their
development. In the process of waste and repair, of destructive and
constructive metamorphosis, by which brains as well as bones are built
up and consolidated, education often leaves insufficient margin for
growth. Income derived from air, food, and sleep, which should
largely, may only moderately exceed expenditure upon study and work,
and so leave but little surplus for growth in any direction; or, what
more commonly occurs, the income which the brain receives is all spent
upon study, and little or none upon its development, while that which
the nutritive and reproductive systems receive is retained by them,
and devoted to their own growth. When the school makes the same steady
demand for force from girls who are approaching puberty, ignoring
Nature's periodical demands, that it does from boys, who are not
called upon for an equal effort, there must be failure somewhere.
Generally either the reproductive system or the nervous system
suffers. We have looked at several instances of the former sort of
failure; let us now examine some of the latter.

Miss F---- was about twenty years old when she completed her technical
education. She inherited a nervous diathesis as well as a large dower
of intellectual and aesthetic graces. She was a good student, and
conscientiously devoted all her time, with the exception of ordinary
vacations, to the labor of her education. She made herself mistress of
several languages, and accomplished in many ways. The catamenial
function appeared normally, and, with the exception of occasional
slight attacks of menorrhagia, was normally performed during the whole
period of her education. She got on without any sort of serious
illness. There were few belonging to my clientele who required less
professional advice for the same period than she. With the ending of
her school life, when she should have been in good trim and well
equipped, physically as well as intellectually, for life's work,
there commenced, without obvious cause, a long period of invalidism.
It would be tedious to the reader, and useless for our present
purpose, to detail the history and describe the protean shapes of her
sufferings. With the exception of small breasts, the reproductive
system was well developed. Repeated and careful examinations failed to
detect any derangement of the uterine mechanism. Her symptoms all
pointed to the nervous system as the _fons et origo mali_. First
general debility, that concealed but ubi