THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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in the end, and far more cruel, as the process is slow and its ultimate consequences are far more serious, for it effects the generations yet unborn. There is over-pressure and over-crowding, and the effects are becoming evident in the prevalence of nervousness, especially among girls, due to the circumstances of school, such as overwork, punish­ments, the excitements of examinations, harsh treatment, etc. The origin, progress and development of St. Vitus dance is probably due to the causes named above.

Statistics report that during the last decade the American quota to the popula­tion has fallen off over one million, that the negro and the lowest of the foreign born have greatly increased. We must never lose sight of the elements which go to make a powerful and enduring nation. It'is not by propagating the worst elements. Time is not given me to enter into the discussion of this serious question. It is the duty of every American woman to arraign herself at the bar of her own conscience and call her duty in question in this matter, for it has a close relationship to the many mental and physical ills that afflict the women of the day, which specialists have recognized and profited by. A noted foreign specialist who has achieved fame and fortune through the practice of his specialty condemns vivisection on animals, but does not hesitate to experiment on women. An American gynecologist equally successful has in his annual report of a few years ago stated that after an experience of over twenty- five years in his specialty that more than half of the operations performed by him during the last ten years were errors. We may well ask if during the latter period more than half are acknowledged errors, how many errors were there during the first fifteen years? We are forced to the conclusion that at least two-thirds were.

As a woman intimately and widely concerned in the application of human knowl­edge for the preservation of human life and the relief of human suffering, I would say that we are in great need of restrictive legislation for this practice. And were we properly educated in physiology public sentiment would demand these restrictions. This branch of surgery calls for special exercise of the protective and educational functions of the state.

A writer in the New York Tribune, of July 6, 1893, says: “If hospital experi­ence makes students less tender of suffering vivisection deadens their humanity and begets indifference to it.” And again: “ By experimentation that has no restrictions but the will of the experimenter, by the slow process of benumbing pity in the young students, may it not be tending to deteriorate one of the chief safeguards of society, the moral sensibility of the future physician? There is an astounding record of utterly heartless crime by educated men. What else is the cause of it? What is the underlying cause of that mysterious outbreak of homicide among physicians revealed by the criminal records of 1892? The object of one physician for the commission of several homicides was the pleasure of killing. That of nearly all the others was money.” The great crimes of history may be often traced to the education of youth. Surely this is a serious question. Cassandra goes on to ask, “ to what lengths unre­strained by law or religion a scientific investigator sometimes permits himself to go.” Another evil is the use of hypnotism by the medical profession, of which a recent med­ical authority says: “Therapeutically the value of hypnotism is obviously but slight and occasional. Its moral and social perils are certain and serious.” I would say in conclusion, “ that there is an urgent need for the protecting services of women as physi­cians, as officers of public health, factory inspectors, members of school boards and school inspectors, superintendents of all hospitals, asylums and places where women and the young of both sexes are kept and employed. There are obviously a vast num­ber of complaints of evils that should be remedied, and of inconveniences that should not be suffered, which would much more readily be brought before the notice of women inspectors than before men occupying a similar position, or would be made to the latter under any circumstances. We may hope for many improvements in the condi­tion of women wh^n their interests are guarded by one whose training and tastes have been so congenial to the subjects which would be brought under her constant notice. There are many among my audience who have nothing to learn in the matter of