CHIEFLY CLINICAL.

79

need not stop to inquire into, the regimen of our schools, colleges, and social life, that re­quires girls to walk, work, stand, study, recite, and dance at all times as boys can and should, may shut the uterine portals of the blood up, and keep poison in, as well as open them, and let life out. Which of these two evils is worse in itself, and which leaves the largest legacy of ills behind, it is difficult to say. Let us examine some illustrations of this sort of arrest.

Miss D-entered Yassar College at the

age of fourteen. Up to that age, she had been a healthy girl, judged by the standard of American girls. Her parents were appar­ently strong enough to yield her a fair dower of force. The catamenial function first showed signs of activity in her Sophomore Year, when she was fifteen years old. Its appearance at this age* is confirmatory evi-

* It appears, from the researches of Mr. Whitehead on this point, that an examination of four thousand cases gave fifteen years six and three-quarter months as the average age in England for the appearance of the catamenia. Whitehead, on Abortion , Src.