we take the mass of girls, even of mature age, and give them the
training commonly given to men, they run, I think, grave risks of being
injured by it, and in larger proportion than do their brothers. Where it
seems for other reasons desirable, it should be, I think, a question of
individual selection. The majority of healthy young women ought to be
able to bear the strain. Once in a female college, the woman goes on,
and it is my own experience that, on the whole, she exhibits a far
larger list of disastrous results from such work than do young men. If
she be in the least degree nervous or not well, I, for one, should
resolutely say no to all such claims; for let us bear in mind that the
higher education is rarely to be used as men use it, to some definite
end, and is therefore not, on the whole, so essential to her as to him.
Few women mean it as a way towards medicine, or even the upper ranks of
teaching; and if they do, the least doubt as to health ought to make us
especially unwilling to start an unseaworthy or uninsurable vessel upon
an ocean of perilous possibilities. I wish that every woman could attain
to the best that men have. I wish for her whatever in the loftiest
training helps to make her as mother more capable, as wife more helpful;
but I would on no account let the healthiest woman thus task her brain
until she is at least nineteen. If she is to marry, and this puts it off
until twenty-three, I consider that a gain not counted by the advocates
of the higher education. I leave to others to survey the broad question
of whether or not it will be well for the community that the mass of
women should have a collegiate training. It is a wide and wrathful
question, and has of late been very well discussed in Romanes's paper,
and by Mrs. Lynn Linton. I think the conclusions of the former, on the
whole, are just; but now, whatever be my views as to the larger
interests of the commonwealth and the future mothers of our race, I must
not forget that I am giving, or trying to give, what I may call
individualized advice, from the physician's view, as to what is wisest.