The results are monstrous brains and puny bodies;
abnormally active cerebration, and abnormally weak digestion; flowing
thought and constipated bowels; lofty aspirations and neuralgic
sensations;
"A youth of study an old age of _nerves_."
Nature has reserved the catamenial week for the process of ovulation,
and for the development and perfectation of the reproductive system.
Previously to the age of eighteen or twenty, opportunity must be
periodically allowed for the accomplishment of this task. Both
muscular and brain labor must be remitted enough to yield sufficient
force for the work. If the reproductive machinery is not manufactured
then, it will not be later. If it is imperfectly made then, it can
only be patched up, not made perfect, afterwards. To be well made, it
must be carefully managed. Force must be allowed to flow thither in an
ample stream, and not diverted to the brain by the school, or to the
arms by the factory, or to the feet by dancing. "Every physician,"
says a recent writer, "can point to students whose splendid cerebral
development has been paid for by emaciated limbs, enfeebled digestion,
and disordered lungs. Every biography of the intellectual great
records the dangers they have encountered, often those to which they
have succumbed, in overstepping the ordinary bounds of human capacity;
and while beckoning onward to the glories of their almost
preternatural achievements, register, by way of warning, the fearful
penalty of disease, suffering, and bodily infirmity, which Nature
exacts as the price for this partial and inharmonious grandeur.
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