Her education
and work, or rather method of work, had wrought out for her anemia and
epileptiform attacks. She got two or three physiological lectures,
was ordered to take iron, and other nourishing food, allow time for
sleep, and, above all, to arrange her professional work in harmony
with the rhythmical or periodical action of woman's constitution. She
made the effort to do this, and, in six months, reported herself in
better health--though far from well--than she had been for six years
before.
This case scarcely requires analysis in order to see how it bears on
the question of a girl's education and woman's work. A gifted and
healthy girl, obliged to get her education and earn her bread at the
same time, labored upon the two tasks zealously, perhaps over-much,
and did this at the epoch when the female organization is busy with
the development of its reproductive apparatus. Nor is this all. She
labored continuously, yielding nothing to Nature's periodical demand
for force. She worked her engine up to highest pressure, just as much
at flood-tide as at other times. Naturally there was not nervous power
enough developed in the uterine and associated ganglia to restrain
the laboring orifices of the circulation, to close the gates; and the
flood of blood gushed through.
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