All that need be told of her
career is that she worked as a student, continuously and
perseveringly, through the years of her first critical epoch, and for
a few years after it, without any sort of regard to the periodical
type of her organization. It never appeared that she studied
excessively in other respects, or that her system was weakened while
in college by fevers or other sickness. Not a great while after
graduation, she began to show signs of failure, and some years later
died under the writer's care. A post-mortem examination was made,
which disclosed no disease in any part of the body, except in the
brain, where the microscope revealed commencing degeneration.
This was called an instance of death from over-work. Like the
preceding case, it was not so much the result of over-work as of
un-physiological work. She was unable to make a good brain, that could
stand the wear and tear of life, and a good reproductive system that
should serve the race, at the same time that she was continuously
spending her force in intellectual labor. Nature asked for a
periodical remission, and did not get it. And so Miss G---- died, not
because she had mastered the wasps of Aristophanes and the Mecanique
Celeste, not because she had made the acquaintance of Kant and
Koelliker, and ventured to explore the anatomy of flowers and the
secrets of chemistry, but because, while pursuing these studies, while
doing all this work, she steadily ignored her woman's make.
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