"[23] It has been reserved for our age and country, by its
methods of female education, to demonstrate that it is possible in
some cases to divest a woman of her chief feminine functions; in
others, to produce grave and even fatal disease of the brain and
nervous system; in others, to engender torturing derangements and
imperfections of the reproductive apparatus that imbitter a lifetime.
Such, we know, is not the object of a liberal female education. Such
is not the consummation which the progress of the age demands.
Fortunately, it is only necessary to point out and prove the existence
of such erroneous methods and evil results to have them avoided. That
they can be avoided, and that woman can have a liberal education that
shall develop all her powers, without mutilation or disease, up to the
loftiest ideal of womanhood, is alike the teaching of physiology and
the hope of the race.
In concluding this part of our subject, it is well to remember the
statement made at the beginning of our discussion, to the following
effect, viz., that it is not asserted here, that improper methods of
study and a disregard of the reproductive apparatus and its functions,
during the educational life of girls, are the _sole_ causes of female
diseases; neither is it asserted that _all_ the female graduates of
our schools and colleges are pathological specimens.
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