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The Doctor takes for granted that women cannot go through a college course with men without overtaxing their brains, and then goes on to show what a train of evils follows overtaxing the brain. This is an easy way to manage the case, and saves the trouble of proving that women would be injured, and their nervous systems broken down, by allowing them freedom to pursue such a course of study as they might feel able to master. It is really surprising to see with what complacency the Doctor maps out a course for women, assuming that he is a better judge of what they can bear than they are themselves, and assuming that if allowed to decide for themselves what they could bear they would destroy themselves by excessive study! This is not exactly consistent with his admission of their intellectual equality with men, but women have been long accustomed to being told that they are the intellectual peers of men, and, in the next breath, that they do not know what is best for them, and that men are their natural protectors and supporters, and that they should defer all matters relating to their welfare to the better judgment of men, who will take all the trouble of such decisions from them and settle such questions in the way that will promote their greatest happiness! When the time comes that men have so far mastered the plan of the universe as to perceive that the Creator has endowed each class of animals with its own peculiar method of defence, and capable of choosing the way of life most in harmony with its nature, and that man, the highest in the grade of created beings, is also endowed with the power of seeing what will best conserve his interest, and that he has not made one-half of the race incapable of choosing wisely, and therefore dependent upon the other half for this information a great step will be taken in the right direction, and equal freedom of action being secured by the removal of all laws and customs that limit women to narrower bounds than men will give an opportunity to decide the question of what women can do and will do, when allowed free scope for all their powers.

The Doctor talks as if the Creator had made man so perfectly that, without any special care on his part, his whole nature would naturally develop into a perfect and healthy human being, prepared to fulfil all objects of his creation; but that He made woman so imperfectly that her organism would not naturally develop into a perfectly healthy woman, fitted to fulfil the high objects of her creation, unless men took charge of her and directed what she must do and how she must live.

Is not this impugning the wisdom of the Creator in assuming that He left a being on whom the welfare of the race greatly depends to the poor care of erring mortals, instead of creating her as He has man, so that she would naturally grow into a perfect woman from the very nature of her constitution? We take no issue with the Doctor in regard to the host of ills that women are suffering from at this time in America; but they are certainly not to be charged to co-education, for that has been so little tried that no conclusions can as yet be drawn from it.

So far as our observation goes, the number of invalid women is greater in the class of fashionable women than in any other; and they surely do not overtax their brains in studies that compose the college curriculum. The want of some noble and engrossing subject of thought and action is, in our opinion, a much more frequent cause of ill-health than over-study, and next to that, if not taking precedence of it, is the manner in which women are clothed. The corsets that confine the waists and abdomen as if in a vice, preventing the action of the muscles and pressing down the contents of the. abdomen, so as to displace important organs; the great weight of skirts hanging on the abdominal muscles; the long skirts that fetter the limbs and prevent a natural movement of them; the thin boots that expose the feet to cold and damp; the high heels that throw the body out of the perpendicular line, so that a constant strain is imposed on the muscles to keep the balance, -- these are prolific causes of invalidism. The late hours and continued excitements of parties and balls, the great exposure to cold from changing the warm dresses worn in winter for the thin party dresses for evening, combined with the unwholesome diet on such occasions, complete the destruction of health, never robust on account of the failure to give girls the out-of-door active exercises which boys enjoy, while as yet there is no physiological reason for their being shut up in the house, or only taken out to walk dressed so finely that play and exercise are out of the question.

There is still another case, which to my mind is as clear as the overtaxing of brains is to Dr. Clarke's; and that is the necessity for women to go to physicians of the male sex when they need advice for their peculiar diseases. The medical colleges, refusing admission to women, kept them out of the regular avenues for acquiring a medical education, and consequently the number of educated women physicians was so small that they could scarcely be mentioned as treating the diseases of women; and the result has been that for a long period women have been treated by men who, having no corresponding organs, could not possibly understand their diseases, and they have been left uncured, only palliated, and often made worse by this great error. When women are permitted to add the light of science and art to their personal experiences and similar organizations, we may look for a healthier race of women.