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V.

BY CAROLINE H. DALL.

"THE hand of iron in the glove of silk!" How utter one word in the face of testimony like this, -- honest, conscientious, earnest; adding to the highest professional reputation all the force of a pure and noble individual character? How do it, still further, in the face of personal obligations accumulating for more than twenty years, and of that loving respect with which the physician who is also priest is held in every household? I have anticipated this book with pain. I lay it down with pain, far sharper and far different from any that I foresaw. I start from the same premises with Dr. Clarke; for I believe the spiritual and intellectual functions of men and women to tend differently to their one end; and their development to this end, through the physical, to be best achieved by different methods. But I do not believe that any greater difference of capacity, whether physical or psychical, will be found between man and woman than is found between man and man; and my faith in the co-education of the sexes has been greatly stimulated by the present inelastic method, from which many boys do shrink as much as any girl could.

Under a proper system boys and girls help each other forward, not merely towards excellent scholarship, but towards a perfect humanity, -- that is, a perfect self-possession, -- the attainment for each of a sound mind in a sound body. To understand this, however, not even the President of Harvard will find possible unless he does more than look at a mixed college. To have any fair comprehension of the elements which constitute its power for good or evil, it is necessary to pass at least a week within its walls, sharing the "college commons" and the college recreations studying its whole action as if it were a large family.

When I laid down this book I felt the emphasis of my pain in a direction wholly unexpected. Every woman who takes up her pen to reject its conclusions knows very well that it will penetrate hundreds of households where her protest cannot follow; and Dr. Clarke must be patient with the number and weight of our remonstrances, since he knows very well that upon the major part of the community our words will fall with no authority, our experiences invite no confidence. We must gain the public ear by constant iteration, and by our "importunity "prevail. This book, will fall into the hands of the young, and that I deplore. They should be taught the proper care of their growing bodies; but any such cases of disease as are here recorded are fruitful of evil stimulus to any girl inclined to hysterics. If this subject ought to be discussed publicly at all, a matter open to doubt, teachers and mothers should discuss it. No amount of professional skill can avail in place of that sympathetic intuition of causes which should spring from identical physical constitution. In no pages that I ever read is the need of educated women physicians so painfully apparent as in these. I expected to find premises from which I should dissent, but, with the exception of that upon which the book is based, I did not find any; and, so far as it is an argument against co-education, the book utterly fails.

Co-education does not necessarily include identical methods; and, if it did, Dr. Clarke's examples of broken constitutions are brought from the clerk's desk, the theatre, and the woman's college, as well. His examples have no statistical value; for nothing is told us of their proportion to the whole number of students of the other sex under the same precise conditions, or to the failures in the same number of girls educated tenderly at home. When the book passes from the methods of education to the effect of those methods on womanly functions, the treatment of the subject is both one-sided and incomplete. The only proper place for a discussion of the latter in extenso is the columns of a medical journal; but this book is intended for popular use, and to the people must those who criticise it appeal.

The most painful thing in the book is its tone. Mr. Higginson has said that it is not coarse! Surely never was a sentence written that more eloquently betrayed the need women have to speak for themselves! Women read this essay with personal humiliation and dismay. A certain materialistic taint is felt throughout the whole, such as saddens most of our intercourse with our young physicians, but which we had hoped never to associate with this man, so long and so justly revered. The natural outgrowth of this tone are the sneers which disfigure its pages, the motto from Plautus, and a few most unhappy illustrations.

These things might be easily forgiven to the immature student, as we pardon the rude manners of growing boys; but should not our friend have denied himself the small relief of their utterance? We cannot excuse the trait merely because the work has been undertaken in the midst of more pressing cares. We feel that it indicates something in the author which is no accident. We do not accept it as suitable in the "beloved physician" for whose delicate and thoughtful care so many have been grateful. He, at least, should have given us pages that a woman might read without a blush.