Sex in Education | Page 9

Edward H. Clarke
the feet by dancing. "Every physician," says a recent writer, "can point to students whose splendid cerebral development has been paid for by emaciated limbs, enfeebled digestion, and disordered lungs. Every biography of the intellectual great records the dangers they have encountered, often those to which they have succumbed, in overstepping the ordinary bounds of human capacity; and while beckoning onward to the glories of their almost preternatural achievements, register, by way of warning, the fearful penalty of disease, suffering, and bodily infirmity, which Nature exacts as the price for this partial and inharmonious grandeur. It cannot be otherwise. The brain cannot take more than its share without injury to other organs. It cannot do more than its share without depriving other organs of that exercise and nourishment which are essential to their health and vigor. It is in the power of the individual to throw, as it were, the whole vigor of the constitution into any one part, and, by giving to this part exclusive or excessive attention, to develop it at the expense, and to the neglect, of the others."[7]
In the system of lichens, Nylander reckons all organs of equal value.[8] No one of them can be neglected without evil to the whole organization. From lichens to men and women there is no exception to the law, that, if one member suffers, all the members suffer. What is true of the neglect of a single organ, is true in a geometrical ratio of the neglect of a system of organs. If the nutritive system is wrong, the evil of poor nourishment and bad assimilation infects the whole economy. Brain and thought are enfeebled, because the stomach and liver are in error. If the nervous system is abnormally developed, every organ feels the twist in the nerves. The balance and co-ordination of movement and function are destroyed, and the ill percolates into an unhappy posterity. If the reproductive system is aborted, there may be no future generations to pay the penalty of the abortion, but what is left of the organism suffers sadly. When this sort of arrest of development occurs in a man, it takes the element of masculineness out of him, and replaces it with adipose effeminacy. When it occurs in a woman, it not only substitutes in her case a wiry and perhaps thin bearded masculineness for distinctive feminine traits and power, making her an epicene, but it entails a variety of prolonged weaknesses, that dwarf her rightful power in almost every direction. The persistent neglect and ignoring by women, and especially by girls, ignorantly more than wilfully, of that part of their organization which they hold in trust for the future of the race, has been fearfully punished here in America, where, of all the world, they are least trammelled and should be the best, by all sorts of female troubles. "Nature," says Lord Bacon, "is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished." In the education of our girls, the attempt to hide or overcome nature by training them as boys has almost extinguished them as girls. Let the fact be accepted, that there is nothing to be ashamed of in a woman's organization, and let her whole education and life be guided by the divine requirements of her system.
The blood, which is our life, is a complex fluid. It contains the materials out of which the tissues are made, and also the débris which results from the destruction of the same tissues,--the worn-out cells of brain and muscle,--the cast-off clothes of emotion, thought, and power. It is a common carrier, conveying unceasingly to every gland and tissue, to every nerve and organ, the fibrin and albumen which repair their constant waste, thus supplying their daily bread; and as unceasingly conveying away from every gland and tissue, from every nerve and organ, the oxidized refuse, which are both the result and measure of their work. Like the water flowing through the canals of Venice, that carries health and wealth to the portals of every house, and filth and disease from every doorway, the blood flowing through the canals of the organization carries nutriment to all the tissues, and refuse from them. Its current sweeps nourishment in, and waste out. The former, it yields to the body for assimilation; the latter, it deposits with the organs of elimination for rejection. In order to have good blood, then, two things are essential: first, a regular and sufficient supply of nutriment, and, secondly, an equally regular and sufficient removal of waste. Insufficient nourishment starves the blood; insufficient elimination poisons it. A wise housekeeper will look as carefully after the condition of his drains as after the quality of his food.
The principal organs of elimination, common to both sexes, are the bowels, kidneys, lungs, and skin. A neglect of their
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