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MY DEAR DOCTOR, I have great pleasure in answering your inquiries in regard to the course, which, to my knowledge, German mothers adopt with their daughters at the catamenial period. As soon as a girl attains maturity in this respect, which is seldom before the age of sixteen, she is ordered to observe complete rest; not only rest of the body, but rest of the mind.
DEAR SIR, The information, given by two prominent physicians in Berlin, in answer to the questions in your letter, is mostly of a negative character. I believe them to prove that generally girls here are doing very well as to the catamenial function.
The catamenial function first showed signs of activity in her Sophomore Year, when she was fifteen years old. Its appearance at this age is confirmatory evidence of the normal state of her health at that period of her college career. Its commencement was normal, without pain or excess. She performed all her college duties regularly and steadily.
The results are monstrous brains and puny bodies; abnormally active cerebration, and abnormally weak digestion; flowing thought and constipated bowels; lofty aspirations and neuralgic sensations; "A youth of study an old age of nerves." Nature has reserved the catamenial week for the process of ovulation, and for the development and perfectation of the reproductive system.
Sometimes these causes, which pervade more or less the methods of instruction in our public and private schools, which our social customs ignore, and to which operatives of all sorts pay little heed, produce an excessive performance of the catamenial function; and this is equivalent to a periodical hemorrhage.
She was a good student, and conscientiously devoted all her time, with the exception of ordinary vacations, to the labor of her education. She made herself mistress of several languages, and accomplished in many ways. The catamenial function appeared normally, and, with the exception of occasional slight attacks of menorrhagia, was normally performed during the whole period of her education.
At the age of twenty-one she might have been presented to the public, on Commencement Day, by the president of Vassar College or of Antioch College or of Michigan University, as the wished-for result of American liberal female culture. Just at this time, however, the catamenial function began to show signs of failure of power. No severe or even moderate illness overtook her.
"The principal organs of elimination, common to both sexes, are the bowels, kidneys, lungs and skin. A neglect of their functions is punished in each alike. To woman is intrusted the exclusive management of another process of elimination, viz.: the catamenial function. This, using the blood for its channel of operation, performs, like the blood, double duty.
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 functions is punished in each alike. To woman is intrusted the exclusive management of another process of elimination, viz., the catamenial function.
These, of course, are not as inflexible as the rigid rules of a technical school, and admit of easy adjustment to the periodical demands of the female constitution. The second is the traditional motherly supervision and careful regimen of the catamenial week.