Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/546

520 special instruction every day, and a considerable proportion of their evenings is spent in preparing themselves for this; 2. They themselves have to teach the younger children in the school for from five to six hours daily; 3. They have to pass a Government examination at the end of each year, which entails further special private study. This course of instruction continues for five years; and, being satisfactorily concluded, the pupil becomes an assistant teacher. During the next two years she either resides in a college and there undergoes a special and systematic course of study, or, if her means preclude, she continues the system already described at school, and further prepares herself for a final examination; after which, if she acquit herself in an efficient manner, she becomes a full teacher, and as such is certified by Government.

Such a career may be said to represent the intellectual life of an ordinary student, in which there are considerable mental strain, a constant exertion to acquire and retain knowledge, anxiety as to results, and possibly worry and irritation in details. In consequence, there are diminished exercise, loss of fresh air, and generally deficient hygienic surroundings. We have said that numbers of such young women are constantly applying to the hospitals for medical assistance. They complain of physical debility, anæmia, dyspepsia, and loss of appetite; their functions are disordered and irregular, and they present the usual conditions of bodily weakness and depression. Their nervous system and mental faculties are also affected. They are irritable, nervous, depressed, and melancholic; they do not sleep at night, partially lose their memories, they suffer from violent headaches, and can not settle to work; they have all kinds of nervous and subjective pains, hysterical symptoms, and, in short, all the phenomena of nervous and mental as well as of physical exhaustion and debility. If our patients be asked the cause of these ailments, they will with one accord say that it is the hard and constant brain-work, combined with worry and perpetual anxiety.

From teachers let us turn aside for a moment to women who follow other intellectual employments. If we examine the matter we shall find, a certain number of exceptions always being allowed, that as a rule when females are subjected to severe and prolonged mental exertion, more especially if it is associated with anxiety and physical fatigue, they break down under the ordeal. How many excellent and clever women have we known who, either from necessity or from love of study, have eagerly embraced and distinguished themselves in literary, scientific, and educational pursuits! Burning the midnight oil, contending, it may be, with difficulties, harassed with doubt and anxiety, debilitated from want of rest and bodily fatigue, they struggle on, their circumstances or their enthusiasm impelling them, but at last they, like the pupil-teachers, give way and succumb from sheer exhaustion. The objects of this paper are to endeavor to explain why