Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/243

Rh of their lives have been different for them? When do they begin to show differences in themselves? From a very early age there have been certain differences—in clothes, in occupation and in recreation, but these have manifestly been superficial and insufficient to account for the contrast. Very little difference appears between the sexes until they are nearly through the grammar school. Then a great change comes to the girl. "My daughter has become a woman" is the phrase which our grandmothers used to describe the epoch; and far as the callow, fourteen-year-old maiden seems from womanhood, the term is the exact expression of a vital truth.

It is at this very beginning of woman-life that especial attention is needed. We know that the boy who is overworked before he gets his growth is always an undersized man; just as surely a girl who is over-worked physically or mentally during her period of puberty is always an undeveloped woman. And mental overwork is fully as injurious as physical overwork.

To speak plainly, the maturing girl must have blood and vitality to perfect the organs essential to her complete being and to establish regularly the periodic function characteristic of her sex. She must do these things at the time appointed. If she must choose between developing mind or body let her by all means choose nourishment for her physical growth. The mental expansion can come later, but the physical perfecting has no second chance. If there is lack of development or unbalanced development at this time she is pretty sure to endure suffering for the best part of her life. From careful investigation of the physical condition of a large number of girls it has been found that from "65 to 70 per cent, enter the higher institutions of learning and business with menstrual suffering of some sort." In some occupations the rate of suffering is as high as 91 per cent.

And the girl may be called upon to bear other sorrows harder than pain for a woman to endure. The injury from arrested development may not appear at once, though flat chest and narrow hips may suggest it; but when life demands of the woman that she do a woman's work she is unequal to it and is broken down in her attempt. Dame Nature, herself the representative mother, has her own idea of the function of women in the scheme of things. When they are fulfilling her purposes she gives them marvelous protection, but woe to those who try to stand against her!

Just as soon, then, as signs of change appear in the girl she should have especial care. To quote from Dr. Engelmann, "She should have personal talk and explanation from a woman who has learned the meaning of wifehood and maternity." To supplement from President Hall, "The quality of motherhood has nowhere a more crucial test than in meeting the needs of this epoch." In general the girl should have at this time no mental or nervous strain to divert nourishment from her