Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/8

2 "It is rarely that a book is written which dares to treat of the themes here embodied with the simplicity, earnestness, and candor that the evil of society demands. But Dr. Blackwell's little book may be placed in the hands of our sons and daughters unhesitatingly, and it can not fail to make them wiser and better, inasmuch as it will teach them that the happiness of the individual and of the race hangs upon the proper use and the reasonable discipline of the functions of sex."

N. Y. Sun, Nov. 9, 1879. "A subject of supreme concern to parents, yet one whose adequate treatment calls for a rare union of experience, insight, and delicacy, is discussed by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell in a little treatise entitled 'The Moral Education of Children in Relation to Sex' (Brentano). No one can read this essay without cordial respect for the author's motives and abilities, or without a conviction that her just strictures and acute suggestions will be turned to large, immediate, and beneficent account by thoughtful men and women. Here is a book which examines in a sufficiently plain-spoken, yet clean and wholesome and profoundly earnest way, questions which perplex and occupy the mind of every mother—questions of vital import to the well-being of youth, and of decisive bearing on education and society. We know of no other work on the same urgent, but awkward, topic which combines so much substantial worth with such purity of form. It would be well for the community if the author's cautions and counsels could be pondered in every household."

Observer, Nov. 20, 1879. "Brentano's Literary Emporium publishes Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of their Children,' a little volume full of wise suggestion aud argument, all of which is timely, needful, and on the side of truth, health, honor, usefulness, and happiness"

Graphic, Dec. 6, 1879. "In this little treatise Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell discusses, with commendable frankness and earnestness, a subject which is of the gravest importance not only to parents and the youth they have in charge, but also to society at large, which is, in fact, only a family circle of wider dimensions, whose interests are clearly identical, and not easily separated from those of the narrower band of home members. The writer's experience of twenty-eight years as a physician enables her to write intelligently on a topic which is usually tabooed in polite society from motives of false delicacy, and she has done so with an ability which should win from the public which she desires to touch a careful consideration of the views put forth. . . . . Woman has an important part to fill, in the special duties which devolve upon her as wife, mother, sister, ruler of a household, and member of society. When she fails in these, we are fain to believe it is through ignorance. Would that she might have such a valuable mentor as this little work of Dr. Blackwell's constantly near to help her realize her responsibility. It is a book written for a good purpose, is well done, and should be commended."