Nichols, Mary S. G.  A Woman's Work in Water Cure and Sanitary Education.  Nichols & Co.: London, 1874.

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A WOMAN'S WORK IN WATER CURE.
CHAPTER I.
MY EDUCATION AND MISSION.
Woman's Sphere--The Need of Female Physicians--Early Experience--Infant Mortality--Sufferings of Woman--Medical Studies--Lectures to Women--Practice in Water Cure.

    In giving to the world some records of my work, I make no attempt to explore or define the sphere of woman. Each individual must do this for herself.  But I assert that woman in her nature is eminently qualified to heal the sick.  If it were thought needful at this day to bleed and poison people into health, I would by no means recommend women for the work.  This is clearly not "woman's sphere".
    Woman has great quickness in understanding principles.  I do not say in discovering them.  The first and more rugged processes of intellection belong to man.  Woman reasons well from principles, and acts wisely, and kindly, particularly where affection induces her to act, and affection should be the prime moving power in constituting woman a physician,---a teacher,--- an artist, or indeed, to qualify her to act usefully and successfully in any sphere.  She sees and comprehends with a rapidity [8]  that makes the conclusions of reason seem intuitions.  By all this she is fitted to be a physician.  Then there is a propriety, a delicacy, a decency, in a woman being the medical advisor of her own sex---which most people can see.
    Many delicate ladies have said to me, that they would die before they would submit to examinations needful to their cure, by a male physician.  There is reason to believe that many women, with that innate and shrinking modesty which is an ornament to the sex, do give up their lives a prey to hopeless disease, simply because women are not qualified to act as physicians.  They cannot commit their cases to those who should care for them-- they cannot persuade themselves to submit to exposure to men, and they linger a few years in untold and unconceived misery, and die when they should be in the full flush of life, and in the midst of usefulness.
    Alas, for woman!  her lot in this age, as in all previous ages, has been one of suffering, and the depth and bitterness of that suffering is known only to herself and to God.
    The general prevalence of those diseases peculiar to woman, constitutes a fearful necessity for the education and training of women for physicians.  The Healing Art opens a broad field of usefulness to our sex, but no woman can enter this field and be really useful, without deep devotion.  We must desire above all to be of the greatest use, and then we shall seek to be prepared to accomplish the end we have in view.
    At this day it would be a matter of much difficulty, if not of impossibility, for women to enrol themselves as members of the medical profession, by studying the Healing Art.  We cannot receive a diploma from an Alma Mater that has borne us through a courses of study like an infant in arms.  No long-established institutions, no ancient and honorourable societies, offer [9] us support and facilities on our untried way.  Single-handed, we must grapple with iron prejudice and a time-honoroured custom, grown hoary in a dotage of error.  WE have word to do which will strengthen our hands.  We may be thankful that work will strengthen them.  We have difficulties to overcome that would sharpen meaner wits than ours.
    The discipline of self-culture is wholesome.  The labour of self-education goes far toward creating the mind it is meant to improve.  At first thought, the obstacles interposed between woman and one of the learned professions seem absolutely insurmountable.  But it is not so.  "There is not anything denied to persevering and well directed effort."  Men cannot conceded to us our position, but they can help us to secure it, when the purpose to attain it has come fully into our hearts.  Men are wiling to do this individually, though not yet corporately.
    I am a witness of the truth of this assertion, for scientific men have assisted me in the attainment of knowledge, and rejoiced in my usefulness, though they could give me no diploma---albeit diplomas are sometimes given to men whose wit, worth, or scientific attainments do not move the especial reverence even of us women.
    Those who have done the greatest service to humanity have not had nor needed diplomas.  Priessnitz established water cure in Germany without one.  Men love justice ; and when woman is truly qualified for the responsible work of curing diseases, she may not only accept but give diplomas.  There may be, not only a female college, but female professors.  I took my part in the field of labour it was so long my lot to occupy as teacher and healer, from a necessity of my being.  I first received benefit from water cure in my own case, and then sought to benefit others.  There is room for many more to do as I have done. [10]
    New England, the land of my birth, was peopled with an intelligent, hardy, enterprising race of colonies from England, Scotland, and Wales.  My own ancestry was Scottish and Welsh.  I inherit their vitality, but I had also that "heritage of woe," a diseased constitution, the consequence of some ignorance of, or want of conformity to, the laws of life, in my progenitors.  Climate and the conditions of life in a  new country may have had their part in the matter, but, as a rule, the habits of living chiefly affect the health of posterity.  Our sins, willful or ignorant, are visited upon our children, "to the third and fourth generation".  And our purity and right to doing are no less their inheritance.  I was born to a life of pain, to a long struggle against hereditary tendencies to disease.  So far, and to a certain extent, I have conquered in the fight, I have gained, to aid many others in similar contests, and, I believe, to save many from such suffering as I have endured.
    I had the misery of seeing my beautiful sister fade and die of New England's scourage, consumption.  Later, a brother, just preparing to enter upon the duties of life as a physician, was struck down and carried off by the same disease.  My own lungs were attacked; I had what were considered fatal symptoms, and I have at intervals suffered from pain, cough, and at times profuse hemorrhages.  By a pure diet, care, and water treatment, I have so far overcome this tendency to consumption, through with the occasional returns of symptoms which warn me not to relax my vigilance, nor to expect to live without a careful conformity to the laws of life.
    It was not only  my own case and the cases of premature death in my family that made me take an absorbing interest in the question of health.  Half the children born around me died in infancy.  Almost [11] ever year epidemic diseases, such as measles, scarlatina, and cholera infantum, carried off great numbers.  Adults died of typhus or consumption.  The graveyards were full of the graves of women who died between the ages of twenty-five and forty.  After marriage, my own babes shared the common lot, and but two lived to maturity.
    I wished to know the causes of this misery, disease, and death, and determined to gain instruction.  A physician who attended me gave me the use of his fairly furnished medical library ; the editor of a literary journal, for which I wrote tales and poems, procured me a copy of "Copeland's Medical Dictionary."  An earnest and pretty thorough study of physiology and the practice of medicine, with the results of that practice all around me, early satisfied me that ignorance of the laws health went hand in hand with false and mischievous system of drugging, bleeding, blistering, and life.  In my studies at this period, so far from meeting with opposition from the medical profession, I received from its distinguished professors every possible assistance.
    While engaged in the work of education, I was shocked and grieved to see lovely children weakened, and their health of mind and body destroyed, and even idiocy and insanity produced,  by habits formed in ignorance, and the result, in many cases, of hereditary tendencies.  I was surrounded with sin, and the consequences of sin.  Wrong being and wrong doing were everywhere; but it seemed to me that the disposition to do right was not so much wanting as the knowledge of right.  I became as anxious to teach others as I had been to learn the way of moral physical salvation.  I began, therefore, to teach those whom I was educating the elements of physiology and the laws of health. [12]

  
Figure 1:  Mary Gove Nichols, as drawn by her artist-daughter Elma Gove, 1853.

    At this period two earnest reformers were at work in New England, writing and lecturing on these subjects--Dr. Alcott and Dr. Graham.  I was, so far as I know, the first woman who gave lectures to her own sex on anatomy, physiology, and the prevention and cure of diseases.  This work came without my seeking, and very unexpectedly.  When it was known to some ladies of Boston, who had formed a Health Society or Lyceum, that I was giving health lectures to my pupils, they invited me to lecture also to them.  The satisfaction I was able to vie to these ladies led to my receiving invitations, from similar societies, and to my giving courses of such lectures in many of the larger towns of New England, and later, in the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, Cincinnati, New Orleans, & etc.  These were, as a rule, give to ladies---chiefly to mothers who wished to learn the laws of health for the benefit of their offspring, but I was also in some cases induced to give lectures on popular subjects to large audiences of both sexes; a custom more prevalent in America than it has yet become in this country, where women, except upon the stage, in the concert-room, in the most exalted positions, are generally restricted to what is considered their proper sphere---the domestic circle.
    It was to prepare women for the better performance of the duties of their proper sphere as wives and mothers, that I became, in a more public manner than I wished, a teacher of the laws of life and health.  After several years of arduous and, I trust, useful labors, I made my residence in New York, and engaged in literary occupations and in giving health-lectures to classes of ladies assembled in my drawing-room.  I had become acquainted with the practice of water cure, at first from English friends who had visited the establishment of Priessnitz in Germany, and from German physicians settled in the United States, and at two im- [13] portant water-cure establishments.  Ladies who attended my lectures consulted me for themselves and their children, and I was finally induced to change my house into a water-cure establishment.  My husband, a medical graduate of the New York University, having adopted the hydropathic system of treatment brought me the aid of his science and skill, and we eventually formed an institution for water-cure treatment, general education adapted to the young who needed hygienic conditions, and for scientific lectures on the principles of hydropathy.  Many who became excellent water-cure physicians, male and female, were among our pupils.  My "Lectures to Ladies on Anatomy and Physiology" were published by Harper Brothers, New York.    

Figure 2:  1.     Example of a water cure establishment—pictured:  Village of Danville, NY, called the “Castle on the Hill” circa 1870.

    At this time water cure had become a favorite mode of treatment with large numbers of the most intelligent people in America.  I had visited the large water-cure establishments at Battleboro, Vermont, Lebanon, New York, and cures more or less extensive, had been erected in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and perhaps, in other States.  In doing the work pressed upon me, first by my sense of a great need, and then by the urgency of the demand for my labours, I had no theory of women's rights to promotes, though the wrongs of women, in destroyed  health, wrecked constitutions, and shortened lives, were but too apparent.  I though woman had the right to do all she was capable of doing to teach and heal her own sex at least, and I could not see that the success of men in either teaching or health gave them any exclusive privileges.  I had acquired the knowledge which enabled me to be useful, and I responded to the cry of those who said, give us light, give us health, save us and our children.  I am happy in the belief that there are many thousands whose health has been restored, whose lives have been prolonged, and whose usefulness and happiness have [14] been greatly increased by my not shrinking from my duty.
    In the following pages I wish to give an idea of the causes of disease, and the best methods of cure, as clear an account as I can make of the processes of water cure, and such cases as may best illustrate the application, mode, and efficiency of the hydropathic treatment.  I give no cases as a lure for patients, since I wish for none ; or to promote the sale of nostrums, for I have none to sell.  I wish to teach mothers how to cure their own diseases, and those of their children ; and to increase health, purity, and happiness in the family and the home.

CHAPTER II.
HEALTH AND HYDROPATHY.
Health--Conditions of Health--Medical Practice--Principles of Hydropathy--Its Modus Operandi.

    The science of health is based upon a sound physiology- a study of nature and the laws of life; but it is not necessary that every one should be profoundly scientific.  The details of anatomy may  be needful to surgery; all knowledge may be useful; but the conditions of health and the causes of disease are simple and easily understood.  Health is a natural condition; disease unnatural.  Health is simple; disease complex and difficult.  Health is a result of the regular and orderly performance of the functions of life, and gives vigour and enjoyment; disease is disorder, exhaustion, and the effort of nature to overcome evil.
    To every organised being-plant, animal, man, there are certain conditions of health; a pure and vigorous germ, the requisite temperature, nutrition, air, exercise, [15] whatever is needed for a natural and orderly development of organs, and a regular performance of the functions of life.  The natural life of man, as of every animal, in suitable conditions, is a life of health- of bodily and mental vigour, activity and consequent happiness. The only natural death is the gradual and painless wearing out of the vital energy, in old age, "like a shock of corn fully ripe".  All other death than this, though it may be the mercy of God be made a blessedness to those who die, and even a blessing to survivors, is yet a violation of natural law.  We bring upon ourselves the largest part of all premature mortality by ignorant or wilful violations of the laws of life.
    Health, in those who have the blessing of a good constitution, is maintained by a simple nourishing diet, pure air, exercise, cleanliness, and the regulation of passions.  Man surfeit themselves with the impure flesh and fat of diseased animals, heating condiments and spices, spirituous drinks and poisonous narcotics, injuring their digestive powers, and filling their systems with morbidic matter; and to these are but too often added vegetable and mineral poisons, given as medicines, not one grain of which can be taken without more or less injury to the human organism: we inhale poisons in filthy streets and unventilated buildings, and these poisons are retained in the system.  The skin-the great purifying organ of the body-is weakened, by a neglect of personal cleanliness, which cannot be maintained in perfection without daily bathing in cold water.  The poisonous matter thus brought into, and kept in the system, weakens its powers, interrupts its functions, and produces a state of disease.  Nature makes a violent effort to cast out these evils- and we have pain, inflammations, fevers, and the whole train of acute diseases.  The poisons in the system, and the bleedings and drug-dosings of the doctors, weaken the powers of nature, and we have [16] the less violent, but more protracted agonies of chronic disease.  Such violations of the laws of God have filled the world with disease and misery.  Diseases parents bring forth sick and short-lived children, half of whom perish in infancy, and not one-hundredth of whom reach old age.  Thus, "sin came into the world, and death by sin".
    The struggle of the system to cast out its diseases goes on as long as the vital power remains.  Every effort of nature is for health; pain accompanies all remedial action; and all the symptoms of disease are caused by the re-active powers of the system.  It is the work of the physician to assist and facilitate these efforts; but this cannot be done by drawing out the vital current, and thus weakening the re-active powers of nature; nor by giving additional poisons, to task still more the vital energies.  Doctors with lancets and poisons, have joined Disease in a war upon Nature, instead of aiding Nature in its struggle with Disease.
    I have no quarrel with routine physicians; the do as well as they know how, and they are learning better every day.  Within the memory of man medicine has been greatly simplified and ameliorated.  We have got beyond the complex and terrible mixtures of all sorts of nasty and discordant drugs in the old pharmacopoeias.  Doctors no longer blister so extensively, purge so exhaustively, or are so sanguinary as they were a few years ago.  They do not salivate with mercury as a rule; they are more sparing of opiates.  Homeopathy, if it has done no more, has proved that people may get well either by means, or in spite, of very small doses of medicine.
    Every medical system professes to recognise, as a first principle, that there should be no harmful interference with the healing powers of nature.  Better do nothing than do harm.  This is not in accordance [17] with the interests of druggists or physicians; but every honest doctor must be governed by this rule.  In most cases, all that can be safely done is to remove obstructions, and aid nature in her own work, by substituting the conditions of health for the causes of disease.
    The water-cure treatment is a scientific application of the principles of nature in the cure of disease.  It changes conditions, removes or promotes the removal of morbidic matters laid up in the system, cleanses, invigorates.  It is the hand-maid of nature and the minister of health.
    If disease or tendencies to disease, have been inherited, as the taint of scrofula, the delicate organisation which favours the development of tubercular consumption, the low and oppressed vitality which makes life a painful and generally an unsuccessful struggle with disease; the processes of water can purify the organism of its taint, and give the vital powers their best chance for a victorious contest.
    If bad air, the bane of civilisation, impure and indigestible food, exhausting labours, habits, or influences, have produced their nature effect upon the system, the water cure is the best system to bring about the two conditions of health-purification and invigoration.
    Water!  you say-what is the good of mere water?  There are still many people in the world who know very little about it; and wasting diseases and premature death are far more familiar to the multitude of those who have been called "the great unwashed".  Water, however, is an element of some importance.  Four-fifths of the human body is composed of water.  Blood, brain, nerves are nearly all water.  Muscle is three-fourths water, and it even enters largely into the composition of bones.  Water cleanses the surface of the body, and restores the health action of the skin.[18]  The skin itself contains thirty miles in length of tubes, which in health, and the effort of the system to throw off disease, pour out water.  By water all food is dissolved, and so enabled to penetrate the system and nourish its tissues; by water the waste matter of the body is carried out of the body through the skin, the lungs, and other secreting or excreting organs.  We can live much longer without food than without water.  In its absence no life is possible on earth.  It is the necessary element of all vegetable and all animal life.
    Is it strange that pure water should be the most powerful agent in producing the purification and invigoration of the body which is the cure of disease?
    Water cure, however, as a system of medical treatment, dose not consist in the use of water alone, but it enters into all the causes of disease, and assists all the efforts of nature for its cure.  It prescribes a pure and healthy diet, carefully adapted to the assimilating powers of the patient; it demands pure air and strengthening exercises, with other physical and moral hygienic conditions.  The applications of water, according as they are made, are cleansing, exciting, tonic, or sedative.  Water clears the stomach better than any other emetic; produces powerful and regular evacuations of the bowels; excites the skin-the great deterging organ of the system-to throw off the masses of impurities; stimulates the whole absorbent and secretory systems; relieves pain more effectually than opium; dissolves acrid and poisonous matters; purifies the blood; reduces inflammations; calms irritations; and answers all the indications of cure-to fulfill which physicians search their pharmacopoeias in vain.  The proper application of the processes of the water cure never fails of doing good.  It only abuses come from ignorance.  The water-cure physician requires a thorough knowledge of the system and a careful dis- [19] crimination in applying it to various constitutions and the varied conditions of disease.

Figures 3-6:  Examples of types of water cure baths.

    Medicines, too often, instead of aiding, check the curative processes of nature.  Often they change the acute affections, which left to their own course, would result in health, to chronic and incurable diseases.  The patient, rid of the particular action of the disease, still retains the cause that produced it, with the addition of the medicine he has taken.  In the water cure, patients throw off quantities of mercury and other poisons, which have lain in their systems for years, producing rheumatic, neuraglic, and other nervous and chronic diseases.
    As nature is making constant efforts, by means of the excretory system, to free the body from disease, and as the water cure strengthens and invigorates all the powers of nature, and assists in its great processes of dissolving and expelling morbid matter, it is applicable to every kind of disease, and will cure all that are curable.  It cools fevers, and gives tone and energy to the exhausted nervous system; it soothes the most violent pains, and calms the paroxysms of delirium; it brings out the poisonous matter of scrofula, and gives firmness to the shaky hand of palsy.
    Unassisted nature, where there is a large stock of vitality, may triumph over both disease and medicine.  The successes of both the Homeopathic and the Expectant systems show that very little medicine is necessary in some cases, and that none at all may be consistent with recovery from violent diseases.  But the water cure equalises the circulation, cleanses the system, invigorates the great organs of life, and, by exciting the functions of nutrition and excretion, builds up the body anew, and re-creates it in purity and health more rapidly than nature can do it without such favouring conditions.  Purification is health; at least, it is the first condition of health.  Wash away [20] filth, poison, the morbidic matters which gather in a neglected organism, and pure air, pure food, and the recuperative powers of nature bring health.
    It is rare, indeed, that a water-cure family ever needs a physician a second time.  The system threatens in this way to destroy all medical practice by removing all need of any.  Mothers learn not only to cure the disease of their families, but, what is more important, to keep them in health.  The only way a water-cure physician can live, is by constantly getting new patients, as the old ones are too thoroughly cure, and at the same time too well instructed, to require further advice.  This is a striking advantage to water-cure patients, if not to water-cure physicians.
    The efficacy of the water cure depends upon the amount of vital energy or re-active force of the patient; and this in low and chronic diseases and enfeebled constitutions must be economised with the greatest care.  Mistakes and failures in water cure have come from not knowing how to adapt the treatment to the patient's re-active power.  The same treatment that would cure one might fail entirely with another.  The practice of this system, therefore, in difficult cases, requires true science, the best judgment, and the finest discrimination.  These are especially needed in chronic, nervous, and female diseases.  In all these, the water cure is the most effectual- I might almost say, the only effectual- remedy.  Thousands of women are doctored into premature graves, who might be saved by a knowledge of the water cure.  The world is scarcely prepared to believe that its processes relive childbirth of nearly all its dangers and sufferings-yet this truth has many living witnesses.
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    The processes of the water cure, skillfully directed, are never painful and seldom disagreeable.  If irksome at first, they soon become pleasant, as the nerves acquire tone.  They may be gone through at all seasons, and in many cases without materially interfering with the ordinary business and amusements of the patient.  They can be applied in all situations where it is possible to get pure water, fresh air, and a proper diet.  It is desirable, in many cases, to live at a water-cure house; but many very good cures are made by patients who apply the water at home, under competent advice or after an intelligent study of the system.  Summer is favourable for some cases, winter for others, and spring and autumn for all.  A few days' treatment suffices for an acute case, but a chronic one may require weeks and months of persevering attention according to the vitality of the system and the nature of the disease.
    The great trouble with Americans is, they are in too great a hurry.  They are in a hurry to eat and drink, and to get rich.  They get ill as fast as they can, and they want a short cut to health. Chronic disease that has been inherited, or induced by a wrong-doing through half a lifetime, cannot be cured in a day by any process now known to the world.  What is wanted for water cure is a fair trial for a sufficient length of time.
    The water cure is the most economical system of [24] medicine.  It supports no druggists, and requires few practitioners.  Water is everywhere free, and the best diet is cheaper than the worst.  The universal practice of water cure (including obedience to the laws of life, else it is not water cure) would lead to universal health.  A single constitution and prescription is often all that is necessary; and contrary to every other system of medicine, the means for gaining health are also the means of preserving it.  For these reasons, water cure is destined to be one of the greatest blessings ever bestowed upon a diseased and suffering race.

Figures 7-10:  Examples of types of water cure baths.
    
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CHAPTER VII.
FEMALE DISEASES.
Particular Directions to Women--Case of Uterine Disease--Case of Uterine and Nervous Disease--Case of Rupture and Premature Delivery--Inflammation and Ulceration of the Uterus and Renal Organs--Uterine Disease--Spinal Disease and Prolapsus Uteri--Ulceration of the Womb, etc.--Inflammation of the Uterus--Uterine Disease--A Sad Case--Diabetes and Prurigo.

    To all who are interested or uninterested in water cure, I have something to say; for all who are interested in health.  We fall little short of the truth when we say that the whole world is diseased.  I have hesitated somewhat as to what portion of my experience I should give to the public in the present volume.  I have decided to speak to women, and mothers particularly, being satisfied that I cannot achieve a higher good than to enlighten these as widely as possible with [80] regard to the conditions of health and disease.  I have endeavoured to give plain, practical, home directions.  Many women are ill and wretched, and feel life to be a burden instead of a blessing, who cannot go to a water cure house to recover their health.  But they have wells and springs of pure water at home.  What they want is instruction.  Many of them display a great heroism in the endurance of suffering: give them knowledge, and that same heroism will save them- will restore them to health and usefulness.
    And for every individual thus relieved, an added joy will spring to my life, whether I know the fact of such relief or not.  "We are members one of another", and the universal life-spirit circulates in every heart more freely and joyously for every new influx of wisdom and goodness, and consequent health, that is received by the world.
    The following directions and cases are written for my sisters in all plainness of speech.  I love truth too well to conceal it, and thus obstruct its blessings.

PARTICULAR DIRECTIONS TO WOMEN.

    Women have too long regarded their diseases as the atheist regards the world- as coming without a cause.  There is much hereditary disease, and tendency to disease; aside from this, we are responsible for our illness; and this responsibility, which I am now contemplating, is not removed from us because we are ignorant of the laws and conditions of health.  If we take poison we are responsible, whether we do it ignorantly or advisedly, that is, the body is responsible, and we cannot escape.  Our ignorance of physical laws never lessens our suffering when we violate them.
    Women have many troubles, of which they know neither the cause nor the cure.  They think these things come upon them because they are women.
    The most common diseases of women are painful [81] and obstructed menstruation, fluor albus, and prolapsus uteri.  Properly speaking, these are all symptoms attendant on a weakened or prostrated nervous system.
    The causes of these affections are various.  Hereditary disease comes first, then the ignorance and errors of the mothers as to the training of children, tight dressing, impeding the circulation of the blood, and nervous energy; excessive amativeness and its indulgence, either social or solitary.  All these causes, and many more, waste the vital and nervous power, and the result is what we call female diseases, such as fluor albus, or whites, obstructed or painful menstruation, piles, prolapsus uteri, or falling of the womb, and general neuralgic affections, such as toothache, and other facial pains, pains in the spine, and a great many other miserable aches.
    The question first to be answered by each woman who finds herself suffering from either of the above maladies is- What is the cause of my disease?  Is it tight-dressing, improper food or drinks, late hours, the round of fashionable dissipation; or is it excessive labour, or mental anxiety, or excessive indulgence of amativeness?
    We must not hide from ourselves the fact, that solitary vice in young persons, and the too great indulgences of amativeness by married partners, are powerful producing causes of nervous disease.  We must look life in the face, and meet its evils.  In all cases of female weakness, the cause or causes must be first of all ascertained and removed; then the different applications of water are rapid in curing the disease.  In whites and falling of the womb, the sitz bath, vagina syringe, and wet compress about the abdomen, will often cure without other applications of water, when the cause is removed.
  
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CHAPTER XII.
SANITARY EDUCATION.
The Model School--Boys and Girls should be Educated together--Sex in Education--Feminine Abilities and Disabilities--Competition--Work--Duties of Parents--Mutual Influence of the Sexes--Life, Work, and Mission.

     "God hath set the earth in families".  The true family is the model school- the home of loving nurture, of that harmonious development of all the faculties of soul and bodies, which is integral education in mutual dependence and mutual help.
    A father and mother, wise with the wisdom that is of God, educated in all that unites and relates to man to the earth, and to his fellow-men are the best educators, either of their own children, or of the children of others, in a school of life, health, manners, work-in one word, of religion.
    The true love of both father and mother is required in the education of children; and as boys and girls are born and reared in the same family, so should they be educated together.
    It has been thought that girls have not the faculties or the physical powers necessary to acquire the same education as boys; that they are more delicate in health, and that the functions which fit them to become wives and mothers unfit them for the severe studies of men.  And as girls are now born and educated, there is some truth in this; and they are cramped and weak-[149] ened in having imposed upon them the dress, manners, habits, and exercises, supposed to be suitable to their condition.  By these means their systems are weakened, and when they become women, their peculiar functions become diseased.  They have spinal irritation, and often distortion, and periodical seasons of weakness or suffering, and are really unfit for serious study or work.
    But this is all abnormal and unnecessary.  A girl as healthily rejected as her brother, will successfully compete with him in learning.  The feminine intellect is quicker than the masculine, and girls often grasp by a sudden intuition what boys acquire slowly by study.  Genius is of no sex, and there are examples enough to prove that women can excel in literature, art, poetry, and even in mathematics.
    The conditions of health being equally secured to both sexes, there will be found greater equality in the progress of boys and girls in scholarship. Girls, being more impulsive, need more rest, and their quickness in learning will give them more time for recreation and repose.
    Competition in study should in all cases be under the careful watch and close rein of the parent-teacher; for I repeat, parent and teacher should be one in spirit, if not in actuality.  Cramming for examinations will, I trust, soon come to be considered a horrible abuse of the past- as much as the drinking orgies in which men fell under the table at the close of a feast.
    There can be no true education without health-in which the health of the pupil is not the first consideration; and there can be no real health without work.  Cricketting and rowing, gymnastics, calisthenics, and dancing may be beautiful as amusements and recreations, but they can never give the same strength to the body, because they cannot give the same satisfaction [150] to the mind.  In every school, there should be professors of agriculture and practical mechanics and domestic economy.  Housekeeping, cookery, and all the needful avocations of a home, should be taught, as well as sciences and accomplishments.  Every girl should know how to perform every domestic duty, and be able to teach her servants, and secure the perfect order of the home of which she is to be the mother and mistress.
    But knowledge and accomplishments are alike useless if women are to become victims of sensuality, and if women have their health wrecked by the selfishness of ill-educated, or reckless husbands, and the exhaustion of two frequent child-bearing, how can they be true wives, mothers and teacher?
    Schools can never be what they ought to be until parents know their duties to each other and their offspring - until they have studied and put in practice the principles of sanitary and social science, and so live that they can have children who can be educated together, at once strengthening and refining each other.  Youth of both sexes, when educated together, come to have a mutual spiritual dependence most conducive to health of body and of soul.  Isolate education fosters prurient imaginations, sickly sentimentalities in both sexes, which have acts and results most disastrous to health; and too often schools, for both boys and girls, are hot-beds of sensuality and disease.  Every father and mother should seriously reflect and carefully inquire before placing their children in schools of even a high reputation.  But most of all, parents should seek to be so pure in themselves that their children shall be born pure and unsensual in their bodies and souls.  The impress of the sensual life of parents is stamped upon their children, and by inheriting the weaknesses and diseases of their parents, they fall easy victims to temptation.
[151]    My part in education for the past thirty years has been to teach woman her organisation and the laws of her life- how she can be healthy herself, and so bear pure sons and daughters, and so lessen the disease and death of the world; and this must be my professorship to the close of my work on earth- to teach women the law of pure and painless birth and thereby the eradication of impurity, disease, and premature mortality.  I have found time for lighter literary labours, but this has been the earnest mission of my life, and to-day I ask no greater happiness than to teach the laws of life in my own home, to those who can come to me, or to go where classes of earnest women can be gathered, my expenses guaranteed, and a proper equivalent given for my wok.  "The poor ye have always with you"- to these I have given instruction as far as was possible to me, and to educate those who can pay only by offering themselves to teach others, and so pass on and extend the blessing, has been my earnest desire and great happiness.
    The work of Education in health, wholeness, or holiness, is a more noble and beautiful one than we know, for it holds the future of the race.  All of what we call Use, all of Art, all of Beauty, and all of Religion, is contained in this holy mission.  I pray that many may be called to work in this field, and that our practice may be always worthy of our calling.

THE END.