THE ALLEGED DELETERIOUS EFFECTS ATTENDANCE AT VASSAR COLLEGE HAD ON A YOUNG GIRL'S HEALTH A CENTURY AGO

[摘要] Many nineteenth century physicians believed that a girl's health would be adversely affected if she were to devote as much time at college to scholarly pursuits as was required of boys. The passage below, written in 1873 by a wellknown Boston physician, is an excellent example of this opinion.1Miss D— entered Vassar College at the age of fourteen. Up to that age, she had been a healthy girl, judged by the standard of American girls. Her parents were apparently strong enough to yield her a fair dower of force. 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. She studied, recited, stood at the blackboard, walked, and went through her gymnastic exercises, from the beginning to the end of the term, just as boys do. Her account of her regimen there was so nearly that of a boy's regimen, that it would puzzle a physiologist to determine, from the account alone, whether the subject of it was male or female. She was an average scholar, who maintained a fair position in her class, not one of the anxious sort, that are ambitious of leading all the rest. Her first warning was fainting away, while exercising in the gymnasium, at a time when she should have been comparatively quiet, both mentally and physically.

[学科分类] 儿科学