Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1904-08-12
HEALTH OF WOMEN.
How, If at All, Education Affects It and Mar
rIaqe.
Minneapolis Tribune

rage.
, Minneapolis Tribune.
Medical authorities continue to con-
tend, in spite of popular disapproval.
that modern methods of education for
women are gradually sapping their
vitality, impairing their health and
uniting them for the performance of
their primal duties as wives and moth
ers. We suspect that the woman
President OF Bryn Mawr College for
Women is right when she insists that
female education is wrongly blamed
for the common tendency and develop
ment OF women in the great intermed-
late class which is most in evidence
when the subject is under discussion.
The view of Miss Thomas, set out in
this place not long ago, was that wo-
men educated in colleges are quite as
tit for marriage and marry quite as
much as other women in the same
class.
She held that marriage had de-
clined throughout the great middle
class, from which most college women
are drawn, because, to put it crudely
the home education of women in that
class is above their station. That is
to say, nearly all OF them have been
taught to expect in marriage the
luxury, freedom and responsibility
enjoyed by women who carry large
dowries TO their husbands. Middle
class men without great fortune, Miss
Thomas says, avoid as a costly luxury
marriage with women who will not
work with them like the lower, and
cannot share the cost of living with
them like the wealthier, class of wo-
men.
At the r, cent meeting Of the Ameri.
can Academy of Medicine, this sub
iect was discussed with fullness and
particularly that testifies to the deep
feeling of the profession about it. We
find the fullest and most Ineligible
report of paper by DR.. Smith, of
Toronto, who holds that modern edu-
cation has impaired the happiness OF
individuals and the vigor OF the race
by preventing many thousands of wo.
men from becoming wives and moth
ers.
| DR.. Smith deals with college educa-
ton less than with that of the Sec
ondary schools which, he insists, train
the brain at the expense of the body,
interfere with the natural develop
ment OF the latter at the most critical
time, lay the foundation of future dis
eases that prevent inclination for or
happiness in marriage, instill tastes
and tendencies that make the highest
duties and privileges of home life dis
tasteful or impossible, and, by general
ing obvious discomfort and unhappi.
ness in marriage, warn away from it
the increasing myriads of American
bachelors and spinsters.
What" he asks, "has made the
average marrying age rise from l6 to
20 during the last 1C0 years? What
has made the divorce rate rise? Simp-
ly that women have been gradually
educated to want more and to be able
to do less. 1t may be justifable for
men to exchange little health for
higher education, but, so far as the
race is concerned, health is not so i'm
portant for the man as for the wo-
man."
1t is quite certain that Miss Thomas
and DIR. Smith are looking at different
aspects Of the same fact; which is
that the physical vigor of the great
majority of American women is de-
clining with their gain in mental de-
velopment. DR.. Smith is not sure that
this is more true of women than of
men; but he thinks it vastly more
important. 1t may be necessary, he
says, to sacrifice the physical vigor of
the males by severe intellectual train.
a., ing in order to enable them better to
earn living aud support wives and
families.
We should think that he would con.
fine this admission to the compare.
lively small number whose intellectual
labor society demands. We should
think that for the great mass who
make living by unintellectual labor,
he would be as careful to preserve the
vigor Of the males as that of the fe.
males. However, in his view some
male deterioration may be endured if
only the primitive vitality OF the race
is maintained in its wives and mothers.
This he would conserve in every gen.
GRAFTON for the sacred purpose of ma
ternity and the perpetuation OF the
race. To that end he would put
stop to all mental training that inter
feres with bodily development. substi.
tute dressmaking and domestic econ
omy for Greek and algebra and get
every woman safely married at Is
years OF age.
A VERY swell wedding was to take
place in certain town; the invita-
tions had q notice printed in the cor
ner. No children expected" "Well,"
said an old lady, "they will come just
the same"
Ga ST oEIA
| Ra.,,th. 1Ihe Kind You Have Always BOUGHT