Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls by Edward Hammond Clarke
page 22 of 105 (20%)
training. This divergence, however, is limited in its sweep and its
duration. The difference exists for a definite purpose, and goes only
to a definite extent. The curves of separation swell out as childhood
recedes, like an ellipse, and, as old age draws on, approach, till
they unite like an ellipse again. In old age, the second childhood,
the difference of sex becomes of as little note as it was during the
first. At that period, the picture of the

"Lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
* * * * *
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing,"

is faithful to either sex. Not as man or woman, but as a sexless
being, does advanced age enter and pass the portals of what is called
death.

During the first of these critical periods, when the divergence of the
sexes becomes obvious to the most careless observer, the complicated
apparatus peculiar to the female enters upon a condition of functional
activity. "The ovaries, which constitute," says Dr. Dalton, "the
'essential parts'[3] of this apparatus, and certain accessory organs,
are now rapidly developed." Previously they were inactive. During
infancy and childhood all of them existed, or rather all the germs of
them existed; but they were incapable of function. At this period they
take on a process of rapid growth and development. Coincident with
this process, indicating it, and essential to it, are the periodical
phenomena which characterize woman's physique till she attains the
third division of her tripartite life. The growth of this peculiar and
marvellous apparatus, in the perfect development of which humanity has
DigitalOcean Referral Badge