Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls by Edward Hammond Clarke
page 22 of 105 (20%)
page 22 of 105 (20%)
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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 |
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