as I have too frequent occasion to know it often is, it becomes
impoverished,--anemic. Then the brain suffers, and mental power is
lost. The steps are few and direct, from frequent loss of blood,
impoverished blood, and abnormal brain and nerve metamorphosis, to
loss of mental force and nerve disease. Ignorance or carelessness
leads to anemic blood, and that to an anemic mind. As the blood, so
the brain; as the brain, so the mind.

The cases which have hitherto been presented illustrate some of the
evils which the reproductive system is apt to receive in consequence
of obvious derangement of its growth and functions. But it may, and
often does, happen that the catamenia are normally performed, and that
the reproductive system is fairly made up during the educational
period. Then force is withdrawn from the brain and nerves and
ganglia. These are dwarfed or checked or arrested in their
development. In the process of waste and repair, of destructive and
constructive metamorphosis, by which brains as well as bones are built
up and consolidated, education often leaves insufficient margin for
growth. Income derived from air, food, and sleep, which should
largely, may only moderately exceed expenditure upon study and work,
and so leave but little surplus for growth in any direction; or, what
more commonly occurs, the income which the brain receives is all spent
upon study, and little or none upon its development, while that which
the nutritive and reproductive systems receive is retained by them,
and devoted to their own growth. When the school makes the same steady
demand for force from girls who are approaching puberty, ignoring
Nature's periodical demands, that it does from boys, who are not
called upon for an equal effort, there must be failure somewhere.
Generally either the reproductive system or the nervous system
suffers. We have looked at several instances of the former sort of