The experiment of the identical co-education of the sexes has been set
on foot by some of our Western colleges. It has not yet been tried
long enough to show much more than its first fruits, viz., its results
while the students are in college; and of these the only obvious ones
are increased emulation, and intellectual development and attainments.
The defects of the reproductive mechanism, and the friction of its
action, are not exhibited there; nor is there time or opportunity in
college for the evils which these defects entail to be exhibited.
President Magoun of Iowa College tells us, that, in the institution
over which he presides, "Forty-two young men and fifty-three young
ladies have pursued college courses;" and adds, "Nothing needs to be
said as to the control of the two sexes in the college. The young
ladies are placed under the supervision of a lady principal and
assistant as to deportment, and every thing besides recitations (in
which they are under the supervision of the same professors and other
teachers with the young men, reciting with them); and one simple rule
as to social intercourse governs every thing. The moral and religious
influences attending the arrangement have been most happy."[30] From
this it is evident that Iowa College is trying the identical
co-education of the sexes; and the president reports the happy moral
and religious results of the experiment, but leaves us ignorant of its
physiological results. It may never have occurred to him, that a class
of a hundred young ladies might graduate from Iowa College or Antioch
College or Michigan University, whose average health during their
college course had appeared to the president and faculty as good as
that of their male classmates who had made equal intellectual progress
with them, upon whom no scandal had dropped its venom, who might be
presented to the public on Commencement Day as specimens of as good
health as their uneducated sisters, with roses in their cheeks as
natural as those in their hands, the major part of whom might,