A MEDICAL VIEW.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13336, 30 January 1909, Page 10

A MEDICAL VIEW.

A well-known medical man was approached for his opinion on the matter, and he looked at it from rather a different view .point. "Tho trouble is," be said, "that the pressure on a girl's mental and nervous system occurs just at tho time when her development is at the point of greatest change. Girls are growing from girlhood to womanhood! just when they are going in for University Scholarships and degrees, trying at the same time to keep up _>vith athletics. The consequence is that a certain proportion of them have not the neeevssary stamina, and break down. You will find that in pure examination work girls will generally get better results than boys, simply liecause they have moro concentration, and they do not have the outside pastimes that boys indulge in. But- I don't think they can keep up the pressure for many years, because the strain chows itself more.

"The question is: What is tho remedy? If girls aro going to compete with boys for all sorts of positions thoy must bo tested in the same way. I think that when they marry, and have to give up these positions and go in for the duties of motherhood, they suffer for it. I know several cases in my own practice of girls who have been strong up to a certain point and then been over-crammed, and developed nervous diseases.

"As to tho proposed institution of scholarships for girls only" I think that would bo a good idea, if tho girls were examined in their own departments. But as long as girls are competing with boys in commercial and professional lines, it is only fair, from tlie boy's point of view, that they should, have to bear J_ie same test. To mako domestic science a subject for girls would be much better for them. The whole question, put in a nutshell, may be, stated in this way: Is a woman in her natural sphere when sho is devoting her whole life to work which is unnatural ? A certain number of girls possessing strength»and good physique, work in business or study, and) os they are the fittest, they survive. They marry and give up that work. But the others who have %ot got tho physique, break doVn, and' become prc-matuu-ery ajged. To a certain extent they lose the characteristics of their sex, and a gfbat denl of the joy of and interest in life.

-"This question is. only one of many social problems. The tendency of the so-called emancipation of women is rather to put them in a worse position than before, from a purely physical point of view. The suffragette is not as. perfect a creature as her great grandmother, who did not bother, about social problems, but did understand domestic science. In university life a very large percentage of women go under, as they have not the stamina to carry them through. I don't think they are intended' by Nature to go in for professional and commercial careers."