are, at times, almost maniacal in character."[1] I shall make but one other quotation, and I am glad to say that it bears directly and practically upon this matter. Dr. H. R. Storer, of Boston, is reported to have spoken as follows in a debate at the Gynæcological Society of Boston, May, 1870: "In the present excited state of public opinion, it were foolish, and at the same time unkind, to object to female physicians upon any untenable grounds; and he frankly stated that the arguments that physicians had usually employed, when discussing this subject, were, almost without exception, untenable. Some of the women who were desirous of practising physic and surgery were just as well educated for the work, had just as much inclination for it, and were as unflinching in the presence of suffering, or at the sight of blood, as were many male practitioners. They had a right to demand an acknowledgment that, in these respects, they were as competent to practise as are a large proportion of ourselves. There is, however, one point, and it is upon this that the whole question must turn, that has till now almost wholly been lost sight of: and this is the fact that, like the rest of their sex, lady doctors, until they are practically old women, regularly menstruate, and are therefore subject to those alternations of mental condition, observable in every woman under these circumstances, which so universally affect, temporarily, their faculties of reason and judgment. That these faculties are thus affected at the times referred to is universally acknowledged."[2]
Many other authors may be cited to the same effect; but these are sufficient to render evident the possibilities of danger, if not of disaster, to women subject to the ceaseless calls of professional life.
Among popular writers upon this subject, the matter of wifehood or motherhood has been treated as if, were woman willing to sacrifice some of her traditional feeling, and voluntary likings for the other sex, she might cast off the fetters of these honorable conditions, and move on untrammeled to the study and practice of a profession. We have been studying woman, in her relation to the subject of this paper, as a sexual being; and, if we continue the study in the same direction, we must arrive at the conclusion that marriage is not an optional matter with her. On the contrary, it is a prime necessity to her normal, physical, and intellectual life. There is an undercurrent of impulse impelling every healthy woman to marry. That this is a law of her sexual being we know by the positive evidence of medical men and others. We also know that the married woman exerts a more marked influence upon men, and society in general, than the celibate. There is also, among married women, a more perfect equilibrium between the intellectual, physical, and sexual forces; and yet, necessary as marriage is for woman, in the present relation of the sexes, it must in every way impair her prospects of success in professional work.
