Lo LDN AO et AE AN A AE AE OA OA FG I A SRM AEE ARN OTR NT ARE AY EA A A A I IE A A A RR EN Rt tA ECA A tt BN Ee Re RR fe EE TR NEO RLS NE A ON NS Nt Let A Hn eC Te Ame et ne me me mn em me a ae ek mt nt eer en TE ET A TT TE ES TE TY mE _ — i ee eC — EE we _— Sa - & é - ; S Mab ais me 4° ; v f # “+ Sy Bem - s + { : oe : y \ ns ae oF as : ’ gt i J Pat id b, ee ah | _—~ ., i ws & : 4) " : Pa \ 1 i « ¥¢ : 46 rit J - 2 Ye a oft if & t p SAL Re. - “ww ge Py ag - " at y z . ~ d 2, s . a Ke g Z ~ a(t ‘ 4 < aa ¥ W) te O's 4 = = > ad — 69) wo a. Ss “7 pr eae \ { ~~ BR. 2h 3 MVE FROM . LIBRARY OXFORD ~~ % A a es — % - 3 RR : TH MEIGS (CHARLES D[ELUCENA]) 1792-1869. 3377. Lecture on some of the Distinctive Characteristics of the Female. Delivered before the class of the Jefferson Medical College, Jan. 5, 1847... 8°. Phila., 1847. pg LECTURE ON SOME OF THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FEMALE, DELIVERED BEFORE THE CLASS OF THE JEFFERSON MEDICAL COLLEGE, January 5, 18477. BY CHARLES D. MEIGS, M.D., OR OF OBSTETRICS AND THE DISEASES OF WOMEN AND CIILDREN IN JEFFERSON MEDICAL COLLEGE. PUBLISHED BY THE CLASS. PHILADELPHIA: 1. K. AND P, G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. 1847. ‘ CORRESPONDENCE. Jerrerson Mepricau Correee, Jan. 20th, 1847. Pror. Meies: Dear Str—At a special meeting of the Class, held at the College the 12th inst., it Was Resolved, That a committee be appointed to request of Professor Meigs a copy of the Lecture delivered the 5th inst., on the “Distinctive Characteristics of the Female,” for publication. We, as representatives of the Class, solicit the same, hoping it may meet with your approbation. Yours, &c., M. Henny Lacy, Va. G. W. Win ey, Pa. Bens. Nerr, Ohio. I. Werricn, Pa. Dan’t M. Srovt, N. J. PuiLtapetputra, Jan. 21st, 1847. GENTLEMEN—I have the honor herewith to hand you the Lecture which you, as organs of the Class, have requested for publication. [t is assuredly unnecessary that I should say how flattering to a public instructor is such a proceeding on the part of the gentlemen whom he has the honor to address in the lecture room. I should not feel at liberty, under such circumstances, to refuse the request of the Class, whose patient attention and most admirable conduct in the College are the object of so much congratulation among all the friends of learning. I have the honor to be, with grateful respect, Your obedient and faithful servant, CH. D, MEIGS. To Mr. Lacy, Chairman, and Messrs: WIMLEY, NEFF, WEIRICH and STouT, Members of a Committee of the Class. 1* LECTURE. Berore I begin again the consideration of those topics which engaged our attention up to the commencement of the Holidays, I wish to take advantage of the late break in the thread of our thoughts, to say some words to you on the Distinctive Charac- teristics of the Female—or rather, J should say, on some of them —for to describe them all, would require rather a series of lec- tures than a single discourse. I shall, therefore, in the present address, attempt to indicate only a few points of contrast be- twixt the male and female, with a view to turn your attention that way. I could readily fill a volume upon the different texts that Iam about to present to your consideration. I intended, before this time, to have fulfilled this design, for I had thought, as I now do, that without some prefatory remarks in this direction, you might be less fully prepared to receive those views of the disorders to which the woman is subject, which it behooves you as medical students to acquire; and less capable to appreciate those modifications of therapeutical indication and process that are demanded by the moral, the intellectual, and the physical qualities of the female; for her mere human, or generic nature is modified by her sexual or female nature, to such a degree, that in certain of the great crises of her life, she de- mands a treatment adapted to the specialties of her own con- stitution, as a moral, a sexual, germiferous, gestative, and parturient creature. I do not suppose you could acquire just views on these points in the dissecting room, or the theatre of anatomy alone. Nor can I give them to you here to-day ; the time is too short. There, it is true, you may explore the items of her physical structure, in order to compare them with those of the hardier sex. You — eS eee ee ee ee ee ee OS _ Pe RNR RTD mapa 7 a 6 may there learn that though she be a part of mankind, a truer Zygozoaire than those of M. de Blainville’s classification, she yet differs from men in her stature, which is lower; in her weight, which is less; in her form, which is more gracile and beautiful; in her reproductive organs that are peculiar to her; and in her intellectual and moral perceptivity and powers; which are feminine as her organs are. Beyond all these, you shall have to explore the history of those wonderful functions and destinies which her sexual na- ture enables her to fulfil, and the strange and secret influences which her organs, by their nervous constitution, and their func- tions, by their relation to her whole Life-force, whether in sick- ness or health, are capable of exerting, not on the body alone, but on the heart, the mind, and the very soul of woman. The Medical Student has, then, much to study, as to the fe- male, that is not purely medical but psychological and moral rather: such researches will be a future obligation lying heavily upon you, upon all of you. Every well educated medical man ought to know something more of women than is contained in the volumes of a medical library. Her history and literature, in all ages and countries, ought to be gathered as the garlands with which to adorn his triumphant career as a physician; but these insignia of his power he can only gather by the careful and tasteful study of his subject among the rich stores of learning that are gained in the belles-lettres collections, whether archaiological, medieval, or modern. The medical man, surely, of all men, ought to be best able to appreciate the influence of the sex in the social compact. But for the power of that influence, which one of you would doubt the rapid relapse of society into the violenee and chaos of the earliest barbarism ? Are. you not aware that the elegance and the polish of the Christian nations are due to the presence of the Sex in society— uot'in the Zenana! Do you not perceive that Music, Poetry, Painting, all the arts of elegance: Luxury, Fashion, (that potent 7 spell!) are of her, and through her, and to her? Versailles and Marli, and the Trianons, had never been built for men. ‘The loom blends and sets forth the dyes that add richer reflections to her bloom; the wheel flies for polishing the diamond that is to flash in impotent rivality above her eyes; sea and land are ransacked of their treasures for her; and the very air yields its egrets, and marabouts, and paradise-birds, that they may add piquancy fo her style, and grace to her gesture. Even litera- ture and the sciences are in a good measure due to her patronage and approbation, which is the motive power to all manly en- deavor. This is true, since, but for her approving smile, and her rewarding caress, what is there should stir man from the sole, the dire, unremitted compulsion to act that he may live? With woman for his companion, he acts not only that he may live, but that he may live like a Christian and like a Gentle- man. “Blest as the immortal Gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee all the while, Softly speak, and sweetly smile?!” The great'stage of the world, we are informed by the inspired writers, was prepared as the scene of a grand moral drama. The earth and-all that it inherit is for man, his use, his delight, his trial! But, this mankind—this genus man—what 1s it? It is an imperishable unit—it commenced at the beginning— it touches the middle and the end of time. It is a vast wave rolling down the tide of time, ever rolling, ever descending. Its spray and its foam are lost im the sands or melted in air as the fragments of its mortality are broken off and swallowed up in the grave: but the unit is unbroken, the wave rolls on- ward, onward forever; perdurable ; and shall not be swallowed up till the last tramp shall sound, and the last end be come. The sun himself “‘ grows dim with years’’—but the Unit, the Genus man, springs ever fresh in immortal youth and vigor, like Anteus of old, foreshowing the immortality of that spiritual part to which Adrian the pagan addressed his speech, as it was See a re Se ee ES vert ~ — = ——s a es : > ne Sr pe eee tw i ee es SL a ; 8 leaving the imperial possessor a mere dust-fragment of the vast, ever-living unit man. Animula vagula blandula Hospes comesque corporis, Q@use nunc abibis in locis. AEL. Spar tranus.—Adrian. Cesar. Now are not these high considerations? and yet from what lowness do they spring! Yea, even from the germiferous tis- sue of the female. It is from her stroma that issues the generic as well as the genetic force!. What a wondrous law! what a won- drous power is that which maintains each gentis and species pure and unalloyed as when it issued from the Creator’s hand! So great, so powerful, that each of them is set, as it were, within a magic ring out of whose charmed round it can never stray ; so that no wild and horrid passion, no brutal lust, no insane desire can break, much less change or abrogate the law that set forth the primordial models, ‘‘each after his kind,” of the species of the globe. For notwithstanding the countless myriads of generations that from the remotest ages have reproduced in- dividuals more numerous than the sands of the shore or the stars in the firmament, each blade of grass still obedient to its generic law, still imitates exactly its primitive pattern; and every elephant or worm; every eagle that soars to the sun, or sparrow that chirps in the hedge; every man, and every woman go steadily, like the current of a river, down Time’s flowing stream, ever ending, ever beginning, always changing, ya immutably the same! I repeat it, the generic power is launched from the ovarian stroma. ‘That is the sole animal concrete that is capable of producing yelk matter. Yelk matter is germinal or generic matter; I should rather say reproduct- ive matter. ‘The male tissues are nowhere endowed with the power of this yelk production, and the sole elaboration of the stroma of ovaries is germ-elaboration. Let me pronounce three words in your ear, stroma is sex. In pronouncing these words, then, I wish you to appreciate the importance of that tissue—it was for the elaboration of germs 9 that sex was appointed to the female, the human Zygozoaire. See, then, in this unobvious, apparently vile lump of animal texture, in the inner court of the temple of the body,—the ark that contains the law, which keeps the genera unmixed, from age to age. How can you study this subject sufficiently ? But let us pass to other views. Let us go to look upon wo- man in the phases of her intellectual nature. If we scan her position amidst the ornate circles of a Christian civilization, it is easy to perceive that her intellectual force is different from that of her master and lord. I say her master and lord, and it is true to say so, since even in that society she is still in a manner in bonds, and the manacles of custom, of politics, or of bienséance not yet struck from her hands. She has nowhere been admitted to the political rights, franchises, and powers that man arrogates to men alone. The Crown, when it rests of the brow of a woman, is always a political accident, grievous and deprecable; and even then, where woman reigns, men governs. The great administrative faculties are not hers. She plans no sublime campaigns, leads no armies to battle, nor fleets to victory. The Forum is no theatre for her silver voice, full of tenderness and sensibility. She discerns not the courses of the planets. Orion with his belt, and Arcturus with his suns are naught to her but pretty baubles set up in the sky. She guides no ship through night and tempest across the trackless sea to some far off haven half round the world. She composes no Iliad, no Atneid. The strength of Milton’s poetic vision was far beyond her fine and delicate perceptions. She would have been affrighted at the idea of that fiery sea on whose flaming billows Satan, “With head uplift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed extended long and large, Lay floating many a rood; in bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size, —or that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.” Si ete: “So Sate So ia a5 Stas eet ere ees ee Oe Cee Te eee = dems a ee er “Seo = Pane = = — ——— 10 Do you think that a woman, who can produce a race and modify the whole fabric of society, could have developed, in the tender soil of her intellect, the strong idea of a Hamlet, or a Macbeth? Could her voice, like the accents of Hortensius, or Tully, or Chatham’s, or Burke’s,. command the bent ear of list- ening senates, or move like a rushing wind the agitated masses of a people tossed in the tempest of its own vehemence; and then, like a gentle west wind, soothe and calm them down again by the influences of its reasoning and prayerful suasion? “Tile regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet.” ZENEID, I. Such is not woman’s province, nature, power or mission. She reigns in the heart; her seat and throne are by the hearth- stone.—'T’he household altar is her place of worship and ser- vice.—The Forum is too angry for her.—The Curia is too grave and high, and the Commitia too boisterous and rude. Home is her place, except when, like the star of day, she deigns to issue forth to the world, to exhibit her beauty and her grace, and to scatter her smiles upon all that are worthy to receive so rich a boon—and then. she goes back to her home, like as the sun sinks in the west, and the memory of her presence is like the sun-light that lingers long behind a bright departed day. Her voice is not for brawling. Its tender tones are for soothings and caressings. The sweetest lute is in her vocal organs ; and with its music she stifles the passion, assuages the rage of her master, and reduces back to the gentlest flowing, the furious tide that boils in his veins. It is by the mere con- trast of her gentleness, her docility, her submissiveness, and patience, that she makes herself the queen and the arbitress of the fate of whom she loves, and whose best rewards for the pains, hazards and toils of existence, are ever to be found within the narrow circle of her domestic reign, It is true, that we meet in the pages of History and Bio- graphy, the relations of strange phenomena in the lives and 11 actions of certain women. ‘There are Julias and Messalinas, that are monsters. ‘There is even somewhat questionable in the nature of such ladies as Elizabeth, or Mary of Medici.— We have the male powers of a Dacier and a Stael. We find the ventle and feminine Hemans sometimes bursting forth with a wild, impetuous and martial enthusiasm. Yet these are ex- ceptions, and not rules, that fill ws with surprise, as of things out of, or beyond the common course of nature. The bibliographical lists are full of the prettynesses of the ladies.—No Mecanique Celeste—no Principia—no Treatise de Senectute—no Annals of Tacitus; but canzonetti, fairy tales, stories of the heart, Mysteries of Udolpho, and Ceelebs in Search of a Wife. Such are their works. So that it is easy, by a slight glance at history, and by the facts that surround us, to conclude that the intellectual and moral force of the female are different from those of the stronger or ruder sex. Who could imagine such am intellectual fairy as Felicia Hemans joining a charging squadron of crusading chivalry, with Godfrey de Bouillon, or Coeur de Lion, and glorying m the commingling of the spears? Yet, though timid herself, her very tenderness gives her the keenest perception of the nature of courage, and the deepest sympathy with the feelings of her gallant knight. See, gentlemen, in the following lines by Mrs. Hemans, her touching sympathy with a captive Crusader in some lofty Pagan tower, perched above a deep craggy wady in Palestine. Worn and wearied with a long and lone captivity, his valiant heart, though broken, still pants, in its solitude and hopeless- ness, for the freedom and action of the field. Suddenly he starts at the wild scream of a buele! "Twas a trumpet’s pealing sound! And the Knight look’d down from the Paynim tower As a Christian host, in its pride and power, Through the pass beneath him wound. Cease awhile, Clarion—Clarion loud and shrill— Cease; let them hear the Captive’s voice.—Be still, be still. rv) t bee ade es 4 dee a 12 I knew twas a trumpet’s note, And I see my brethren’s lances gleam, And their pennons wave by the mountain stream, And their plumes on the glad wind float. Cease awhile, &c. I am here in my heavy chain! And I look on the torrent sweeping by, And an eagle rushing to the sky, And a host to its battle plain! Cease awhile, &c. Must I pine in my fetters here With the wild wave’s foam And the free-bird’s flight, And the tall spears glancing in my sight, And the trumpet in my ear? Cease awhile, Clarion, &c. &e. Now, for my part, I cannot but see in these verses of that most sweet poetess, proofs of her liveliest sensibility to both the nature and the intenseness of those male passions, which, however they may be fitted to enkindle her admiration, and enslave her heart, as forming a perfect antithesis to her own gentle nature, would, as tae in her own breast, demoralize and deform it. The military pennons and plumes floating on the glad wind, and the tall spears glancing in her mental sight, are not for her to wear or wield. But she may well glory in the hero, who is both able to wield and to wear them. As to the more strictly moral attributes and propensities of the female, what are the facts? Is not her heart, in general, the seat of tenderer and gentler emotions than those. of her mate? Her susceptible soul is acutely alive to the human charities and trembling sympathies that spring spontaneously in the delicate innervations of her feminine constitution. She cannot unmoyed Jook on scenes of woe. She melts at the spectacle of human distress—a maiden sheltering a wounded dove in her bosom is an eidolon of the Sex. Mungo Park in the Sahara, and Ledyard among the wildest 13 Samoiedes, always received good, and not evil entreaty at the hands of women, whose husbands had hearts of the nether rillstone. Notwithstanding the poet has characterized her as being, “in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light trembling aspen made,” she is faithful and true. She follows the fortunes of her mate, who has gained her affections. Yea, she adheres to the pro- mise at the altar, which was for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health—even unto death; so that the same rhymer apostrophises her with “When pain and anguish wring the brow A ministering angel thou!” What a beautiful picture is that of the “ Intemperate!”? What touching, what immortal fidelity is depicted by the artist in the face of that woman! A face beautiful in its expression of resig- nation, and of pride in her own faithfulness and truthfulness, as she bears on her bosom the youngest child, while she leads a sick boy bythe hand, and is clutched: by a timid older girl, all of them barefooted, houseless, hopeless, homeless, for they leave behind in the distance, the pretty cottage where they were born, to pursue, along a rugged way, the uncertain, drunken footsteps of the husband and the father, who leads them (the wretch) far away, deserting the homestead she had brought as her dower, in that blessed morn when in the village church she gave herself away for him. Now here is her reward!! But she will cling to him until the death of the drunkard shall have broken the bond; and after that, go weep on his discreditable grave, and forgive him too. Such pictures are from life. ‘There are thousands of such. The female is naturally prone to be religious. Hers is a pious mind. Her confiding nature leads her more readily than men to accept the proffered grace of the Gospel. If an unde- Be Ses =~ Bee ae Ue Soe «Se he See 3 Vee oe = oe = _ _--=5 = — SS ee ee Se ee a eee mos pa = = _——— 14 yout astronomer is mad, what shall we say of an irreligious woman? See how the temples of the Christian worship are filled with women. ‘They flock thither with their young chil- dren, and endeavor to implant in their souls the seeds of virtue and piety to be reared, in that pure soil and by their watchful nurture, into plants that shall blossom like the immortal ama- ranth among the stars. See then what and how great the in- fluence that women exert on the morals of society, of whole nations, of the whole world: wherever there is a true civilization, woman reigns in society. It is not until she comes to sit beside him, in view of all the people, that man ceases to be barbarous; or semi-barbarous, and cruel, and ignorant. She spreads abroad the light of civilization and improvement as soon as she issues from the prison of the Harem, or Zenana, to live with him in the parlor. Who made us human? Whose were the hands that led us to kneel down and whose the lips that taught our infant voices the earliest invocations to Heaven? Is it not so, that after the world and fortune have done their best, or their worst by us, we, in late years, and early, forget not those pious mothers, who so steadfastly strove to bias our young minds in favor of whatsoever is true, whatsoever 1s pure, whatsoever is of good report!! How can we forget the rewards we received at her hands for all our good, and the gentle, and sometimes tearful reproachings of our evil inclinations and practices? She was not only our teacher, and pattern, but our companion and play-fellow, for, of a truth, she was of a child- like temper—and that was the secret of the bond that united us so long and so closely. Hear what an eloquent Frenchman says of her: “ Source féconde et sacrée de la vie, la mére est la créature la plus respectable de Ja nature ; c’est d’elle que découlent les generations sur la terre ; c’est Eve ou Vétre vivifiant, qui nous réchauffe dans son. sein, qui nous allaite de ses mam- melles, nous recueille entre ses bras et protége notre enfance dans le giron de son inépuisable tendresse. Femme! mére! honneur de la creation! quels hom- mages éternels ne vous sont pas dus dans tout ’univers 2” Virey.— La Femme. The male is less versatile than the woman. His mission is 15 more adventurous and dangerous. He enters on the path of ambition, that dark and dangerous, or broad and level road. He pursues the devious track of politics with a resolute will; reaching ever onwards to the possession of fame and patron- age, and rank and wealth. She sits at home, to adorn the tent or the cottage with wreaths of flowers; or to guide the tendrils that give shade to his bower. She plies the busy loom—and the sweet sounds of her singing—how often have I listened as they accompany the hum and buzz of her wheel, as she gracefully advances and retires by turns, forming the threads about to be woven into garments for her husband or child! Her nimble fingers, all day long, ply the shining needle, to fashion the robe for her spouse—or to arrange the more elegant embellishments of her person, that they may engage his admiration, and augment the flame of his love. What say you of the fortitude of woman? She bears the evils of life without repining or complaining against the pro- vidence of God. Is she evil entreated, prevented, injured ¢ That which sets a man on fire with an insane rage, kindles in her bosom, perhaps, only a virtuous feeling of indignation. She bears the greater crosses. How beautifully does Shaks- peare say so in the words, ‘She never told her love, But let Concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, Prey on her damask cheek ; And sate, like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief.” She dies a willing martyr for religion, for country—for her children. Who can number the Lucretias and Portias? How many are like the charming Roland? Think of the calm features of Charlotte Corday! Women possess a peculiar trait—it is modesty—and Is one of the most charming of their attributes; springing probably from their natural timidity and sense of dependence. All rude, OF & FE eS ee fee: © Se er i. et Ce on ‘ HN ¥, : it a - re: ee a ~~ Se } ee ee ee ne - : — a See ? a fe Bl = - - é "Swit G2 _— i? gece valy Sia Aart ae 16 boisterous, and immodest speech or action unsexes and dis- graces her. ‘This modesty is one of the strongest of her attrac- tions ; and she sometimes, perhaps, affects to possess it for the purpose of riveting her chains on the conqueror man. Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella, Et fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri—III Ecroevr, The attribute of modesty certainly lends the most: powerful aid to the charms of a woman. It is one of the qualities given to her in order to be a strong fence for her children; it. binds her to the domestic altar—her children could not but endure damage and loss, should she leave them at home to plunge into the torrent of public affairs, or mingle freely with the dis- tracting world! Her modesty, gentleness, and timidity assimi- late her to the characters of children, whose best play-fellow, nurse, and instructress she is. Come out from the world, and be separate from it, is peculiarly a command for her. There is in the Museo Pio-Clementino, at Rome, an antique statue, which the learned Visconti asserts to be a statue of Modesty ; and, as I am informed, is among the most beautiful of the works of ancient art now remaining in the world. It is completely clothed from head to foot, and veiled. It seems to me that such a work is proof enough of the ancient admiration of the quality in question; for the artist who could produce, and the people who could appreciate such an exquisite speci- men of taste and right feeling, must have had a keen percep- tion of the charm, By her physical form and proportion, she is still more trench- antly divided from the male. Look at two statues, male and female. ‘Take the Venus de Medici as the consummate expo- sition—the very eidolon of the female form, just as Praxiteles in the greatest verve, fervor and enthusiasm of his genius, and he alone of all mankind, could conceive the idea of the Queen of the Loves. Compare her with the Apollo of the Belvidere—she has a head almost too small for intellect but just big enough for 17 love. His magnificent forehead, calm as Heaven, and almost as high as it, rises above those eyes that are following the shaft he has sped with his clanging silver bow. The front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, A station, like a feathered Mercury, new-lighted on Some Heaven-kissing hill. Her thorax seems built as the sanctuary of that beautiful bosom, whence is destined to flow the sweet nutriment of the winged boy. His vast chest is for breathing, and for eloquence and com- mand. From its capacious stores of oxygen he draws the elements of the most strenuous, the most protracted exertion. He breathes deep, that he may ascend the highest hills and the sharpest crags in pursuit of his game or his prey, and that his loud harmonious voice may command his armies in the midst of the conflict—or sway the forum with its tones. Like Virgil’s wild horse—he is equal to the longest career—nothing can stay him in his race. Non Scopuli, rupesque cavé, atque objecta retardant Filumina, conreptos unda torquentia montes.—Geronre. III. See his loins how they are narrowed down, as they approach the hips, that he may balance himself, as it were, on the point of an inverted cone, ready for the promptest motion. His pelvis contains no variable organs, requiring ample space for extraordinary developments ; but its depth and solidity afford origin and insertion to the powerful muscles, by whose im- mense strength he can act well in the wild, rude, and adven- turous life to which he is ordained. The cone, on the other hand, is reversed in the female. The apex is above, and the base is at the hips. It is within that bony cell that are hidden those miraculous organs, that out of nothing, can evolve the wondrous work of reproduction: Her pelvis is broad and shallow, lighter in subtance, its exca- vation ampler, and its pubic arch round or Roman; while his ee MS ee? | : ’ 4+ " +: SAS or ee Om oe ae NS ee ESE: 5 SS I i } F a t i bie i " tin — ar 18 is Gothic or lanceolate. From under his arch a child could not go. Hers gives it easy utterance. ‘The organs of the male are permanent—hers are mutable. The uterus—no bigger than my thumb—comes in gestation to be twelve inches high and nine in width. Its invisible vessels and nerves come to be great cords and tubes, and its uncognoscible muscles ac- quire a force to rend itself in pieces in its rage, and, what seems still more miraculous, to expel a full-grown fcetus from its parietes, against the enormous resistance of flesh and bone. She is a germiparous and vitelliferous creature. She—the fe- male call stroma, ovarian stroma, of which I already have spoken, but must again speak. Now that stroma lives by the blood it receives out of a common cyst, and yet it has a nerve which enables it to convert that blood into vitellus or yelk. ‘The per- petuation of races and germs depends on the elimination of possesses that strange compound or concrete which you that matter, There is no animal germ without it—so that an organ so small, so unobvious, is endued with the vast respon- sibility of keeping up the living scheme of the world—with its moralities—its lives——its actions—its trial—which, were it to cease, there would be left no flowers to bloom, no insects to sport in the evening beam, no choral song of birds, no low- ing of cattle, no bleating of flocks, nor voices of men to thank and praise and acknowledge the author of every good and every perfect. gift. Think of that, gentlemen. Think of that great power and ask your own judgments whether such an organ can be of little influence on the constitution of the woman; whether she was not made, in order that 7¢ should be made, and whether it may not on occasion, become a disturbing radiator in her economy, and how much. You will answer yes, if you know that her ovary. is her sex—and that she is peculiar because of, and in order that she might have this great, this dominant organ concealed. within the recesses of her body. Men cannot suffer the same pains as women. What do : 19 you Call the pain of parturition? There is no name for it but Agony. Why does she love her child more than its father does. Why, he grew to her; he was perhaps an acinus cast out of her stroma, and after drawing his blood from her own blood, he drank life at the living well of her bosom, and character from her monitions and example. What were Cornelia’s jewels?) Who was Washington’s mother ? What do we owe her 2a dife, peace, hiberty, social order. She built up this great frame of society in civilization, It is to her we are idan for our “ Placidam sub libertate quietem.” Christianity is propagated by her domestic influence. The loom is her work, and the tapestried walls are of her imagining. Were it not for her we were this day clothed in sheep: skins and goat skins, and should lie down in dens and caves. Yes, for her are the looms of Cashmere, the silks of China, the gauzes of Hindustan, the mousselines of Lyons, the laces of Belgium and England, the carpets of Ispahan and Dresden, Cornelius’ blazing chandelier, all the riches displayed by Lévy and Baily... Everything that man is and hath, except his brute force and brutal inclinations—are of her, and for her. See her gliding down the Cydnus in her stately barge, with its silken sails ane costly equipage, and the great Tnumvir at her feet, who thought the world well lost for her love, and gave up the world to lie there. Look at her in the regal halls of Windsor, waving her golden sceptre around the world over dominions of hers, on which the sun is never set for all. Drive her out, and all her sex with her, to the primitive rudeness of her nature, and leave man alone, and what should move him afterwards to do more than is done by the lions and tigers, who follow their instinct, and who are less cruel than he by nature, since he reasons in his evil, while they are only instinctively monstrous! Study the nature of woman, young gentlemen, follow out all FARA. xen * ae asd PPTs Oe sD ly 20 i the psychological and physical transformations which her sex produces. What is her erotic state? what the Protean mani- festations of the Life force developed by a reproductive irritation which you call Hysteria. f Take Martin Barry’s microscope, and Bischoff’s History of ii Development, and study the myriad germ points that are buried in the depths of her stroma. I have already placed in your hands a key that unlocks all the secret details of her mensual phenomena, and not hers — only, but those of all that reproduce, both of the animal and vegetable kingdoms of nature. But why should I attempt, or why should I have attempted a theme too great for a volume, and far beyond my abilities. You see how I have failed. It requires the eloquence of a Roussel and the learning of a Virey, to present even a sketch of a topic so vast, so interesting, so closely related to what ever may be called happiness, whether domestic, or social, or political. I hope you will study this subject better than I have done, or can do. _I do not believe in a physician who knows only calomel and rhubarb. I would have you fill your souls with knowledge; I would have you bathe init asin an ocean. Were I young again, and could I appreciate as I now in some degree begin to do, the beauties of learning, I could not cast away, asI have done, a half century of time, but I would grow pale by the reflection of the midnight lamp, and I would never be satiated until my soul were satisfied with the fullness of knowledge. For what are we in the general but erring and curious inquirers? and, does not the most highly cultivated intelligence to be found among men, leave them at last, even the most gifted among them, blind, groping, feeble worms of the dust? What should id be our motto and our cry, from the lowness of the human nature if in which we lie groveling ?—Exzcelsior! 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