The Education of American Girls

by Anna C. Brackett

1st. Experimental excitation, by means of galvanism or mechanical irritation, causes different results when applied to spinal nerves, to different parts of the spinal cord, or to different parts of the brain. Galvanism applied to a spinal nerve, determines, it has been said, dilatation of blood-vessels, and increased secretion in glands. But galvanism applied to the spinal cord in the neck, causes contraction of blood-vessels. Mechanical irritation of other parts of the spinal cord, on the other hand, causes vaso-motor paralysis and dilatation of blood-vessels. This is especially true of that part lying in the loins, and which contains a peculiar nervous centre, that stands in special relation to the uterus and ovaries, and is involved in many of their diseases, either as a cause or effect. Systematic galvanic irritation of the brain has been little attempted, until in some very recent experiments; but its effects are already known to be most various, according to the part to which it is applied. The brain is not a single organ, but rather a collection of organs, differing from one another in function even more than in situation, and among them only some are really concerned in the production of thought.

2d. In the medulla oblongata exists a nervous centre called the vaso-motor centre, because of its close relations with the vaso-motor nerves. Stimulation of this centre causes contraction of the blood-vessels. Severing the same part causes paralysis of the vaso-motor nerves and dilatation of the blood-vessels. The conditions of the brain that have been most clearly shown to influence the circulation, are those that can be proved to take an effect on this vaso-motor centre. If, as is probable, different forms of cerebral action induce or depend on different cerebral conditions, or involve different sections of the cranial masses, this effect would necessarily be different, and the influence on the circulation vary accordingly.

3d. No experimental proof has hitherto been obtained that stimulation of the cerebral organs lying above the vaso-motor centre, and which include those possessing the function of thought, ever paralyzes this centre; but, as it is only by such paralysis that cerebral conditions can induce dilatation of blood-vessels, it must follow that no experimental proof at present exists that stimulation of the brain ever does cause such dilatation—that is, ever does become a cause of hæmorrhage. The clinical facts for such a supposition are those in which the occurrence of an emotion is followed by flushing of the face, acceleration of the pulse, hot or cold perspirations, phenomena all indicative of dilatation of the blood-vessels, with temporary paralysis of their nerves and of their vaso-motor centre. It is not proved, however, that the emotions capable of causing these effects really result from a stimulation of the brain. On the contrary, they are generally accompanied by diminished activity of that cerebral function that most certainly does depend on such stimulation—the function, namely, of thought.

Now, since the power of thought and the power of the vaso-motor centre are equally paralyzed under these circumstances, it is more probable that the phenomena which most nearly resemble those of stimulation of the brain are either confined to some special part of it, whose activity is in antagonism to the rest, or else are really phenomena of exhaustion, and therefore come under another category. But if these do not, no facts exist to prove that stimulation of the intellectual functions of the brain is in itself capable of producing vaso-motor paralysis—that is, of becoming a cause of hæmorrhage; or, in other words, stimulation of the brain cannot be likened in its effect to galvanic stimulation of a spinal nerve. But if stimulation of the brain does not paralyze, it must increase the tonicity of the vaso-motor centre, and hence the force and regularity of the circulation. Up to a certain point, these characters do indeed increase, with increase of pressure in the cerebral blood-vessels. They increase also during intellectual operations, unattended by emotion, in which a similar increase of pressure must take place, on account of the afflux of blood to the cerebral hemispheres, when these are aroused to activity.

These facts already indicate a radical difference between the nature of the cerebral actions involved in emotion and in thought. From them also we should infer in all cases where vaso-motor paralysis was apparently traceable to excess of cerebral activity, either that exhaustion had already occurred, or that the activity was not intellectual but emotional. In the first case, we should be immediately brought to our fourth possible condition for uterine hæmorrhage, dependent on modifications of the cerebro-spinal system. It is admitted, as the result of many experiments and pathological observations that need not here be quoted, that exhaustion of certain parts of the brain and spinal cord may induce vaso-motor paralysis, and that, if a cause for hæmorrhage is already in operation, a passive flow of blood may be indefinitely increased. Such a course is the menstrual crisis, without which even the vaso-motor paralysis is usually unable to determine uterine hæmorrhage.[40] In connection with it, physical exercise, pushed to the point of exhausting the spinal cord, and the peculiar centre in its lumbar portion, or mental effort so excessive and prolonged as to exhaust the brain, and the general vaso-motor centre, might become causes of menorrhagia.

It is evident, however, that if such exhaustion had been produced previous to the menstrual epoch, the effect would be precisely the same as if the morbific causes operated only at the time of menstruation. From this point of view the precaution suggested by Dr. Clarke, of intermitting intellectual effort during the menstrual period, would be inadequate whenever it was not superfluous. But in Dr. Clarke's theory this period has a peculiar influence in rendering morbific conditions that at other times are innocuous. This, in virtue of the law already quoted, that the evolution of force at one centre of the nervous system is incompatible with an evolution of equal intensity at another, since it diminishes the sum of resources distributed to the nervous system as a whole. Hence, relatively to the amount of power left in the brain, the same exertion becomes very much more fatiguing, and may easily lead to exhaustion with all its consequences.

Nothing seems more simple than this proposition when thus stated. But all physiological problems are complicated by the element of quantity—circumstance which almost indefinitely limits our power of making absolute assertions. The comparison already made between the process of digestion and that of menstruation should suffice to show that there is no absolute incompatibility between the evolution of nerve force at the ganglionic centres and at the cerebro-spinal. For if so the process of digestion would necessitate such absolute torpor of the brain and spinal cord as certainly would be quite incompatible with the exigencies of civilized life. There is a certain alternation between the periods of activity of the two systems, but this varies in infinite gradation; from the digestive torpor of the savage, analogous to that of ruminating animals, up to the unconscious digestion of healthy men of temperate habits and marked intellectual and physical activity, to whom all hours of the day are nearly equally suitable for exertion. As previously said, up to a certain point, the incompatibility diminishes with every increase in the development of the cerebral system.

But again, the evolution of nerve force required by ovulation should not normally be comparable in intensity with that effected in cerebral or spinal action. Whenever it is so the activity of the ganglionic system must be in excess, or that of the cerebro-spinal system must be deficient. It is true that among the women of highly civilized societies, one or both of these conditions very frequently exist, but it is then as truly abnormal as is the dyspepsia and spleen—equally prevalent.

Although, for certain purposes, it is necessary to consider the ganglionic and cerebro-spinal system together, as parts of a single apparatus, it is important also to remember the boundaries that lie between them. It is much easier, by intense muscular exertion, that necessitates evolution of force in the spinal cord, to render the brain incapable of function, than to do so by intense action of the ganglionic nerves, whose connection with the brain, though real, is much less direct. Were it not so, life would be much more precarious than it is, and advance in civilization impossible; because the necessarily incessant activity of the nerves involved in nutritive processes would too largely impair the action of the brain. The effect on the brain of a really irresistible and predominant activity of the nerves involved in the reproductive organs, is to be studied in the lower animals, and in phenomena that, fortunately, are rarely to be observed in healthy individuals of the human race. Still less can such confessedly morbid predominance be considered as a peculiar liability of the female sex in this race. A singular tendency exists in many quarters, and is strongly manifested in Dr. Clarke's book, to assume that considerations pertaining to sex and to the functions of reproduction exercise such an enormous influence upon one sex, and none at all upon the other. Since the discovery in 1827 of the ovule or female reproductive cell, there can be no question of the complete physiological equivalence and analogy between the essential organs of reproduction in the two sexes. The period of their development, the influence of such development on the entire nutrition of the body, the irregularities of nutritive or of cerebro-spinal action, that may be caused by irregularities in such development, are also completely analogous. It is only the organ of gestation that is peculiar to the female—the organ of maternity—the function that, although resulting from sex, transcends sex and belongs to the race. In a double sense is the uterus secondary to the ovaries.[41] For its physiological action, both in menstruation and in pregnancy, is the direct consequence of ovarian functions, and closely dependent upon them; and the period of its prominent activity does not come until after the action of the ovaries has been completely established; that is, the period of maternity is, or should be, consecutive to the period of adolescence, and the work of gestation only entered upon when the work of ovulation has long been thoroughly accomplished.

The analogies have been much overstrained that exist between the menstrual epoch of an adolescent girl and the pregnancy of an adult woman. They are illustrations of a general physiological law that in some cases might be called a caprice of nature, in virtue of which the rudiments of a process that is to be effected at a future epoch are sketched out during an epoch already existing. The afflux of blood to the uterus during the rupture of the ovisac, cannot be shown to be useful by any effort of teleological physiologists. It predicts, however, the afflux that will be necessary at a future pregnancy, in precisely the same way as the growth of the lungs in the fœtus predicts the future necessity for respiration, or the formation of ovules in the ovaries of the newborn girl, predicts the future necessity of a reproductive apparatus. But to impose on the girl the precautions necessary to the mother, is one way to enfeeble and prematurely age her. In the same way is the child enfeebled by premature considerations in regard to sex that do not yet exist, and the adult woman so often treated as old as soon as she has borne children, which should be a proof not of age, but of maturity.