their children were absolutely ignorant of these matters, and were astonished to realize their mistake; “parents do not know their children, nor have they the least idea of what their children know, or what their children talk about and do when away from them.”  The parents guilty of this neglect to instruct their children, are, Lindsey declares, traitors to their children.  From his own experience he judges that nine-tenths of the girls who “go wrong,” whether or not they sink in the world, do so owing to the inattention of their parents, and that in the case of most prostitutes the mischief is really done before the age of twelve; “every wayward girl I have talked to has assured me of this truth.”  He considers that nine-tenths of school-boys and school-girls, in town or country, are very inquisitive regarding matters of sex, and, to his own amazement, he has found that in the girls this is as marked as in the boys.

It is the business of the girl’s mother, at least as much as of the boy’s, to watch over her child from the earliest years and to win her confidence in all the intimate and personal matters of sex.  With these aspects the school cannot properly meddle.  But in matters of physical sexual hygiene, notably menstruation, in regard to which all girls stand on the same level, it is certainly the duty of the teacher to take an actively watchful part, and, moreover, to direct the general work of education accordingly, and to ensure that the pupil shall rest whenever that may seem to be desirable.  This is part of the very elements of the education of girls.  To disregard it should disqualify a teacher from taking further share in educational work.  Yet it is constantly and persistently neglected.  A large number of girls have not even been prepared by their mothers or teachers for the first onset of the menstrual flow, sometimes with disastrous results both to their bodily and mental health.[26]

“I know of no large girl’s school,” wrote a distinguished gynaecologist, Sir W.S.  Playfair ("Education and Training of Girls at Puberty,” British Medical Journal, Dec. 7, 1895), “in which the absolute distinction which exists between boys and girls as regards the dominant menstrual function is systematically cared for and attended to.  Indeed, the feeling of all schoolmistresses is distinctly antagonistic to such an admission.  The contention is that there is no real difference between an adolescent male and female, that what is good for one is good for the other, and that such as there is is due to the evil customs of the past which have denied to women the ambitions and advantages open to men, and that this will disappear when a happier era is inaugurated.  If this be so, how comes it that while every practical physician of experience has seen many cases of anaemia and chlorosis in girls, accompanied by amenorrhaea or menorrhagia, headaches, palpitations, emaciation, and all the familiar accompaniments of breakdown, an analogous