France, Edmond de Goncourt in Cherie (pp. 137-139) described the terror of his young heroine at the appearance of the first menstrual period for which she had never been prepared.  He adds:  “It is very seldom, indeed, that women speak of this eventuality.  Mothers fear to warn their daughters, elder sisters dislike confidences with their younger sisters, governesses are generally mute with girls who have no mothers or sisters.”

Sometimes this leads to suicide or to attempts at suicide.  Thus a few years ago the case was reported in the French newspapers of a young girl of fifteen, who threw herself into the Seine at Saint-Ouen.  She was rescued, and on being brought before the police commissioner said that she had been attacked by an “unknown disease” which had driven her to despair.  Discreet inquiry revealed that the mysterious malady was one common to all women, and the girl was restored to her insufficiently punished parents.

Half a century ago the sexual life of girls was ignored by their parents and teachers from reasons of prudishness; at the present time, when quite different ideas prevail regarding feminine education, it is ignored on the ground that girls should be as independent of their physiological sexual life as boys are.  The fact that this mischievous neglect has prevailed equally under such different conditions indicates clearly that the varying reasons assigned for it are merely the cloaks of ignorance.  With the growth of knowledge we may reasonably hope that one of the chief evils which at present undermine in early life not only healthy motherhood but healthy womanhood generally, may be gradually eliminated.  The data now being accumulated show not only the extreme prevalence of painful, disordered, and absent menstruation in adolescent girls and young women, but also the great and sometimes permanent evils inflicted upon even healthy girls when at the beginning of sexual life they are subjected to severe strain of any kind.  Medical authorities, whichever sex they belong to, may now be said to be almost or quite unanimous on this point.  Some years ago, indeed, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, in a very able book, The Question of Rest for Women, concluded that “ordinarily healthy” women may disregard the menstrual period, but she admitted that forty-six per cent, of women are not “ordinarily healthy,” and a minority which comes so near to being a majority can by no means be dismissed as a negligible quantity.  Girls themselves, indeed, carried away by the ardor of their pursuit of work or amusement, are usually recklessly and ignorantly indifferent to the serious risks they run.  But the opinions of teachers are now tending to agree with medical opinion in recognizing the importance of care and rest during the years of adolescence, and teachers are even prepared to admit that a year’s rest from hard work during the period that a girl’s sexual life is becoming established, while it may ensure her health and vigor,