the bowels and the bladder out of laziness or modesty; they are even indifferent to physical cleanliness.[29] In a great number of minor ways, which separately may seem to be of little importance, they play into the hands of an environment which, not always having been adequately adjusted to their special needs, would exert a considerable stress and strain even if they carefully sought to guard themselves against it.  It has been found in an American Women’s College in which about half the scholars wore corsets and half not, that nearly all the honors and prizes went to the non-corset-wearers.  McBride, in bringing forward this fact, pertinently remarks, “If the wearing of a single style of dress will make this difference in the lives of young women, and that, too, in their most vigorous and resistive period, how much difference will a score of unhealthy habits make, if persisted in for a life-time?"[30]

“It seems evident,” A.E.  Giles concludes ("Some Points of Preventive Treatment in the Diseases of Women,” The Hospital, April 10, 1897) “that dysmenorrhoea might be to a large extent prevented by attention to general health and education.  Short hours of work, especially of standing; plenty of outdoor exercise—­tennis, boating, cycling, gymnastics, and walking for those who cannot afford these; regularity of meals and food of the proper quality—­not the incessant tea and bread and butter with variation of pastry; the avoidance of overexertion and prolonged fatigue; these are some of the principal things which require attention.  Let girls pursue their study, but more leisurely; they will arrive at the same goal, but a little later.”  The benefit of allowing free movement and exercise to the whole body is undoubtedly very great, both as regards the sexual and general physical health and the mental balance; in order to insure this it is necessary to avoid heavy and constricting garments, more especially around the chest, for it is in respiratory power and chest expansion more than in any other respect that girls fall behind boys (see, e.g., Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, Ch.  IX).  In old days the great obstacle to the free exercise of girls lay in an ideal of feminine behavior which involved a prim restraint on every natural movement of the body.  At the present day that ideal is not so fervently preached as of old, but its traditional influence still to some extent persists, while there is the further difficulty that adequate time and opportunity and encouragement are by no means generally afforded to girls for the cultivation and training of the romping instincts which are really a serious part of education, for it is by such free exercise of the whole body that the neuro-muscular system, the basis of all vital activity, is built up.  The neglect of such education is to-day clearly visible in the structure of our women.  Dr. F. May Dickinson Berry, Medical Examiner to the Technical Education Board of the London County