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The blood, which is our life, is a complex fluid. It contains the materials out of which the tissues are made, and also the débris which results from the destruction of the same tissues, -- the worn-out cells of brain and muscle, -- the cast-off clothes of emotion, thought, and power. It is a common carrier, conveying unceasingly to every gland and tissue, to every nerve and organ, the fibrin and albumen which repair their constant waste, thus supplying their daily bread; and as unceasingly conveying away from every gland and tissue, from every nerve and organ, the oxidized refuse, which are both the result and measure of their work. Like the water flowing through the canals of Venice, that carries health and wealth to the portals of every house, and filth and disease from every doorway, the blood flowing through the canals of the organization carries nutriment to all the tissues, and refuse from them. Its current sweeps nourishment in, and waste out. The former, it yields to the body for assimilation; the latter, it deposits with the organs of elimination for rejection. In order to have good blood, then, two things are essential: first, a regular and sufficient supply of nutriment, and, secondly, an equally regular and sufficient removal of waste. Insufficient nourishment starves the blood; insufficient elimination poisons it. A wise housekeeper will look as carefully after the condition of his drains as after the quality of his food.

The principal organs of elimination, common to both sexes, are the bowels, kidneys, lungs, and skin. A neglect of their functions is punished in each alike. To woman is intrusted the exclusive management of another process of elimination, viz., the catamenial function. This, using the blood for its channel of operation, performs, like the blood, double duty. It is necessary to ovulation, and to the integrity of every part of the reproductive apparatus; it also serves as a means of elimination for the blood itself. A careless management of this function, at any period of life during its existence, is apt to be followed by consequences that may be serious; but a neglect of it during the epoch of development, that is, from the age of fourteen to eighteen or twenty, not only produces great evil at the time of the neglect, but leaves a large legacy of evil to the future. The system is then peculiarly susceptible; and disturbances of the delicate mechanism we are considering, induced during the catamenial weeks of that critical age by constrained positions, muscular effort, brain work, and all forms of mental and physical excitement, germinate a host of ills. Sometimes these causes, which pervade more or less the methods of instruction in our public and private schools, which our social customs ignore, and to which operatives of all sorts pay little heed, produce an excessive performance of the catamenial function; and this is equivalent to a periodical hemorrhage. Sometimes they produce an insufficient performance of it; and this, by closing an avenue of elimination, poisons the blood, and depraves the organization. The host of ills thus induced are known to physicians and to the sufferers as amenorrhoea, menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, hysteria, anemia, chorea, and the like. Some of these fasten themselves on their victim for a lifetime, and some are shaken off. Now and then they lead to an abortion of the function, and consequent sterility. Fortunate is the girls' school or college that does not furnish abundant examples of these sad cases. The more completely any such school or college succeeds, while adopting every detail and method of a boy's school, in ignoring and neglecting the physiological conditions of sexual development, the larger will be the number of these pathological cases among its graduates. Clinical illustrations of these statements will be given in another place.

The mysterious process which physiologists call metamorphosis of tissue, or intestitial change, deserves attention in connection with our subject. It interests both sexes alike. Unless it goes on normally, neither boys, girls, men, nor women, can have bodies or brains worth talking about. It is a process, without which not a step can be taken, or muscle moved, or food digested, or nutriment assimilated, or any function, physical or mental, performed. By its aid, growth and development are carried on. Youth, maturity, and old age result from changes in its character. It is alike the support and the guide of health convalescence, and disease. It is the means by which, in the human system, force is developed, and growth and decay rendered possible. The process, in itself, is one of the simplest. It is merely the replacing of one microscopic cell by another; and yet upon this simple process hang the issues of life and death, of thought and power.

Carpenter, in his physiology, reports the discovery, which we owe to German investigation, "that the whole structure originates in a single cell; that this cell gives birth to others, analogous to itself, and these again to many future generations; and that all the varied tissues of the animal body are developed from cells." (9) A more recent writer adds, "In the higher animals and plants, we are presented with structures which may be regarded as essentially aggregates of cells; and there is now a physiological division of labor, some of the cells being concerned with the nutriment of the organism, whilst others are set apart, and dedicated to the function of reproduction. Every cell in such an aggregate leads a life, which, in a certain limited sense, may be said to be independent; and each discharges its own function in the general economy. Each cell has a period of development, growth, and active life, and each ultimately perishes; the life of the organism not only not depending upon the life of its elemental factors, but actually being kept up by their constant destruction and as constant renewal." (10) Growth, health, and disease are cellular manifestations. With every act of life, the movement of a finger, the pulsation of a heart, the uttering of a word, the coining of a thought, the thrill of an emotion, there is the destruction of a certain number of cells. Their destruction evolves or sets free the force that we recognize as movement, speech, thought, and emotion. The number of cells destroyed depends upon the intensity and duration of the effort that correlates their destruction. When a blacksmith wields a hammer for an hour, he uses up the number of cells necessary to yield that amount of muscular force. When a girl studies Latin for an hour, she uses up the number of brain-cells necessary to yield that amount of intellectual force. As fast as one cell is destroyed, another is generated. The death of one is followed instantly by the birth of its successor. This continual process of cellular death and birth, the income and outgo of cells, that follow each other like the waves of the sea, each different yet each the same, is metamorphosis of tissue. This is life. It corresponds very nearly to Bichat's definition that, "life is organization in action." The finer sense of Shakspeare dictated a truer definition than the science of the French physiologist, --

(10) Nicholson, Study of Biology, p. 79.