Sex and Education. A reply to Dr. E.H. Clarke's "Sex in Education."
Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, [ed.]. Sex and Education. A Reply to Dr. E.H. Clarke’s “Sex in Education.” Edited...by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1874.
12mo, 203pp; brown-coated endpapers; dark green pebble-cloth with decorative devices and rules in blind front and rear; title and publisher’s logo in gold-gilt at the spine; small split at front hinge; two or three minor snags to head of spine with some rubbing to heel; very good.
First edition. In 1873 a retired Harvard Medical School professor issued an attack on women in higher education. Dr. E. H. Clarke’s Sex In Education suggested that “higher education was ... more of a threat to women’s health than sweatshop, cotton mill, or canning plant.” Widely influential, heatedly-discussed, the book went through 17 printings. Clarke explained in his book that “mental activity drew blood from the nervous system and reproductive organs. Higher education, therefore, could cause mental collapse, physical incapacity, infertility, and early death” (Women And The American Experience, Woloch). As one authority notes, “this medical verdict put the stamp of scientific truth on the ancient suspicion that the female brain and body could not survive book learning.” (In The Company Of Educated Women, Solomon). Educators and women’s rights groups hastened to refute Dr. Clarke’s findings. Here Julia Ward Howe, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Mrs. Horace Mann, Caroline Dall, Abby May, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and others contribute to the rebuttal. BAL 8283, 9442, 20877.
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