Another point is worthy of careful consideration. Certain professions were once held to be unlawful for women on the ground that their intellectual faculties were of too inferior an order to enable them to follow masculine callings successfully. Women thereupon attained eminence in these very professions, thereby proving that their intellects, at all events, were equal to the occasion. An intimate acquaintance with some of the women who have thus proved their mental capacity has convinced me that they are not, on that account, very highly organised people. So far from having enlarged their whole circle, they seem to have shot out a long angle on one side of their natures at the expense of drawing to a corresponding extent on the other side. The emotional part of them appears to be defective, and the defect manifests itself chiefly in a lamentable want of sympathy, and in an annoying, though often amusing, deficiency of humour. It may be that the sieves of these professions are of a particularly distorting order, and that the sensitive organisations of women are more easily injured by them than are the tougher organisations of men. Distortion is apt to produce nerve-deterioration in both sexes, but especially in the highly strung nervous systems of women. Unfortunately, the Modern Malady is at present so little understood, that the very people who are betraying the most serious symptoms of nervous weakness are often declared by those about them to be in excellent health, a mistake which the sufferers themselves, eager to avoid the imputation of nervousness, are careful to foster. On one occasion I remarked to friends on the enfeebled state of nerve to which a clever and energetic woman had been reduced, owing in part to her labours in an arduous profession. Although the symptoms were unmistakable, my words were received with derision. “Mrs. T---- nervous!” exclaimed my friends. “What an idea! As if such a thing could be possible!”