That there are more numerous diseases than formerly, is not true; but it is true that we know more, for we have learned to detect them more readily and to examine them more minutely. This is especially true of such as are peculiar to women. Within the last ten or twenty years so much that is of sovereign importance has been contributed to this department of medical science, that it is hardly possible for one to become an expert in it unless he gives it his whole attention. To avoid the tendency to debilitated frames and chronic diseases, woman should therefore learn not only the laws of her own physical life, but the relations in which she stands to the other sex. Thus she can guard her own health, and preserve her offspring from degeneracy. It is only by enlightenment, and the extension of knowledge on the topics relating to soundness of body and mind, that we can found rational hopes of a permanent and wide-spread improvement of the race. Some have maintained, not understanding the bearing of the facts, that such degeneracy is more conspicuous in the frame of woman than anywhere else. They quote the narratives of travellers, who describe with what fortitude--we might almost say with what indifference--the Indian women, and those of other savage races, bear the pangs of childbirth, and how little the ordeal weakens them. A squaw will turn aside for an hour or two when on the march, bear a child, wash it in some stream, bind it on the top of her load, and shouldering both, quietly rejoin the vagrant troop. Our artificial life seems indeed, in this respect, to be to blame; but if we look closer, we can learn that these wild women often perish alone, that they are rarely fertile, that unnatural labors are not unknown, and that the average duration of their life is decidedly less than among the females in civilised States. HEALTH IN MARRIAGE. _THE PERILS OF MATERNITY._ In the early part of this work we quoted some authorities to show that those women who choose single life as their portion do not escape the ills of existence, nor do they protract their days, but, on the contrary, as shown by extensive statistics, are more prone to affections of the mind, and die earlier. While, therefore, nature thus rewards those who fulfil the functions of their being, by taking part in the mysterious processes of reproduction, and perpetuating the drama of existence, it is true also that she associates these privileges with certain deprivations and suffering. We do not wish to throw around the married state any charms which are not its own. Rather is it our aim to portray with absolute, and therefore instructive, fidelity all that this condition offers of unfavorable as well as favorable aspects.