This does not pretend to be a medical work; but the consequences and symptoms of this disease, leucorrhœa, are so far reaching and generally so much ignored, that it seems imperative to speak out quite openly on the subject. All through this book, the relations of the spirit to the body is considered as being so close, so intimate, and the relation of the attitudes of the positiveness and negativeness to the state of the body is recognized as so inevitable and deep-seated, that I should be guilty of a flaw in my argument, of a grave omission in the frank array of my facts, if, particularly at this stage, I were to scout a subject which, however disagreeable and delicate, formed a necessary link in the chain of my reasoning. To begin with, then, let it be said most emphatically, for all those whom it may concern, that leucorrhœa—this most regrettable and most neglected of the hidden scourges that harass the women of England—is a much more serious and much more distressing ailment than the ordinary general practitioner, or even specialist gynæcologist, is ready to admit. The fact that Albutt in his _Twentieth Century Practice_ allots only one paragraph of about fifteen lines to the subject of leucorrhœa in girls, shows at once with what a frivolous shrug of the shoulders the orthodox medical school cavalierly disposes of this all-important question. Leucorrhœa is not only a catarrh in a most vital part, it is also the symptom of a loss of tone in a most vital part—a loss of tone and therefore of vitality. It is important to remember, in regard to this disease, _that scarcely a case of the kind has ever been known in which colon bacilli were not present in the mucous discharge_. The intimate connexion between leucorrhœa and the state of the colon is therefore indisputable, and shows with what reverent care the body of the young positive girl should be tended and watched. The body of the negative girl does not matter nearly as much. When it is remembered that persistent and obstinate leucorrhœa is the cause not only of more than three-quarters of the irregularity and pain of girls’ periodic indispositions, not only of a depression and degeneration of sexual keenness that may make sexual union quite unenjoyable, not to say unpleasant, but also that it is a reducing, an exhausting, and a sterilizing ailment (sterility where it is not the result of actual malformation is almost always the result of leucorrhœa), it cannot be too urgently or too deeply impressed upon the parent and the guardian of the positive English girl, that reverence for her body, and not alone for her pure soul (which, as we have seen, can well be left to look after itself), is their most solemn and most sacred duty.