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be considered as already addicted to or liable to become addicted to this habit." All physicians admit that it is very difficult—almost impossible, in fact—to ascertain the origin of many of the diseases of unmarried women which they are called upon to treat, and, if the cause be perpetually in operation, they will prescribe with fruitless results. The broken health, the prostration, the great debility, the remarkable derangements of the gastric and uterine functions, too often have this origin, and when the cause is investigated the subject alleges great exertions, intense trouble, unhappiness, etc., but is silent as to the real cause, which, perhaps, after all, she does not herself associate with her maladies. The utmost penetration can only cause one to suspect the truth, but a question skillfully put will generally reveal all.
One of the most celebrated surgeons in the world has related the following case: "A young girl of ten or twelve years, sole heiress of a considerable fortune, was unsuccessfully treated by the most skillful physicians of Paris. At length the physician who has furnished this narration was summoned. He was not more fortunate than his colleagues. Unable to explain this general failure to relieve, and the constantly increasing debility of the patient, he imparted to the mother his suspicions of the cause of all these accidents that nothing subdued. The mother, exceedingly astonished and almost indignant at an assertion which appeared to her so rash, earnestly maintained that the thing was impossible, as the child had always been under her own eye, or confided to a governess incapable of teaching her evil. This governess was an old woman who had reared the mother, and who had never excited her suspicions in any respect. The physician, however, caused the child to be separated from both mother and governess.
