Note 47 — Front matter

Two statistical investigations of the health of college women have been undertaken; one in America in 1882, which tabulated various data connected with the health, occupation, marriage, birth rate, etc., of 705 graduates of the 12 American colleges belonging at that time to the Association of collegiate alumnæ (Health statistics of women college graduates; report of a special committee of the Association of collegiate alumnæ, Annie G. Howes, chairman; together with statistical tables collated by the Massachusetts bureau of statistics of labor. Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co., 18 Post Office Square. 1885), and one in England in 1887 (Health statistics of women students of Cambridge and Oxford and of their sisters, by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, Cambridge university press, 1890). The English statistics dealt with 566 women students (honor students who had taken tripos examinations and final honors, and women who had been in residence three, two and one year) of Newnham and Girton colleges, Cambridge, and of Lady Margaret and Somerville halls at Oxford. It was found that in England 75 per cent of the honor students were at the time of the investigation in excellent or good health. It was found that in America 78 per cent of the graduates were at the time of the investigation in good health and 5 per cent in fair health. In estimating the result of this investigation it is difficult to find a standard of comparison. There is no way of knowing what percentage of good health is to be expected in the case of the average woman who has not been to college. It is stated in the American health investigation, page 10, that Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, while obtaining data for her monograph on the question of rest for women, found that of 246 women only 56+ per cent were in good health. The American statistics were compared with the results obtained in an investigation of the condition of 1,032 working women of Boston, made by the Massachusetts bureau of statistics of labor; the comparison showed that the health of college women was more satisfactory than the health of working women. The English statistics were compared with the health statistics of 450 sisters or first cousins who had not received a college education, and it was found that, at all periods, about 5 per cent less of honor graduates were in bad health than of sisters and cousins. The comparative tables showed that the married graduates were healthier than their married sisters, that there were fewer childless marriages among them, that they had a larger proportion of children per year of married life, and that their children were healthier.