A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School

in the community, and the mental disease was first manifested, by the pupil bringing her Hymn-book or Bible to the class-room, and making it her constant resort, in every interval of school duty. It finally became impossible to convince her, that it was her duty to attend to any thing else; her conscience became morbidly sensitive, her perceptions indistinct, her deductions unreasonable, and nothing, but entire change of scene, exercise, and amusement, saved her. When the health of the brain was restored, she found that she could attend to the "one thing needful," not only without interruption of duty, or injury of health, but rather so as to promote both. Clergymen and teachers need most carefully to notice and guard against the danger here alluded to. Any such attention to religion, as prevents the performance of daily duties and needful relaxation, is dangerous, as tending to produce such a state of the brain, as makes it impossible to feel or judge correctly. And when any morbid and unreasonable pertinacity appears, much exercise, and engagement in other interesting pursuits, should be urged, as the only mode of securing the religious benefits aimed at. And whenever any mind is oppressed with care, anxiety, or sorrow, the amount of active exercise in the fresh air should be greatly increased, that the action of the muscles may withdraw the blood, which, in such seasons, is constantly tending too much to the brain. There has been a most appalling amount of suffering, derangement, disease, and death, occasioned by a want of attention to this subject, in teachers and parents. Uncommon precocity in children is usually the result of an unhealthy state of the brain; and, in such cases, medical men would now direct, that the wonderful child should be deprived of all books and study, and turned to play or work in the fresh air. Instead of this, parents frequently add fuel to the fever of the brain, by supplying constant mental stimulus, until the victim finds refuge in idiocy or an early grave. Where such fatal results do not occur, the brain, in many