by Elizabeth Blackwell

“ Elizabeth Blackwell discusses, with commendable frankness and earnestness, a subject which is of the gravest importance not only to parents and the youth they have in charge, but also to society at large, which is, in fact, only a family circle of wider dimensions, whose interests are clearly identical, and not easily separated from those of the narrower band of home members. ”

“ Woman has an important part to fill, in the special duties which devolve upon her as wife, mother, sister, ruler of a household, and member of society. When she fails in these, we are fain to believe it is through ignorance. ”

“ Elizabeth Blackwell deserves well of the moral community for having recently said bravely and pointedly some things which most of our moralists, however good their intentions, are not stout-hearted or clever enough to say openly and inoffensively. ”

“ Elizabeth Blackwell makes a foreible appeal to parents to stop the ever-growing deterioration of morals among the young men and women of the present day. . . . .'The first falsehood,' says Dr. Blackwell, 'that must disappear, is the belief that the higher classes of women — the cultivated, the refined, the virtuous—have nothing to do with sexual vice; that they must remain ignorant of facts and see nothing but what is pleasant to see. . . . .'"
The Nobility of Sex. ”

“ The chief value of the book to the young themselves is its convincing statement of the fundamental truth that happiness, health, and power are on the side of morality. Stated merely as an ethical proposition, this will not have any new weight. But shown as a physiological principle, founded in Nature herself, bearing always with it its own rewards and penalties, physical and moral, it must be of immense service. ”

“ The writer's experience of twenty-eight years as a physician enables her to write intelligently on a topic which is usually tabooed in polite society from motives of false delicacy, and she has done so with an ability which should win from the public which she desires to touch a careful consideration of the views put forth. ”

“ Although written, as the author declares, to show the necessity for the proper development, distinctions, and discipline of sex in the young, it touches upon the important questions of the tendencies of sexual vice in modern civilization, and upon the disastrous results of those sins which society winks at, upon woman. ”