464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and affections to which women are prone will retard them in their 

 pursuit of a profession as a business investment. In the medical pro- 

 fession, to which women have a special leaning, the constant witness- 

 ing of human suffering and misery will call into play emotions which 

 will interfere with the calm and deliberate study of each case, which 

 its rational treatment will demand. The same objection applies to 

 men ; the medical man is rarely to be trusted to treat a difficult case 

 in his wife, or child, or himself. 



There is one fact in woman's functional life which is of vast im- 

 portance to the subject of this paper, and which I refer to with great 

 reluctance. This fact is ovulation. The mental reaction of this func- 

 tion is oftentimes of such a character as, for the time, to totally inca- 

 pacitate for professional or other mental work. As this paper is 

 written solely with the view of arriving at the truth in a matter of 

 great practical importance, I must let this serve as my apology for 

 referring plainly to this subject ; and this importance requires that, 

 I let others, who are acknowledged authorities in gynaecology, speak 

 for me. 



Dr. Robert Barnes, of London, the author of the latest work upon 

 gynaecology, uses the following unequivocal language : " The mind is 

 always more or less disturbed. Perception, or at least the faculty of 

 rightly interpreting perceptions, is disordered. Excitement to the 

 point of passing delirium is not uncommon. Irritability of temper, 

 disposition to distort the most ordinary and best-meaning acts or 

 words of surrounding persons, afflict the patient, who is conscious of 

 her unreason, and perplex her friends, until they have learned to un- 

 derstand these recurring outbursts. . . . Not even the best-educated 

 women are all free from these mental disorders. Indeed, the more 

 preponderant the nervous element, the greater is the liability to the 

 invasion. Women of coarser mould, who labor with their hands, 

 especially in out-door occupations, are far less subject to these ner- 

 vous complications. If they are less frequently observed, if they less 

 frequently drive refined women to acts of flagrant extravagance, it is 

 because education lends strength to the innate sense of decorum, and 

 enables them to control their dangerous thoughts, or to conceal them 

 until they have passed away." ' Another of the accidents attendant 

 upon ovulation is hysteria. Dr. Tilt defines it as a disease peculiar to 

 women during the reproductive period of life, and is often known to 

 return at each period of ovulation. 2 This function is constantly liable 

 to accidents. Speaking of the mental effects of aemenorrhoea, a disease 

 to which every woman is liable who follows an intellectually rather 

 than a physically active life, Sir J. Y. Simpson says that she becomes 

 " subject to fits of excitement which come on most frequently at a 

 menstrual period, and which usually assume an hysterical form, but 



1 " A Clinical History of the Medical and Surgical Diseases of Women," p. 162. 



2 "Diseases of Menstruation and Ovarian Inflammation," p. 129. 



