347 ] 



SECT. XXXVI11. 



OF THE MENSTRUA. 



553. AN important, and indeed the most frequent, 

 function of the uterus, is to afford a menstrual fluid 

 during about thirty years, a law imposed upon no 

 other species of animal :* Woman, in the words of 

 Pliny, is the only menstruating animal. The females 

 of no nation, hitherto explored, are exempt from this 

 law,f since it is among the requisites in the female sex 

 for the propagation of the species. 



554. The commencement of this function usually 



* Most writers upon Natural History, and among the rest Buffon, allow the 

 existence of menstruation in other animals, especially in the simiae. But after 

 carefully observing the females of the species of simise mentioned by him, 

 (v. c. of the simia sylvanus, and cynomolgus, the papio maimon, &c.) for a 

 number of years, I easily discovered that these supposed catamenia in some did 

 not occur at all, and, in others of the very same species, were merely a vague 

 and sparing uterine hemorrhage, observing no regular period. 



f There is hardly occasion at present to refute the unfounded assertion, that 

 in some countries, particularly on the Continent of America, the women do not 

 menstruate. This opinion appears to have originated from the circumstance of 

 the Europeans, who visited those countries and saw innumerable women nearly 

 naked, never observing any menstrual stains upon them. For this there might 

 be two reasons. First, the American women are, by a happy prejudice, re- 

 garded as infectious, wliile menstruating, and retire from society into solitary 

 huts, to the benefit of their health. Again, their extreme cleanliness and the 

 modest position in which they place their limbs would prevent any vestige of 

 the catamenia from being observable, as Adr. Van Berkel expressly states, 

 Fteiscn nach Rio de Berbice und Surinam, p. 4(j. 



