CORRESPONDENCE. 



493 



large a percentage of women, even in the 

 "upper" classes, are shown never to feel 

 the need of rest at this period ; the fact that 

 in so large a proportion of those who suffer 

 the suffering dates from the first menstru- 

 ation, and hence precedes the habits of oc- 

 cupation sometimes supposed to induce it ; 

 the fact that in no case did rest alone suc- 

 ceed in averting pain or in curing its cause, 

 and hence proved anything but the "pana- 

 cea " the reviewer supposes it to be (page 

 244) these facts appear plainly on the 

 tables of the essay, and are certainly of im- 

 portance in regard to the question at issue. 



For the reason already surmised it may 

 be that the reviewer has failed to see that 

 the third section of the essay, which he 

 describes as " containing a review of the 

 various theories of menstruation," is de- 

 voted not to summarizing these, but to crit- 

 icising them ; and that an effort is made to 

 replace one of the famous current doctrines 

 of menstruation by another, substantially 

 in agreement with those universally held 

 prior to the writings of Bischoff and Pou- 

 chet and Raciborski, but claiming to con- 

 tain some original details and suggestions 

 for a new line of experiment. This effort 

 is, to the intention of the author, the main 

 subject-matter of the essay. That the re- 

 viewer has either overlooked this, or its 

 bearing on the conclusions, or has not 

 deemed it so worthy of notice as lesser de- 

 tails, is shown by his remark that the "ex- 

 periments " were made " before, after, and 

 during ovulation " (page 243), whereas the 

 essay has ranged itself upon the side of 

 those more modern thinkers whose re- 

 searches are tending to reject the famous 

 ovulation theory. 



The reviewer further criticises the essay 

 for a " strained meaning put upon the word 

 rhythmic," and for confounding "reproduc- 

 tion with the conditions essential to repro- 

 duction " (page 243). It is true that a philo- 

 sophical conception of causation compels us 

 to regard every phenomenon as the result 

 of a chain of sequences, and thus every in- 

 termittent phenomenon recurring at regular 

 periods as the result of a rhythmic chain of 

 sequences ; and thus, in one sense, there can 

 be no antagonism between " periodical " and 

 " rhythmic." But the essay was compelled 

 to consider not only facts in themselves, but 

 certain popular preoccupations about those 

 facts, and especially in regard to the inter- 

 mittence of the menstrual haemorrhage. The 

 aim of the essay has been to show that this 

 phenomenon is only one of a chain succeed- 

 ing each other as continuously as do those 

 involved in the processes of digestion, a de- 

 tail of a rhythmic movement accomplished 

 in the organism, and not as much popular 

 belief goes a periodical accident happening 

 to it. Again, it is true that in the essay 

 the term " reproduction " is used as equiva- 



lent for the process by which material is ac- 

 cumulated in the parent organism for the 

 function of reproduction. This restriction 

 is justified by examples of the eminent bi- 

 ologists who, studying reproduction in its 

 most general and abstract aspect, consider 

 the whole process as a form of nutrition. 

 (I may mention, as one example out of many, 

 the lectures of Claude Bernard, published in 

 the " Revue des Cours Scientifiques " for 

 1874.) For all those classes of animals in 

 whom the conjugation of reproductive cells 

 is effected externally to the parent organ- 

 isms, it is evident that the influence of re- 

 production upon those organisms terminates 

 with the formation of the reproductive cells 

 and the accumulation of the material re- 

 quired for their nutrition. Hence, philo- 

 sophically speaking, the most general view 

 of reproduction coincides exclusively with 

 this nutritive process its type is discover- 

 able in vegetable organisms, and the vary- 

 ing phenomena of animal life involved in 

 the conjugation of reproductive cells may 

 be considered apart. For its special pur- 

 poses the essay was doubly justified in using 

 the term "reproduction" in the sense thus 

 defined. 



It is because the essay was exclusively 

 concerned with menstruation that " the de- 

 rangements due to matrimony receive no 

 attention," although the reviewer, in the 

 preceding rather singularly-worded sentence, 

 implies that they should. 



In the same sentence the reviewer de- 

 clares that the " motive of the book [is] to 

 demonstrate woman's capacity for continu- 

 ous work during certain periods." The only 

 "motive" of the book was the desire to 

 inquire in what way the relations of the fe- 

 male nutrition to the cost of reproduction 

 might be theoretically expected to modify 

 the capacity for exertion of the female 

 nervo-muscular system. The reviewer is 

 certainly in error in saying that the author 

 " does not inform us whether ill-arrange- 

 ment of work has reference to time or not ; " 

 for many pages of the essay are devoted to 

 showing at least in the opinion of the 

 author that the question of time is of great 

 importance in regard to the nervo-muscular 

 energies of women, but not time in regard to 

 the period of the menstrual hemorrhages. 

 Morbid conditions, entailed with other dis- 

 eases of civilization, may compel reference 

 to such time ; but the real necessity lies 

 much deeper, and (theoretically) should com- 

 pel more frequent intermittences in exertion, 

 in order, roughly speaking, to allow of the 

 accumulation in the blood of reproductive 

 material. The essential danger of overwork 

 in women, aside from the dangers common 

 to both sexes, is that, if due provision be 

 not made for " the needs of supplemental 

 nutrition," this will be formed at the ex- 

 pense of the nutrition of the parent organ- 



