THE GENESIS OF WOMAN. 271 



cause and effect he speaks of those only which lie at the very threshold 

 of diseased action. Tracing back these morbid acts to their remote 

 causes, he says a few words of those which we have all heard so much 

 about — late hours and suppers, idle and luxurious habits, improper 

 dress and exciting literature. I have no disposition to deny these 

 conditions their just value in the cause of ovaritis. I acknowledge 

 the importance of the diseases which he describes in the production 

 of ovarian derangement. But, he speaks of the woman and ignores 

 the child ; the accidents of completion are all, and the accidents of 

 formation nothing. There are causes of ovarian derangement other 

 than those which are given by Dr. Tilt. Inflammation is not the only 

 error of structure which may so result. There are conditions which 

 must be assigned to the formative years of life. Relative excess or 

 deficiency is one, and nervous action, radiating from the central or 

 ganglionic systems, exerts a potent and unmeasured power for weal or 

 woe upon ovarian periodicity. Dr. Tilt is not alone in assigning un- 

 due importance to the accidents of puberty. Dr. Meigs has had great 

 influence upon the forming of opinion in this country, and his influence 

 has been the more deeply felt from his having clothed with the graces 

 of rhetoric some stern pathological facts. In describing the advent 

 of puberty he has indulged in a sort of physiological antithesis. The 

 child -life of woman is the material which is suddenly transformed 

 into a being clothed in beauty, veiled in modesty, pulsating with 

 charming passion and the divine consciousness of possible maternity. 

 This is what the doctor says : " The earliest years of her life are 

 occupied then in bringing her up to that point of perfect develop- 

 ment of her alimentary, respiratory, innervative, and circulatory life, 

 that may fit her for exerting the great reproductive force" ("Dis- 

 eases of Women," p. 373); and "the transverse and antero-posterior 

 diameters of the pelvis have suddenly and visibly increased " (p. 375) ; 

 and " it seems as if the forces which had been employed to perfect 

 the beautiful machine, by arranging and completing the quantitative 

 synthesis of its organism, were now occupied, in a sort of paroxysmal 

 intensity, with adorning it with all its graces and attractions, and set- 

 ting upon it the seal of perfection" (p. 376) ; and, lastly, "this occurs 

 between fourteen and fifteen years of age" (p. 372). This is certainly 

 leaving a good many physiological facts unnoticed for the sake of 

 dramatic unity. Leaving out the manner, the above is about the sub- 

 stance of what has been written by gynaecological writers upon this 

 period of woman's life. Anatomical writers are also guilty of coming 

 to hasty conclusions upon what ought to be regarded matters of fact 

 rather than of opinion. Mr. Gray, in his "Anatomy," says, that 

 ^'' about puberty \hQ pelvis in both sexes presents the general characters 

 of the adult male pelvis, but after puberty it acquires the sexual 

 characters peculiar to it in adult life " (" Anatomy, Descriptive and 

 Surgical," p. 158). 



