58 MENSTRUATION. 



In answer to the first of these arguments, Bischoff says, that " no 

 such essential difference between the conditions of heat and menstruation 

 exists. The female quadruped at the commencement of the state of 

 heat appears to be in a state of general suffering, and will not admit 

 the caresses of the male ; it does not seek the coitus until this first stage 

 of the heat is passed. The human female, on the other hand, at the 

 time of the cessation of menstruation feels herself unusually well, and is 

 more than ordinarily disposed for sexual connection. So that there is in 

 this respect a most complete accordance between the two functions." * 

 M. Bischoff might have added, that the less marked development of the 

 sexual feeling in woman at the periods of menstruation, than in female 

 quadrupeds at the periods of heat, corresponds with a fundamental mark 

 of distinction between man and the brute. In animals it is natural that 

 the instinct inducing the act of coitus, should be strongly developed at 

 the times when that act may have for its result the fecundation of ova, 

 and that the instinct should not exist at other times when no ova are 

 prepared for fecundation. In women such a strong development of the 

 sexual feeling, and aptitude for sexual intercourse, exclusively at particular 

 times, would have been in contradiction to the freedom of will and self- 

 command which characterizes the human species. 



With regard to the argument founded on the hemorrhagic nature of the 

 menstrual discharge in women, Raciborski f remarks that this discharge is 

 not the essential phenomenon of menstruation that women have become 

 pregnant who had never menstruated ; that although the discharge attend- 

 ing the heat in quadrupeds is in most cases simply mucous, yet in many of 

 them it is occasionally bloody, and in some, nearest to man, consists chiefly 

 of blood ; | and, on the other hand, that although the menstrual discharge 

 in women is essentially bloody, yet at the commencement and end of men- 

 struation, the blood is mixed with an increased flow of mucus, and with 

 epithelium thrown off* from the mucous surfaces of the sexual passages. 



Assuming, now, that the theory of the discharge of ova periodically 

 at the times of menstruation, and exclusively at those times, is correct, as 

 it certainly is highly probable, the question next presents itself, how 

 long after the extrusion of the ovum from the ovary, or how long after 

 the cessation of the menstrual discharge is fecundation possible. The 

 passage of the ovum from the ovary to the uterus occupies, M. Bischoff 

 says, three days in the rabbit, and four or five days in ruminants, and, 

 therefore, probably eight or ten days in the human female. M. Bischoff 

 believes that the ovum escapes from the Graafian follicle at the time when 

 the menstrual discharge is about to cease, and he is of opinion, that in 

 order to be fecundated, it must be acted on by the semen while it is in the 

 Fallopian tube. From these data, then, he infers that sexual connection, 



* Beweis, p. 40. t Op. Citat. p. 444, ct seq. 



+ See also Gird wood, Lancet, Dec. 1844, for facts of this nature. 



