OF MENSTRUATION. 85 



Turkish women, are capable of becoming mothers at the age of seven 

 or eight years. Dr. Prideaux, for example, relates that Cadijah, 

 aged five years, was regular when Mahomet espoused her. But 

 this story, like most others that come from countries of whose man- 

 ners and customs we know so little, is only a popular tale, for I 

 find in a faithful translation of the Koran, that Cadijah was upwards 

 of forty years old when she married the prophet. Others tell us, 

 that near the poles, and on the northern slopes of mountains, it is 

 not uncommon for the menses, not to appear until the twenty-third or 

 twenty-fourth year. 



211. The discrepancies presented by opposite climates in mass, 

 is found to be true in the details in every country, and occasionally 

 in every province and city. A country life and occupations, sim- 

 plicity of manners, a frugal regimen, like the temperature of northern 

 regions, procrastinate the first menstrual epoch; a life of leisure, the 

 imitative arts, such as painting and music, the habit of frequenting 

 balls, the theatre, lascivious books and pictures, good living, the use 

 of stimulating drinks, and living in populous cities, tend on the other 

 hand, like the temperature of the equatorial latitudes, to accelerate its 

 appearance. It is less precocious also in a robust woman, of a 

 lymphatico-sanguine temperament, very fat, and whose sensibility is 

 not very acute, than in those who are thin, delicate, nervous, irri- 

 table and sanguine. Even at Paris, girls are occasionally observed 

 to become regular at ten, eleven and twelve years: I know two who 

 were so, one at nine and a half, and the other at ten and a half years; 

 and I am in the habit of visiting a family where the young lady, who 

 at fourteen, is as tall and robust as a majority of women at twenty, 

 has been entirely in a state of puberty since she was eight years and 

 a half old. Children are also spoken of who were regular at birth, 

 or between the first and fifth year of their age, but it is reasonable to 

 suppose that this discharge must have been owing to some disease, 

 or at least had nothing in common with the catamenial flow. On 

 this subject I cannot however withhold a case recently made public; 

 it is that of a young girl at Havannah, whose menses appeared first 

 when she was eighteen months old, and have since that continued to 

 return once a month; the child, moreover, has a bosom, a very de- 

 cided character of countenance, and all the marks of anticipated 

 puberty. Other persons also are seen at this capital, who did not 

 menstruate until their seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, or twen- 

 tietii years. Osiander noticed at Gottlngen, that of one hundred 

 and thirty-seven women, nine became regular at twelve years of 

 age, eight at thirteen, twenty-one at fourteen, thirty-two at fifteen, 

 twenty-four at sixteen, eleven at seventeen, eighteen at eighteen, tea 



