OF MENSTRUATION. 87 



in some parts of America, women are so much dreaded during their 

 pienstrual periods, that they are forbidden to go out of doors except 

 in cases of urgent necessity; and further, that they are obliged to 

 wear a mark that advertises people of their situation, so that they 

 may flee out of their way. While ridiculing, as they deserve, such 

 fables as these, the moderns have perhaps too much neglected that 

 portion which may be true. It is very rarely that a vulgar prejudice 

 does not contain some truth. If we reflect on the odor derived 

 from the different secretions of animals, or the aroma exhaled from 

 the skin of certain women, is it fair to reject without distinction all 

 that has been said in relation to the menstrual excretion? I am 

 certainly far from giving credit to the peculiarities related by Pliny, 

 Columella and the Arabians; but I do not see why the miasms that 

 escape from a female during the flow of her menses, should be in- 

 capable of turning a fluid so easily afl'ected as milk, nor why it could 

 not possibly have the same effect on certain sauces. Besides, it is 

 evident that blood retained for some time within the sexual organs, 

 particularly of women who are inattentive to cleanliness, may, by 

 being decomposed, acquire certain deleterious properties. 



Its odor is too variable to permit us to compare it to the marigold, 

 rather than to any thing else. From its being found fluid, although 

 long retained in the womb, we are not authorised to conclude with 

 M. Lavagna, that it contains no fibrine; we too frequently see it es- 

 cape in clots from women who get up to walk about after having 

 been long in a sitting posture, to be able to say with Dionis, that 

 menstrual blood never coagulates. According to all appearances, it 

 contains less fibrine than that from other parts of the body, but is not 

 entirely without it. Being mixed with the mucous and serous mat- 

 ters naturally furnished by the internal surface of the genital organs, 

 the menstrual blood is thus rendered more viscous; and ought not to 

 exhibit the same characters as that which escapes from a wound. 



214. Progress. The menstrual fluid is, in most women, at first 

 very liquid, serous, scanty, and not high colored; its consistence 

 and quantity increase on the second day; on the third it is in almost 

 every respect similar to the blood that escapes from the nose in 

 epistaxis; the fourth restores to it the characters of the second, and 

 on the fifth its appearances are analogous to those of the first; some- 

 times, on the contrary, the evacuation has a slower course, and is 

 not really abundant until the fourth or fifth, while in others the blood 

 flows from the commencement in as great a quantity as on the second 

 or third days. In some cases it appears one day, does not return 

 the next, and flows in abundance afterwards. It most commonly 

 comes away in the shape of simple small drops, which flow fast. 



