88 OF MENSTRUATION. 



and some women are obliged to be very careful to prevent it from 

 falling in quantities to the ground. 



215. The periodical return o( the menses ordinarily takes place 

 every month, as their name indicates, or rather every twenty-eight or 

 twenty-nine days which brings them into relation with the lunar 

 periods; in an infinity of people they are observed to recur at nearer 

 or remoter periods; sometimes only twenty-two, twenty, eighteen, 

 and even fifteen days elapse between each catamenial revolution; I 

 know a person who is never more than twelve days free from it; 

 and I have the care of another who is almost always affected with it, 

 but who in other respects is in good health, only she is thin, and of 

 an extreme sensibility. These frequent returns of the menses, with- 

 out any peculiar change in the health, are particularly to be ob- 

 served in warm countries, and in nervous women. The emaciation 

 which attends this state is at the critical period frequently succeeded 

 by plumpness more or less decided, as if the sanguine discharges to 

 which nature had become accustomed were now turned to the 

 benefit of the whole organism! 



Others are regular every thirty-second, thirty-fifth, or fortieth day, 

 and even every two or three months, without being in the least in- 

 commoded, as is pretty frequently observed to be the case in Green- 

 land, Lapland, and other cold countries; and neither is it uncommon 

 to observe the same thing in our own country places; but none of 

 these anomalies contradict the principles established by physiolo- 

 gists in all ages. 



216. Without daring to set up the simple results of my own ob- 

 servations, in opposition to those who assert that all women are 

 regular in the first fortnight of the month, half from the first to the 

 eighth, and the rest from the eighth to the fifteenth, I cannot refrain 

 from stating that I have seen as many who were menstruating at 

 the close as at the beginning of each month in the year; I therefore 

 do not believe it possible to establish any thing certain on this head. 



217. Causes. Physiologists have been for a long time divided in 

 regard to the causes of menstruation, and at the present day even, 

 every thing seems to indicate that there will not be a unity of senti- 

 ment very soon on this point. Some authors have stated, with Aris- 

 totle and Galen, Simson, Astruc, and M. Lobstein, that the meuses 

 depend upon a general or local plethora, upon a superabundance of 

 blood: others, with Osiander, pretend that the menses are occa- 

 sioned by too large a proportion of carbon and azote being contained 

 in the blood of the uterus. Dr. Clifton refers them to the relative 

 weakness of the venous parieles, and to the perpendicular effort of 

 the blood. Paracelsus, Sylvius, and De Graaf think they are pro- 



