152 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



and mental phenomena herald the expected menstruation because 

 of a complete upset of the balance between the internal secre- 

 tions, with resulting disturbance of the nervous system. Irrita- 

 bility, depression, excitability, melancholia, exaltations, restless- 

 ness, hysteria, loss of self-control, or even more marked mental 

 aberrations may appear. Following them, and roughly parallel- 

 ing them, may come various abnormalities of menstruation it- 

 self. The character, extent and duration of these furnish us the 

 best clues to the endocrine stability or instability of the particu- 

 lar feminine organism. 



Menstruation is simply the uterus saying: well, not this time. 

 As the destined ovum within its nest, the follicle, grows, its fluid 

 affects the interstitial cells to send their specific stuff into the 

 blood. There it circulates, hits this gland and that, makes some 

 more active, others less, transforms the chemistry of the cells, 

 and engorges the mucous membranes, most of all those of the 

 nose and of the uterus. It is all to welcome the mature ovum and 

 its possible impregnation, to prepare a site for its landing 

 and settlement, blood and food for its nutrition, safety for its 

 development. But it is not to be. No sperm at hand, or effective 

 enough to penetrate that wandering ovum. Love's labour's lost. 

 All must return to the so-called normal, really the intermenstrual 

 state. The womb must surrender some of that blood, the glands 

 return to their routine, and a sex diastole of the whole organism 

 succeeds. Until again, another follicle swells, another ovum ma- 

 tures, and the premenstrual state of sex high tide cycles back. 



Seven to ten days before menstruation we know that sex high 

 tide is beginning for that is when the blood pressure goes up. 

 As this rise of blood pressure is probably controlled by the poste- 

 rior pituitary, we have a clue to the reason for the rhythmic 

 variations in the rate of production of its secretion by the ovary. 

 For, since menstruation is so closely connected with the phases 

 of the moon and the tides, the rhythmicity of the posterior 

 pituitary may be traced to the days when the pineal was an 

 eye at the top of the head, and in direct relation with the 

 pituitary. 



Menstruation has been said to be a miniature labor. It is not 

 that as much as it is a miniature abortion. It is an effort of 

 nature still-born. But nature is quite used to its disappoint- 

 ments and returns placidly to the daily grind. The four phases 

 of a woman's twenty-eight day cycle succeed each other as the 

 premenstrual, the menstrual, the postmenstrual and the inter- 



