162 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



esthesia some women are afflicted with before the meno- 



It is as if the ovaries and the accessory sex internal 



secretions erupt into a sort of final geyser before they are ex- 



So the captain, ever faithful, finds her, and dis< 

 to his horror that she is a thousand times more like other women 

 been like other men. Because of his ignorance 

 of the underlying chemical basis for the transfiguration, tragedy 

 follows. Critics may cackle about a sex starved woman, who 

 pressed her natural desires, and hail the play as a contri- 

 bution to the Freudian clinics. As a matter of fact, it is a 

 study of libido variation, with endocrine variation, at two stages 

 of the inner chemical life of a woman. 



The chain of events at the menopause, the acme and then ebb 

 of the sex tide, may be summed up something like this: 



The ovaries cease producing their eggs and so shrivel as a 

 storage battery atrophies when it dries up. An important mem- 

 ber of the endocrine board of directors thus drops out, and so a 

 ngement of gland activities, a new regime, becomes neces- 

 sary. If a balance of power is established quickly and equitably, 

 very little happens. Quickly the woman passes on to the next 

 plane of her existence. But if some endocrine proves recalcitrant, 

 and takes advantage of the situation to make itself dominant, 

 trouble and maladjustment, and their psychic echoes, come. An- 

 terior pituitary control will mean a relative masculinization, with 

 hair on the face and aggressive attitudes. Post-pituitary most 

 i refuses to settle down, and expressing its ambition as 1 

 , obesity and hysteria, may cause extreme m 

 and unhappiness to its possessor. Sooner or later, if the har- 

 monious equilibrium of the normal life is to be revived, all the 

 thyroid, pituitary .Is. 



h the waning of the ovarian function, the thyroid type will 

 particular flare. If there is thyroid excess the 

 woman will be excitable and irritable, the thyroid dv\] 

 be depressed and dull, the thyroid 



tween excess i will ha- ind down 



alternation of 



will have a big)) blood pres masrulinoid trail 



inferior will have a low blood pn 



• and f ID to 



• is individually itninfttfag 



.• ion o! the woman. w ben the 

 Pfomfa hai atrophied, and the breasts have shrunk, the typical 



