SEXUAL PSYCHOSES AND NEUROSES 207 



Mott 1 has expressed his belief in the important Psychoses in 

 part played by the internal secretions in insanity ; ^genital 

 but the arguments set forth by him do not break functions. 

 any new ground. This writer states : " It must have 

 struck everybody that has to do with insanity that 

 there are two periods of life when its onset specially 

 occurs — namely, early adolescence and the involutional 

 period ". The recognition of these facts is not new, 

 for. a similar statement was made many years ago by 

 Wynn Westcott 2 . This observer — a well-known coroner 

 — said that out of over 200 inquests on female suicides 

 " the majority of these women had killed themselves 

 about the change of life, and of the younger women 

 the majority appeared to have been menstruating at 

 the time of suicide ". 



We must now consider the nature of the stimuli con- 

 cerned, and the abnormal effects they may produce. 



In normal circumstances puberty supervenes in stimuli 

 about the fourteenth year, but, as already described, sexual 8 

 with certain disturbances of the hormonopoietic system psychoses and 



* , J neuroses. 



puberty may be precocious. Now, in precocious puberty 

 we have a phenomenon which gives us a clear indication 

 of the effects of abnormal sex-development, and of the 

 causes which later in life may produce excessive sexu- 

 ality ; for in girls precocity is induced by ovarian hyper- 

 plasia or neoplasia. This is important, for it proves 

 conclusively that when excessive sexuality, amounting 

 perhaps to sexual insanity, exists in women we must 

 look for an excessive ovarian secretion as the primary 

 cause of the condition ; and contrariwise we find that 

 deficient ovarian secretion may lead to melancholia, 

 probably indirectly. 



A brief description of the sexual and reproductive 

 psychoses and neuroses dependent on derangements 

 of the internal secretions, which may be found in 

 women, must now be given ; I shall not attempt, 



i Mott, F. W., Proc. Roy. Soc. Med. (Sect PaychiaU), 1915, 

 vol. viii, p. 1. 



2 Westcott, Wynn W., Brit. Med. Journ., 1900, vol. ii, p. 792. 



