XXIII.
1.—“Action repeated tends to rhythmic course.”
“Other and wider muscular actions, partly internal and partly external, also take place in a rhythmical manner in relation with systemic conditions. The motions of the diaphragm and of the thoracic and abdominal walls, in connection with respiration, belong to this category. These movements, though in the main independent of will, are capable of being very considerably modified thereby, and while they are most frequently unheeded, they have a very recognisable accompaniment of feeling when attention is distinctly turned to them.... The contraction of oviducts or of the womb, as well as the movements concerned in respiration, also had their beginnings in forms of life whose advent is now buried in the immeasurable past.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as an Organ of Mind,” p. 220).
4.—“Till habit bred hereditary trace.”
“Let it be granted that the more frequently psychical states occur in a certain order, the stronger becomes their tendency to cohere in that order, until they at last become inseparable; let it be granted that this tendency is, in however slight a degree, inherited, so that if the experiences remain the same, each successive generation bequeaths a somewhat increased tendency, and it follows that, in cases like the one described, there must eventually result an automatic connection of nervous actions, corresponding to the external relations perpetually experienced. Similarly, if from some change in the environment of any species its members are frequently brought in contact with a relation having terms a little more involved; if the organisation of the species is so far developed as to be impressible by these terms in close succession, then an inner relation corresponding to this new outer relation will gradually be formed, and will, in the end, become organic. And so on in subsequent stages of progress.”—Herbert Spencer (“Principles of Psychology,” Vol. I., p. 439).
Id.... “I have described the manner in which the hereditary tendencies and instincts arise from habit, induced in the nervous cellules by a sufficient repetition of the same acts.”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. I.).
Id.... “Ainsi l’évacuation menstruelle une fois introduite dans l’espèce, se sera communiquée par une filiation non interrompue; de sorte qu’on peut dire qu’une femme a maintenant des règles, par la seule raison que sa mère les a eues, comme elle aurait été phthisique peut être, si sa mère l’eût été; il y a plus, elle peut être sujette au flux menstruel, même quoique la cause primitive qui introduisit ce besoin ne subsiste plus en elle.”—Roussel (“Système de la Femme,” p. 134).
Id.... “Il y a eu des auteurs qui ne voulaient pas considérer la menstruation comme une fonction inhérente à la nature de la femme, mais comme une fonction acquise, continuant par l’habitude.”—Raciborski (“Traité de la Menstruation,” p. 17).
Id.... “The ‘set’ of mind, as Professor Tyndall well calls it, whether, as he says, ‘impressed upon the molecules of the brain,’ or conveyed in any other way, is quite as much a human as an animal phenomenon. Perhaps the greater part of those qualities which we call the characteristics of race are nothing else but the ‘set’ of the minds of men transmitted from generation to generation, stronger and more marked when the deeds are repeated, weaker and fainter as they fall into disuse.... Tyndall says: ‘No mother can wash or suckle her baby without having a “set” towards washing and suckling impressed upon the molecules of her brain, and this set, according to the laws of hereditary transmission, is passed on to her daughter. Not only, therefore, does the woman at the present day suffer deflection from intellectual pursuits through her proper motherly instincts, but inherited proclivities act upon her mind like a multiplying galvanometer, to augment indefinitely the amount of the deflection. Tendency is immanent even in spinsters, to warp them from intellect to baby-love.’ (Essay: “Odds and Ends of Alpine Life.”) Thus, if we could, by preaching our pet ideal, or in any other way induce one generation of women to turn to a new pursuit, we should have accomplished a step towards bending all future womanhood in the same direction.”—Frances Power Cobbe (Essay: “The Final Cause of Woman”).
See also Note XXVI., 7.
6.—“... e’en the virgin ...”
An experienced gynæcologist writes:—“For want of proper information in this matter, many a frightened girl has resorted to every conceivable device to check what she supposed to be an unnatural and dangerous hæmorrhage, and thereby inaugurated menstrual derangements which have prematurely terminated her life, or enfeebled her womanhood. I have been consulted by women of all ages, who frankly attributed their physical infirmities to the fact of their having applied ice, or made other cold applications locally, in their frantic endeavours to arrest the first menstrual flow.”
What general practitioner has not met with analogous instances in the circle of his own patients?
7.—“... ere fit ...”
“The physician, whose duty is not only to heal the sick, but also to prevent disease and to improve the race, and hence who must be a teacher of men and women, should teach sound doctrine in regard to the injurious results of precocious marriage. Mothers especially ought to be taught, though some have learned the lesson by their own sad experience, that puberty and nubility are not equivalent terms, but stand for periods of life usually separated by some years; the one indicates capability, the other fitness, for reproduction.”—Parvin (“Obstetrics,” p. 91).
Id.... “The general maturity of the whole frame is the true indication that the individual, whether male or female, has reached a fit age to reproduce the species. It is not one small and unimportant symptom by which this question must be judged. Many things go to make up virility in man; the beard, the male voice, the change in figure, and the change in disposition; and in girls there is a long period of development in the bust, in the hips, in bone and muscle, changes which take years for their proper accomplishment before the girl can be said to have grown into a woman. All this is not as a rule completed before the age of twenty. Woman’s form is not well developed before she is twenty years old; her pelvis, which has been called the laboratory of generation, has not its perfect shape until then; hence an earlier maternity is not desirable. If the demand is made on the system before that, the process of development is necessarily interfered with, and both mother and offspring suffer. Even in countries where the age of marriage is between twenty and twenty-five, where, therefore, the mother has not been weakened by early maternity, it is remarked that the strongest children are born to parents of middle age, i.e., from thirty-five to forty; this, the prime of life to the parent, is the happiest moment for the advent of her progeny.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (Address to the Hindoos).
See also end of Note XXIV., 1.
8.—“Abnormal fruits of birth ...”
Dr. John Thorburn, in his “Lecture introductory to the Summer Course on Obstetric Medicine,” Victoria University, Manchester, 1884, says:—“Let me briefly remind you of what occurs at each menstrual period. During nearly one week out of every four there occurs the characteristic phenomenon of menstruation, which in itself has some temporary impoverishing effect, though, in health, nature speedily provides the means of recuperation. Along with this we have a marked disturbance in the circulation of the pelvis, leading to alterations in the weight, conformation, and position of the uterus. We have also tissue changes occurring, not perhaps yet thoroughly understood, but leading to ruptures in the ovary, and to exfoliation of the uterine lining membrane, a kind of modified abortion, in fact. These changes in most instances are accompanied by signs of pain and discomfort, which, if they were not periodic and physiological, would be considered as symptoms of disease.”
(The italics are not in the original.) Here is certainly cogent evidence of “abnormal fruit of birth,” and the learned doctor seems to be on the verge of making the involuntary discovery. But he follows the usual professional attempt (see Note XXX., 4) to class menstruation as a physiological and not a pathological fact; as a natural, painful incident, and not an acquired painful consequence. His half-declared argument, that, because an epoch of pain is periodic it is therefore not symptomatic of disease, is a theory as unsatisfactory as novel.
Id.... Some of the facts connected with parthenogenesis, alternate generation, the impregnation of insects, &c., passed on through more than one generation, would show by analogy this class of phenomena not extranatural or unprecedented, but abnormal and capable of rectification or reduction to pristine normality or non-existence. The fact of occasional instances of absence of menstruation, yet with a perfect potentiality of child-bearing, indicates this latter possibility. That the male being did not correspondingly suffer in personal physiological sequence is explicable on the ground that the masculine bodily function of parentage cannot be subjected to equal forced sexual abuse; though in the male sex also there is indication that excess may leave hereditary functional trace. And that, again, a somewhat analogous physical abnormality may be induced by man in other animals, compare the intelligent words of George Eliot in her poem, “A Minor Prophet”:—
“... milkmaids who drew milk from cows,
With udders kept abnormal for that end.”
In confirmation of which see “Report of the Committee, consisting of Mr. E. Bidwell, Professor Boyd Dawkins, and others, appointed for the purpose of preparing a Report on the Herds of Wild Cattle in Chartley Park, and other parks in Great Britain.” The Committee state, concerning a herd of wild cattle at Somerford Park, near Congleton, of which herd “the cows are all regularly milked,” that “The udders of the cows here are as large as in ordinary domestic cows, which is not the case in the herds which are not milked.”—(“Report of the British Association,” 1887, p. 141.)