COMMENCEMENT OF THE MENSTRUAL DISCHARGE.
This is usually preceded by more or less disturbance of the general system. There may be a general excitement or a depression, or the two in alternation. There is often experienced a sense of weight in the loins, accompanied sometimes by a feeling of tension in the epigastrium, or pit of the stomach, with pain in different parts of the body. There is also general uneasiness, lassitude of the body, and irritableness of the temper and feelings. With these symptoms, a mucous discharge, more or less yellow, takes place. This, after a time, becomes streaked with blood; yet many experience no particular symptoms at this time, and such, doubtless, would generally be the case were the laws of life and health habitually obeyed. In general, menstruation does not become regular until after some months have elapsed from its commencement.
The health should be carefully guarded at the coming on of menstruation. Perhaps at no one period of woman’s life is attention to the laws of health more requisite than here. A little mismanagement may now lay the foundation for life-long suffering and disease.
Bathing, a full share of exercise in the open air, particular attention to diet, and, in short, all the hygienic means that can be brought to bear in keeping up a good condition of the general health, is the course to be pursued. Cheerfulness, contentment, and a pleasing frame of mind, are very desirable at this time. Severe study and unpleasant discourse, of whatever kind, should not now be undertaken.
Neither should parents be too tender of their daughters at this period. Especially should the reading of novels and books of an exciting nature, the attendance of balls, parties, theaters, etc., be avoided; and persons of whatever sex should be particularly careful to treat those of this age with the utmost kindness in every respect. One unkind look, one harsh expression, or one angry word from a parent or near friend, may be the means of affecting severely the individual’s health.
It has been a question with some, as to whether menstruation is strictly a natural function to the human system. So far as we know, it has occurred in all climates and in all periods of time. We read in the Levitical law, “If a woman have an issue of blood in her flesh, that she be put away seven days, and that whoever toucheth her shall be unclean.” The cases of Rachel and of Sarah every one may recollect. Naturalists tell us, too, that some of the monkey tribes, or species of animals nearest resembling man, have symptoms of this kind. Still there have been those who believed that this function has come upon the human race in consequence of great and long-continued physical transgressions, continued, perhaps, through ages and ages, until at length it took on the form of an apparently natural function.