And Dr. Albert Moll, of Berlin, had written the year previously, that—“When the practical importance of mental influences becomes more generally recognised, physicians will be obliged to acknowledge that psychology is as important as physiology. Psychology and psychical therapeutics will be the basis of a rational treatment of neuroses. The other methods must group themselves around this; it will be the centre, and no longer a sort of Cinderella of science, which now admits only the influence of the body on the mind, and not that of the mind on the body.”—(“Hypnotism,” p. 328.) See also Note XXVIII., 5.
XXXII.
2.—“... woo the absent curse.”
Even Raciborski condemns this common error of treatment:—“... quand les jeunes filles de cette catégorie paraissent souffrantes, quel que soit le caractère des souffrances, on est disposé à les attribuer au défaut du flux menstruel, on le regrette, on l’invoque, et l’on tente tout pour le provoquer. Ces idées sont aujourd’hui encore très profondément enracinées dans le public, et sont souvent la cause des entraves au traitement rationnel proposé par les médecins.”—(Traité, &c., ed. 1868, p. 377.)
And Mrs. E. B. Duffey very sensibly says:—
“Nature ... is very easily perverted: and the girl who begins by imagining she is ill or ought to be at such times will end by being really so.” (“No Sex in Education,” Philadelphia, 1874, p. 79.)
3.—“... counter-effort ...”
“Forel and many others mention that there are certain popular methods of slightly retarding menstruation. In one town many of the young women tie something round their little finger if they wish to delay menstruation for a few days in order to go to a ball, &c. The method is generally effectual, but when faith ceases, the effect also ceases.”—Dr. Albert Moll (“Hypnotism,” p. 226).
Before quitting this special subject it may be well to remark that little more than the fringe is here indicated of an enormous mass of evidence which affords more than presumptive confirmation and support for the position here taken in the whole question of this “abnormal habit.”
4.—“... custom ...”—See Note XXIV., 6.