The diseases which form the basis of the statements in this article are as follows: leucorrhea, displacements, or malpositions of the internal organs; lacerations, ulcers, tumors, sexual incompetency, and the venereal complications.
It is not possible or desirable to tabulate the symptoms which result from these conditions. They would not convey to the average individual a just picture or an intelligent summary of the life of a victim of these ailments. An actual description of the life of a patient will be more effective because it will depict the incidental domestic atmosphere in which most of these patients live.
The Beginning of Female Disease.—When a woman first begins to feel the effects of so-called "female weakness" she is conscious of not feeling "fit." She wonders what the matter is. She may not have actual pain at this time, simply the consciousness that "she is not what she used to be." Her work seems harder and more tedious, she worries without cause, she begins the day with less energy and ambition than she used to, her disposition is more uneven, more irritable and she tires easier and is more willing to retire earlier than formerly. After a time she has more or less undefined pains. It may be an occasional headache, or backache, or she may have various severe neuralgic twinges. She gets nervous and moody; her appetite is not good and she is troubled with constipation. A little later, the general condition growing worse, her nervous system suffers most. So she drifts into neurasthenia and has fits of crying and periods of melancholia. She is more irritable, more impatient, more dissatisfied with herself, her family, and her friends. She loses faith in herself, in the future, and even in her religion, and she may contemplate self-destruction.
There are thousands and thousands of just such women in the world, and the pity is that many of them are mothers. It is surely self-evident that these women must be failures as efficient factors in many ways.
NEUROPATHIC ANCESTRY[C]
From a first glance at the chart it would appear that Daniel was an accidental case of feeble-mindedness. His progenitors were, however, decidedly neuropathic. The presence of apoplexy, paralysis, alcoholism in a family should be watched for with vigilance because of their possible effect upon the nervous system of the offspring.
Parents would do well to scrutinize the man who "led a fast life" before allowing him marry their daughter. The world would be shocked if it knew how many men with disease enter into conjugal relations. David's father had syphilis. David's feeble-mindedness was probably only one of the awful results.
[C] "Feeble-mindedness; Its Causes and Consequences," Goddard, The Macmillan Company.