Functional periodicity : an experimental study of the mental and motor abilities of women during menstruation / by Leta Hollingworth.

  • Hollingworth, Leta Stetter, 1886-1939.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Functional periodicity : an experimental study of the mental and motor abilities of women during menstruation / by Leta Hollingworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    Furthermore, tlie various scientific writers who have expressed themselves on this subject, even when contemporaneous, are far from uniform in statement. (See chapter on Previous Lit- erature.) Hall,* for instance, places the period of maximum efficiency and vitality after the hemorrhage; Van Ott,° before it. Jacobi*' concludes that there is no reason why normal women should rest during menstruation ; Clarke urgently insists that the whole educational schedule of women must be regulated by it. Clouston^ declares that the influence of menstruation is marked and universal among insane patients; Nacke denies that there is a pronounced effect on the insane, due to menstruation, and is inclined to doubt its influence altogether. Thus the disparity between accepted dogma and the results of scientific method is, perhaps, not so surprising after all. The remarks made by J. Stuart Mill^ in 1867 are still about as true as they then were: Even the preliminary knowledge, what the differences between the sexes now are, apart from all question as to how they are made what they are, is still in the crudest and most incomplete state. Medical practitioners and physiologists have ascertained to some extent the dif- ferences in bodily constitution; and this is an important element to the psychologist; but hardly any medical practitioner is a psychologist. Re- specting the mental characteristics of women, their observations are of ■* G. S. Hall, op. cit., p. 492. ^ Van Ott, op. cit., p. 505. * M. P. Jacobi, op. cit., p. 227. ' E. H .Clarke, Sex in Education, 1873, p. 45. ^ Clouston (see Ellis, op. cit., p. 293). The melancholies are more depressed, the maniacal more restless, the delusional more under the influence of their delusions in their con- duct; those subject to hallucinations have them more intensely, the im- pulsive cases are more uncontrollable, the cases of stupor more stupid, and the demented tend to be excited. ^ P. Nacke, Die Menstruation und ihre Einfluss bei Chroniken Psy- chosen. Arch. f. Psychiat, 1896, Vol. 28, No. i, pp. 188-9. Nur f iir wenige Fiille, meine ich, konnte man eine eventuelle Ab- hangigkeit einer psychischen Aenderung von dem Menstruationsvorgange selbst annehmen, das sind namlich die Falle von schwerer Dysmenorrhoe Schwerlich wird sich die Lebenscurve nur auf die Zeit der Gesch- lechtsreife beziehen; sie fangt wahrschienlich mit der Geburt an, um erst mit dem Tode aufzuhoren, doch mit einem Maximum wahrend der Geschlechtsreife. Sie scheint auch beim Manne zu existieren, und ist vielleicht gar ein allgemeines biologisches Gesetz der gesammten organ- ischen Welt. . . . Auf diesem ganzen Gebiete giebt es also noch unendlich viele Probleme zu losen, da wir erst am Anfange der diesbeziig- lichen Studien stehen. i<'J. Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, 1867, p. 42.