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

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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$Max Runge,^ a g\'necologist of Gottingen, writes as follows: Every twenty-eight days in the case of matured woman, a process takes place which is called menstruation. Its essential manifestations are local, but the general mental and physical condition of the woman, as all physicians know, almost always also suffers a change, distinct though subject to large individual differences, which may best be described as irritable weakness. Physiological experiments teach that the organic functions of woman are rhythmical. Temperature, blood pressure, motor power, and other functions are subject to a cycle, which in general rises before the beginning of menstruation and declines immediately before and with its beginning. Only the excitability of the nervous system and caloric radiation reach a climax with menstruation itself. An experienced observer will be able to notice many interesting phases of the mental changes in woman at menstruation. Even though scien- tific experiments are as yet lacking, it may nevertheless be stated that a very great number of healthy women are mentally different during menstruation, especially on the first and second days. Thus woman needs protection during menstruation. All demands on her strength must be remitted. Every month for several days she is enfeebled, if not downright ill. Psychiatrists lay much stress on the significance of this func- tion in nervous diseases. In clinical pictures it figures frequently. Clouston writes, It has a psychology of its own, of which the main features are a slight irritability or tendency toward lack of mental inhibition just before the process commences each month, a slight diminution of energy or tendency to mental paralysis and depression during the first day or two of its continuance, and a very considerable excess of energizing power and excitation of feeling during the first week or ten days after it has entirely ceased. Marion'^ in this connection says, It will suffice to say with the same author [Dr. Sicard*] that the mental condition of woman, under the influence of functional disturbances, may vary from simple malaise, from simple moodiness, to the complete loss of reason. 5 Max Runge, Das Weib in s. Geschlechtliche Eigenart, 1900, p. 3. ^ Clouston, ^Iental Diseases, 1887, p. 480. ■^ H. Marion, o/>. cit., p. 58. II suffrait de dire avec le meme auteur (Dr. Sicard)^—que I'etat mental de la femme, sous I'empire de troubles fonctionelles, pent varier du simple malaise, de la simple inquietude de I'ame jusqu'a I'alienation, a la perte complete de la raison, en modifiant la moralite des actes depuis la simple attenuation jusqu'a I'irresponsabilite absolue! 8 Dr. S. Icard is no doubt here intended, since this is a statement made by that author in his work on La Femme Pendant la Periode Men- struelle (See Bibliography.)$