The question of rest for women during menstruation / Mary Putnam Jacobi.

  • Jacobi, Mary Putnam, 1842-1906.
Date:
1878
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The question of rest for women during menstruation / Mary Putnam Jacobi. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    backache, anemic blood, often neuralgia, often dyspepsia. In these cases menstrual disturbance is often entirely absent, but at other times the milder form of spasmodic dysmenor- rhea supervenes. After passing through a period of three, four or five years in this condition, the health gradually im- proves, with apparently as little reason as it had deteriorated. We have acquired the habit of calling these cases, pseudo- pregnancies. They are sometimes observed much earlier, three or four years after leaving school or college, when attend- ance has been prolonged till twenty or twenty-one, and it is rather the fashion then, to attribute them to overwork at college. But when occurring only some time after the close of college life independent of any influence of adverse circum- stances, of local disease or hereditary predisposition, we believe they are to be explained by the lack of stimulus that should be derived from reproduction. So predominant is this necessity, that the same condition of health may be seen in the women who are married but sterile. These however, are more prone to local disease of the uterus or ovaries. While assigning to the necessity for reproduction, the predominant place in the female organism, the importance to general nutrition of the physical stimulus, derived from the exercise of the sexual functions must not certainly be overlooked. It cannot be said, that it is overlooked by the physicians who have written on diseases of women; but many arrange- ments of society in modern times, seem to have been planned on the assumption of almost the complete absence of such necessity. 3. The last effect of celibacy and sterility we have to con- sider, is that on the uterus and ovaries. In this respect while much truth has been perceived, many exaggerations and mis- statements have been uttered. Thus Barnes says, That the activities of the ovaries, uterus, and mammary glands, are intended to periodically relieve each other by the alternations