1.—“_Action repeated tends to rhythmic course_.”
“Other and wider muscular actions, partly internal and partly external,
also take place in a rhythmical manner in relation with systemic
conditions. The motions of the diaphragm and of the thoracic and
abdominal walls, in connection with respiration, belong to this
category. These movements, though in the main independent of will, are
capable of being very considerably modified thereby, and while they are
most frequently unheeded, they have a very recognisable accompaniment of
feeling when attention is distinctly turned to them.... The contraction
of oviducts or of the womb, as well as the movements concerned in
respiration, also had their beginnings in forms of life whose advent is
now buried in the immeasurable past.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as
an Organ of Mind,” p. 220).
4.—“_Till habit bred hereditary trace_.”
“Let it be granted that the more frequently psychical states occur in a
certain order, the stronger becomes their tendency to cohere in that
order, until they at last become inseparable; let it be granted that
this tendency is, in however slight a degree, inherited, so that if the
experiences remain the same, each successive generation bequeaths a
somewhat increased tendency, and it follows that, in cases like the one
described, there must eventually result an automatic connection of
nervous actions, corresponding to the external relations perpetually
experienced. Similarly, if from some change in the environment of any
species its members are frequently brought in contact with a relation
having terms a little more involved; if the organisation of the species
is so far developed as to be impressible by these terms in close
succession, then an inner relation corresponding to this new outer
relation will gradually be formed, and will, in the end, become organic.
And so on in subsequent stages of progress.”—Herbert Spencer
(“Principles of Psychology,” Vol. I., p. 439).
_Id._... “I have described the manner in which the hereditary tendencies
and instincts arise from habit, induced in the nervous cellules by a
sufficient repetition of the same acts.”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of
Marriage,” Chap. I.).
_Id._... “Ainsi l’évacuation menstruelle une fois introduite dans
l’espèce, se sera communiquée par une filiation non interrompue; de
sorte qu’on peut dire qu’une femme a maintenant des règles, par la seule
raison que sa mère les a eues, comme elle aurait été phthisique peut
être, si sa mère l’eût été; il y a plus, elle peut être sujette au flux
menstruel, même quoique la cause primitive qui introduisit ce besoin ne
subsiste plus en elle.”—Roussel (“Système de la Femme,” p. 134).
_Id._... “Il y a eu des auteurs qui ne voulaient pas considérer la
menstruation comme une fonction inhérente à la nature de la femme, mais
comme une fonction acquise, continuant par l’habitude.”—Raciborski
(“Traité de la Menstruation,” p. 17).
_Id._... “The ‘set’ of mind, as Professor Tyndall well calls it,
whether, as he says, ‘impressed upon the molecules of the brain,’ or
conveyed in any other way, is quite as much a human as an animal
phenomenon. Perhaps the greater part of those qualities which we call
the characteristics of race are nothing else but the ‘set’ of the minds
of men transmitted from generation to generation, stronger and more
marked when the deeds are repeated, weaker and fainter as they fall into
disuse.... Tyndall says: ‘No mother can wash or suckle her baby without
having a “set” towards washing and suckling impressed upon the molecules
of her brain, and this set, according to the laws of hereditary
transmission, is passed on to her daughter. Not only, therefore, does
the woman at the present day suffer deflection from intellectual
pursuits through her proper motherly instincts, but inherited
proclivities act upon her mind like a multiplying galvanometer, to
augment indefinitely the amount of the deflection. _Tendency_ is
immanent even in spinsters, to warp them from intellect to baby-love.’
(Essay: “Odds and Ends of Alpine Life.”) Thus, if we could, by preaching
our pet ideal, or in any other way induce one generation of women to
turn to a new pursuit, we should have accomplished a step towards
bending all future womanhood in the same direction.”—Frances Power Cobbe
(Essay: “The Final Cause of Woman”).
See also Note XXVI., 7.
6.—“... _e’en the virgin_ ...”
An experienced gynæcologist writes:—“For want of proper information in
this matter, many a frightened girl has resorted to every conceivable
device to check what she supposed to be an unnatural and dangerous
hæmorrhage, and thereby inaugurated menstrual derangements which have
prematurely terminated her life, or enfeebled her womanhood. I have been
consulted by women of all ages, who frankly attributed their physical
infirmities to the fact of their having applied ice, or made other cold
applications locally, in their frantic endeavours to arrest the first
menstrual flow.”
What general practitioner has not met with analogous instances in the
circle of his own patients?
7.—“... _ere fit_ ...”
“The physician, whose duty is not only to heal the sick, but also to
prevent disease and to improve the race, and hence who must be a teacher
of men and women, should teach sound doctrine in regard to the injurious
results of precocious marriage. Mothers especially ought to be taught,
though some have learned the lesson by their own sad experience, that
puberty and nubility are not equivalent terms, but stand for periods of
life usually separated by some years; the one indicates capability, the
other fitness, for reproduction.”—Parvin (“Obstetrics,” p. 91).
_Id._... “_The general maturity of the whole frame_ is the true
indication that the individual, whether male or female, has reached a
fit age to reproduce the species. It is not one small and unimportant
symptom by which this question must be judged. Many things go to make up
virility in man; the beard, the male voice, the change in figure, and
the change in disposition; and in girls there is a long period of
development in the bust, in the hips, in bone and muscle, changes which
take years for their proper accomplishment before the girl can be said
to have grown into a woman. All this is not as a rule completed before
the age of twenty. Woman’s form is not well developed before she is
twenty years old; her pelvis, which has been called the laboratory of
generation, has not its perfect shape until then; hence an earlier
maternity is not desirable. If the demand is made on the system before
that, the process of development is necessarily interfered with, and
both mother and offspring suffer. Even in countries where the age of
marriage is between twenty and twenty-five, where, therefore, the mother
has not been weakened by early maternity, it is remarked that the
strongest children are born to parents of middle age, _i.e._, from
thirty-five to forty; this, the prime of life to the parent, is the
happiest moment for the advent of her progeny.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson,
M.D. (Address to the Hindoos).
See also end of Note XXIV., 1.
8.—“_Abnormal fruits of birth_ ...”
Dr. John Thorburn, in his “Lecture introductory to the Summer Course on
Obstetric Medicine,” Victoria University, Manchester, 1884, says:—“Let
me briefly remind you of what occurs at each menstrual period. During
nearly one week out of every four there occurs the characteristic
phenomenon of menstruation, which in itself has some temporary
_impoverishing effect_, though, in health, nature speedily provides the
means of recuperation. Along with this we have a marked disturbance in
the circulation of the pelvis, leading to alterations in the weight,
conformation, and position of the _uterus_. We have also tissue changes
occurring, _not perhaps yet thoroughly understood_, but leading to
ruptures in the ovary, and to exfoliation of the uterine lining
membrane, _a kind of modified abortion, in fact_. These changes in most
instances are accompanied by signs of pain and discomfort, which, if
they were not periodic and physiological, would be considered as
symptoms of disease.”
(The italics are not in the original.) Here is certainly cogent evidence
of “abnormal fruit of birth,” and the learned doctor seems to be on the
verge of making the involuntary discovery. But he follows the usual
professional attempt (see Note XXX., 4) to class menstruation as a
physiological and not a pathological fact; as a natural, painful
incident, and not an acquired painful consequence. His half-declared
argument, that, because an epoch of pain is periodic it is therefore not
symptomatic of disease, is a theory as unsatisfactory as novel.
_Id._... Some of the facts connected with parthenogenesis, alternate
generation, the impregnation of insects, &c., passed on through more
than one generation, would show by analogy this class of phenomena not
extranatural or unprecedented, but abnormal and capable of rectification
or reduction to pristine normality or non-existence. The fact of
occasional instances of absence of menstruation, yet with a perfect
potentiality of child-bearing, indicates this latter possibility. That
the male being did not correspondingly suffer in personal physiological
sequence is explicable on the ground that the masculine bodily function
of parentage cannot be subjected to equal forced sexual abuse; though in
the male sex also there is indication that excess may leave hereditary
functional trace. And that, again, a somewhat analogous physical
abnormality may be induced by man in other animals, compare the
intelligent words of George Eliot in her poem, “A Minor Prophet”:—
“... milkmaids who drew milk from cows,
With udders kept abnormal for that end.”
In confirmation of which see “Report of the Committee, consisting of Mr.
E. Bidwell, Professor Boyd Dawkins, and others, appointed for the
purpose of preparing a Report on the Herds of Wild Cattle in Chartley
Park, and other parks in Great Britain.” The Committee state, concerning
a herd of wild cattle at Somerford Park, near Congleton, of which herd
“the cows are all regularly milked,” that “The udders of the cows here
are as large as in ordinary domestic cows, which is not the case in the
herds which are not milked.”—(“Report of the British Association,” 1887,
p. 141.)