The literature upon this topic falls into several classes, i. Anthropological, treating of the sexual life of primitive people, like Ploss, and shading down to Jennings, Furlong, and writers on phallicism. That traces of the latter — if, as is often assumed, it was general — have been carefully scored away, makes the subject tempting to mystics who see its symbols in everything upright or circular. Despite the extravagances of this school, it must be admitted that their claims for the per- vasiveness and wide and fantastic irradiations of sex symbolism have some support, or at least analogy, in the prurient fancy of a certain stage and class of youth to-day whose sensitiveness is so hypertrophied that they see indecent allusions in almost every form, act, and word. 2. The studies of abnormal phenomena, like those of Tarnowsky, Kraflft-Ebing, Ellis, etc. Here, as always, morbid are often normal phenomena magnified, and from the literature of this class that should be unread save by the expert, I draw this momentous inference, that I have nowhere found stated, viz., that there is almost no feature, article of dress, attitude, act, or even animal or perhaps object in nature, that may not have to some morbid soul specialized erogenic and erethic power. If this be true even to any considerable extent, it shows that the eroticism may be cut loose from its natural excitants and be provoked by even remote accessories, and suggests the profoundly significant con- clusion that esthetic pleasure in general is in considerable part of sexual origin.
^ The Boys' Venereal Peril. Chicago, 1903, p. 35. See also Harvard: Monograph, The Venereal Peril; and Fournier's address to sons on attaining their eighteenth year.
SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT 47' and also that love is not only the strongest but also the most plastic of all the sen- timents, and if not trained to the very highest possible objects may grovel to the lowest. 3. Studies of normal sexual psychology, like those of Finck, Scott, Gu- lick, Bell, and also Ellis. 4. The vast biological literature. 5. That of warning, like Storer, Howe, M. W. Allen, Sperry, Blackwell, Warren, Richmond, Stall, Wilcox, Wilder, and Morley. Most of these are too long; however, some, written by well-intentioned religious people, have had wide sale and brought their authors great gain, and perhaps on the whole they do good. Even these groups do not include works like Ch. Fere, Auvard, Marwedel, Dtickelmann, Gamble, Dantec, Bauer, Rowe, and, perhaps best of all, Ch. Wagner's Youth.
CHAPTER VII PERIODICITY Periodicity in animals — Relation to seasons and length of life — Age of first men- struation and its relations to climate and social status — Precocity — Ideas and practises among savages — Psychic changes during the lunar month — Theories of the nature of menstruation — Wave theories — Irradiation in other parts — Changes in the blood, secretions, pulse, etc, — Psychic states in normal and morbid girls — Menstrual irregularities of excess and defect — Relation to crime and insanity — Cases — Relations to tide and moon — Corresponding rhythms in men — Present transitional stage of g)'necology — Needs and regimen — Impor- tance for psychology — Lessons for education.
Periods of rut or oestrus are frequent and regular in many of the higher animals: ^ monkey, mare, buffalo, zebra, hippo- potamus, four weeks; sow, fifteen to eighteen days; sheep, two weeks; dog, nine to ten days. In the latter, ac- cording to Ketterer, mucous congestion, rupture, extravasa- tion and degeneration of tissues, very like those processes in the human female, occur. In wild animals these periods are seasonal, usually occurring in the spring, and are in abeyance during the rest of the year. In extremely northern latitudes the return of long days and warm weather is marked by an outburst of venery, which becomes almost a rage, in which all the glands share, although during the cold arctic night this function is almost suspended. Traces of the old seasonal rhythm are still seen in women by tables show- ing a greater frequency of conceptions in May and June, and by the fact that statistics attest that the farther south we go the earlier the maximum of spring impregnations occur. Domes- tication with the increased regularity and abundance of food and protection has increased the frequency of these periods. Civilization has had a similar effect in rendering them more pronounced among women. Menstrual phenomena seem to be more and more marked as we pass up the scale. Lee says '' it * See the valuable presentation of this subject by F. S. Lee in the Am. Text- Book of Physiology, p. 898 ft seq., axid passim.
PERIODICITY is wholly probable that the menstrual periods of women are homologous of the frequent reproductive periods of the lower forms." Similarly, I think, we may interpret the vast number of ova and spermatozoa to be a survival in man of the enormous fecundity of lower species.
Heape * has studied with unusual care the menstruation and ovula- tion of a number of specimens, each of two species of monkey, the Macacus rhesus and the Semopithecus entellus. Their periods are marked by congestion of the skin of the abdomen, legs and tail, nipples, vulva, and face, together with regular flow of blood, detritus, etc. These animals have a definite breeding season, differing in different parts of India, but in the non-breeding season ovulation does not occur with menstruation, but is practically suspended. In seventeen cases there was no sign of a recent rupture of a follicle, although the other phenomena occurred. Heape thinks the human species once had a breeding season, and that traces of this remain in those periods of the female unfavorable to conception, and that at least ovulation is independent of the menses and may be suspended, the latter remaining regular as usual with no external sign that the most essential part of the function has ceased. It is remarkable that there was no trace of blood clot in the ruptured follicle of monkeys, although this is so distinct in the human female. In these species the periods occurred each month, and lasted about four days; and although breeding occasionally occurred at all seasons, spring had the marked preference, so that the time of gestation does not vary greatly from that of the human species. These valuable and detailed studies were chiefly histological, and shed no light on the phenomena attending the first onset of the period, but show that not only in the tolerable degree of regularity Animal.
Dormouse Guinea-pig Lop rabbit Cat Goat P"ox English cattle. Large dogs...Horses Hog Hippopotamus Lion Arab horse Camel Elephant Age of adolescence.
3 months 7 months 8 months I year I year and 3 months.
1 year and 6 months.
2 years 2 years 4 years and 6 months, 5 years 5 years 6 years 8 years 8 years 30 years Length of life.
8 years. 12 years. 12 years. 18 years. 30 years. 30 years. 30 years. 40 years. 40 years.
1 Proceedings of the Royal Society, vols, liv, Iviii, Ix, 1890, 1894, 1896, and Philos. Trans., vol. clxxxv.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE found here, but also in the nature of the discharge and the dangers attending the removal to cold climates, and particularly in all the details of the internal processes, analogies to man vastly predominate over differences. So far as it marks the advent of possible parent- hood, the table Chamberlain computes (The Child, 1900, p. 8) is suggestive. (See preceding page.)
In cows it occurs every three weeks; in the hippopotamus, the guenon, and many apes, it is monthly. A baboon averaged six weeks, but the intervals were more frequent in late autumn and winter than in summer. In the chimpanzee, Keith says it occurs every twenty- three to twenty- four days, but in most animals it frequently undergoes great seasonal variation.
The first onset of menstruation in the human female is very varied. Sometimes it is slight and so gradual as to be almost unobserved, and from the first period is regular. In other cases it is preceded by nervousness, febrile symptoms, and pain. The interval may be at first two or three months, and a year or two passes before regularity is established. Sometimes peri- odic pain and perhaps leucorrhoea precede the first flow, and the latter when it arrives is copious, and perhaps with cramps, hysteria, chlorosis, etc. These cases are not so rare as to be necessarily pathological.^ I. Age determinations show a wide range of both individ- ual and racial variations. Basset found the average age of first menstruation in 4,815 cases in northern Europe sixteen years and three months; for 1,655 cases in southern and Oriental lands, twelve years and seven months; and for 10,254 cases in temperate lands, fifteen years. In 261 Italian girls, Marro found first period in 61 cases at the age of 14, 54 at 15, 40 at 16, 34 at 13, 29 at 16, 16 at 12, 12 at 18, etc. From many other observations of rather small numbers he thinks the above distribution of age about normal. Pagliani showed that in country girls the first menstruation is more likely to occur in the spring than at other seasons.
Other comprehensive studies ^ are as follows: Meyer, Germany. 6,000 observations.
Rich. Poor.
Kakuskine, Russia.
Rich. Poor Meyer, Germany, 6,000 observations.
City Country.
Kakuskine, Russia.
City Country ^ L. Meyer: Der Menst. Process, Stuttgart, 1890, p. 16 et seq.
* La Femme Criminelle, par Lombroso et Ferrero, Paris, 1896. p. 37 et seq.
PERIODICITY 475 In Hanover 2,129 observations showed for cities an aver- age age of 16.76 and for the country 17.03. Tarnowski gives the average age of 5,000 cases in Russia as 16 years; Haeker in Munich found it 16 to 17; Boismont in Paris found it 14 to 15, or averaging 14.4. In Parma, Calderini {^2yj cases) found it most frequent at 15, next at 14, then 16 and 13. Pagliani found 280 cases at 14, 219 at 15, 205 at 13, 1 16 at 12, 89 at 16, 55 at 17, 14 at 18, 7 at 11, and 20 at 10. According to Du- Bois and Payot, in warm cHmates the age is from 11 to 14; in temperate cHmates from 13 to 16; and in cold cHmates from 15 to 18. In Italy half of those who menstruate at 13 are blondes, and only one-fifth brunettes.
At twelve American institutions reporting to the Massa- chusetts Labor Bureau and representing 1,290 girls, the aver- age age of menstruation was 13.62. Krieger, in BerHn, report- ing on 6,550 cases, places this period at the beginning of the fifteenth year. Kennedy, basing on 225 girls in the United States, places it at 13.7. A. F. Currier reports 14.5 years as the average age of 200 cases. Lancaster found 78 American girls averaging 13.6. Tuckerman, in New York city, found 81 cases averaging from 14 to 15. In Vienna, Scukits places it at 15 years 8^ months. Whitehead fixes upon 16 in England, Weber 14 J. Tilt thinks it is a little over 13 in hot countries, over 14 in temperate, and over 15 in cold climates. Chadwick fixes the average age at 14^ in U. S. A., light-haired preceding dark-haired girls from one to two years.
One of the most instructive studies of the age of first men- struation is that of Lullies,^ based on 3,000 Prussian girls. Although more cases occur at fifteen than any other year, or W of all, the average age obtained by dividing the sum of the ages of all by the number of cases gives about sixteen. Nearly all such tables show that large girls menstruate earlier than those of small or average size. Lullies thinks, in opposi- tion to most earlier observers, that the strong begin this function later than the weak. Nearly all agree that blondes precede brunettes. Thus, first of all, come large weak blondes, and last come the middle- or small-sized strong brunettes. Despite sev- * Ueber die Zeit des Eintritts der Mens., nach Angabe von 3,000 Schwangerern, etc. Thesis, Konigsburg, 1886.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE eral tables to the contrary, Lullies thinks country girls are at least six months later than city girls. In eighty-three per cent of all the cases the periods were regularly established at once, and in seventeen they were irregular for a time. The aver- age duration of the flow of those in whom it occurred regularly was 4.79 days. Seven and especially eight days are unusually frequent.
Lullies' s Table for Prussia. Year.
Per cent of all.
or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or Dr. Joubert^ thinks, with Playfair, that the influence of climate on menstruation has been exaggerated, and constructs a table to show that racial differences are slight if other condi- tions are similar. Precocity, he thinks, is due to too early knowledge and sexual excitement, and he lays great stress on the contrast between the ignorance in which European girls are raised and the utter want of domestic privacy in the East. Everything is seen and known in India by girls at eight or ten, and the sexual excitement to which child-brides are subjected is a potent factor. Weber lays stress upon race more than climate. Krieger thinks the mode of life has less influence than altitude above the sea. Mosca thinks that it is earlier in higher classes, latest in peasants, and intermediate among clergy, merchants, etc. Weber suggests that students, actresses, and teachers report earliest ages.
* The Supposed Influence of Tropical Climate on Menstruation: C. H. Joubert Indian Med. Gazette, Calcutta, April, 1895, p. 129.
PERIODICITY Raciborski ^ compiled with indefatigable industry the fol- lowing table on the relation of the average temperature and of latitude to puberty: Place.
So. Asia Corfu Toulon Montpellier Florence Marseilles Nimes Madrid Lyons Sables d'Olonne Rouen London Paris Vienna Strassburg Gottingen Manchester.
Copenhagen Warsaw Berlin Stockholm Christiania Kazan Lapland Temperature C.
Beginning of Menstruation.
In a late paper Engelmann reaches remarkable conclusions concerning the age of first menstruation on the Western conti- nent. From Matthews's study of sub-arctic Indians, and from his and others' data for Eskimos (12.6) and Robertson's study of plantation negroes in Jamaica and Barbados (15.6), etc., he infers " an early puberty at the pole and retarded de- velopment near the equator, conditions diametrically opposed to what has hitherto been accepted." ^ He also finds American women " very much more precocious than the women of other continents in the same region of the temperate zone, more pre- cocious than the peoples from whom they have sprung, an average of 14 on this continent and 15.5 in Europe." The native American is more precocious than the American born * Traits de la Menstruation, 1868, p. 200.
' The Age of First Menstruation in the North American Continent. Trans, of the Am. Gyn. Soc, 1901.
47 8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE of foreign parents, and only one year behind his average for southern cH mates. Climate here has practically no influence; race, very little. This is due chiefly to mentality and nerve stimulation, which also hastens the development of the red and black races. Here, too, he finds the difference between the development of girls of the refined and those of the laboring classes to average less than half a year, so that this change takes place here nearer the same age in all classes, and also there is found to be less individual difference. One of Engel- mann's curves gives American girls at 14, Irish at 15, and Ger- man at 16. The influence of social state and race, which seems established at least in Europe, often appears on this continent to be overridden by that of nerve strain. The milieu stimulates " the psychic phenomena reverberating clearly in the genital plexus," suggesting that the influence of environment is greater in this respect than that of heredity. If this be so, a cold cli- mate must be ranked with, and not against, mentality as a cause of acceleration, and it would seem to follow that education in a temperate or subarctic zone is more productive of precocity than in the south, and if general nervous stimulus is the cause, the same schooling is more dangerous in the city than in the country.
In rare cases this function may be very premature. Dr. Peeples ^ reports a case of a primipara where the child was beautiful, well grown, and in the best of health, with breasts and reproductive organs remarkably well developed, having a full and proficiently studied menstruation at the age of five days. Dr. I. W. Irons ^ reports a girl seven days old who menstruated from December to August, the period during which it was under observation, regularly. Dr. P. E. Plumb ' deports a healthy girl who began to menstruate at the age of six weeks and continued to do so every six weeks for ten months, or up to the date of this report. Dr. Howe * de- scribes a case where menstruation began at three, continued regularly for six periods, then stopped for eight months and * Dr. D. L, Peeples: New York Med. Jour., March 30, 1885.
* Brit. Med. Jour., part i, vol. ii, 1896, p. 653.
PERIODICITY 479 resumed. The child was otherwise normal, but looked four or five years older, and had marked sexual development of a child still older. Dr. Price ^ describes a remarkable case of a girl of six years and seven months who was mature apparently in every respect. Some features of puberty were observed at eighteen months — pubic and axillary hair — and menstruation occurred early in the fourth year. In reporting a case of men- strual precocity at the age of four years and nine months. Dr. Seuvre ^ takes occasion to gather a few facts from literature and from his own observations to refute the general impression that precocity usually goes with early cessation of the powers of maternity. His own view is, that the earlier the sex func- tion develops in girls the later it continues and the greater the probability of numerous progeny. Often at least such persons continue to bear children to an advanced age. Similar cases could easily be greatly multiplied.
Instead of being seen to be the inflorescence of the human plant, like its analogues, the blossoms and ripeness of the vege- table and rut in the animal world, both its first and its subse- quent appearance have been regarded with great awe and generally with aversion. Among some primitive races ^ women wear a special costume, badge, or symbol at the first, and often at subsequent monthly periods. The forms and ceremonies that mark the advent of this sign of maturity are very diverse, and often initiations are severe and are intended to drive out the demon of uncleanness. Tattooing, isolation, many local operations, fasting, close confinement, nauseous food, etc., show that these phenomena have generally seemed to primitive hygiene not only mysterious, but that, analogous though it seems to heat in animals when the male is especially attracted, it has had a repellent effect upon man. The old idea was that this function was a periodic purification to rid the body and soul of a previous contamination of original sin. Woman's reserve, too, is increased rather than diminished at these periods, and many superstitions of infection and contagion augment this mutual withdrawal and perhaps taboo. Every- ' New Orleans Med. and Surg. Jour., August, 1896, p. 104. « Union Med. de Nord. Est., January 30, 1897.
480 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE thing known upon this subject seems to indicate that these re- pellent tendencies are very ancient as well as universal, so that it is impossible to determine how much is due to the accumu- lated effects of immemorial usage, and whether, e. g., the de- pression and perhaps even the psychic and physical pains may be inherited effects of the ages of ostracism and cruelty suffered at these times. What we are coming to know from recent studies of hysteria of its metamorphic nature, and the readiness with which psychalgia passes to somatalgia, and even vice versa, inclines the writer to the view that in the psycho-sensory changes of the lunar months modern women recapitulate atavis- tically the effect of ages of such error and misuse, and that few, if any, topics in the whole biopsychic field are as interesting, tantalizingly baffling though they are, for all who have fully adopted the genetic standpoint, as the phenomena and usages that center about the menstnim virginis primum and the sub- sequent catamenia with the attendant magic, supe^^stitions, usages, surprises, and all that early writers comprised under the term parthenologia.
II. Precisely what menstruation is, is not yet very well known. It was not long ago held that in the human female it can not be the homologue of oestrus in animals, because women then have no desire, and men are repelled. Desire has been held to be relieved by the flow, which Wiltshire held was more san- guineous the higher the animal. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell says the flow itself is a competent relief of sex feeling, and Icard thought that thus virginity was safeguarded. Havelock Ellis ^ boldly champions the view that normally the desire and flow coincide in time, and has gathered statements of women con- firming this view. The facts on which the aversion theory rests, he thinks, are superposed by convention upon and belie nature. If ardor is not present, it may be due to languor pro- duced by the process, conformity to custom, or to fear of arous- ing disgust in man, who superstitiously thinks it dangerous for him or for the offspring. Here again, if this view is correct.
^ In his valuable chapter on Sexual Periodicity, in his Psychology of Sex, 1900, p. 53 ei seq. See also Menstruation et Fdcondation Physiologique et Patho- logique. A. Auvard, Paris, 1895.
PERIODICITY 481 our race has rebelled against its own nature, and in this instance the medieval Church aided the revolt. Indeed, just as savages magnify, but civilized races hide and minimize, the organs as centers of attraction, as Moll says has occurred in secondary sex qualities like the beard, so it may be menstruation is now magnified in importance by the attention it receives, and in an age that considers it less it will lapse to a less regarded and therefore normal place. In very rare cases, apparently normal (Ellis, p. 54), it may all be absent.
Raciborski's careful and still valuable work ^ on puberty in girls, that was stimulated by a prize offered by the Royal Acad- emy for the best memoir on the physiology of menstruation and its relation to diseases, and Bouchet's treatise ^ upon this subject, marked the first advance that had been made since Aristotle and Pliny. Considering the methods at his disposal, Raciborski's contributions to the subject were remarkable and almost epoch-making. He investigated the influence of cli- mate, temperament, race, urged the very great impressionability of the sex organs to music, the development of the Graafian follicles, the action of different emmenagogues, and treated Malthusianism also with great sagacity, the improvement of public morality by early marriage, senescence, superfoetation, hygiene, etc. In 1852 Tilt found that of 1,000 girls twenty- five per cent were totally unprepared. Many were frightened, thought themselves wounded, washed in cold water, etc. La- borde^ assumed that woman is what she is by virtue of the uterus, thought menstruation a peculiar erectile process, won- dered that man did not share it, and sought to trace a rapport between the diseases of puberty and those most liable to occur at the menopause.
Bassat,* in his comprehensive thesis, to which a valuable and copious bibliography is appended, defines puberty in wom- an not as the period of the development of pubic hair, as the etymology of the word suggests, but as the age of the growth which accompanies the maturation and escape of the ' Quelques Considerations sur la Pubert^ chez la Femme et sur la Menopause. Th^se, Paris, i860.
* Etude sur la Puberty chez la Femme. Montpellier, 1867, p. 134. 33 482 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE ovule, and his motto is, " The whole woman is in the ovaries." The girl ceases the play of a child, seeks solitude and indulges in reverie and contemplation, is joyous and sad by turns. A new timidity and modesty appears; she seeks strong and more special friendships with her companions, or would forget all else in a more ardent love of her mother. These, however, do not satisfy her, and she is joyous and sad by turns. The other sex seems more beautiful and attractive, and yet perhaps there is a new shyness in the presence of young men. Increased sensibility, more blushing, vague desires, emptiness of heart, and sometimes a disposition to follow and perhaps brood on the changes which occur in body and soul with introspection, curiosity, and perhaps awe, are noted. There are often ob- scure symptoms of disease of mind and body, which threaten, but only in a minority of cases become overt, and nature usually is able to slowly establish a normal rhythm between plethora and anemia on which the hygienic and moral future depend. Each sense is more acute, the imagination more lively, reveries more frequent. In dress she blossoms into colors, a new moral hygiene is slowly added, more manifold exercises are needed, and increased rest in sleep, for there is great feebleness at this plastic age. This paper shows how far knowledge of this sub- ject had progressed before what may be called the modern period.