"On this point you may like to know that in all Continental engagements with female singers provision is made for suspen- sion of duty during the menstrual period, but this does not obtain in English contracts, although the impressario is in practice obliged to recognise it It would be well were this concession made universal, not only in grand opera, but in smaller lyric ventures in which the artiste sings every night in the week, and continuously for many months."
Most of these physical signs may exist in women whom we must consider to be in a state of good health, although we need not expect to find them all in the same person; to a skilled observer it is often easily possible to detect the presence of the monthly period. On the psychic side, even in good health, there is another series of phenomena There is greater impressionability greater suggestibility, and more or less diminished self-control; Burdach stated that at this time women are more under the influence of mesmerism, and there can be no doubt that at this time all the phenomena which may be termed hypnotic become more prominent in women. It is at this time, in those women who are at all predisposed, that sudden caprices, fits of ill-temper, moods of depression, outbursts of self-confession, are chiefly liable to occur. There may also be fits of jealousy.
Tilt's Uterine and Ovarian Inflammation, 1862, Chaps. i.-xiv., there is a full account of menstruation, giving facts and statistics regard- ing the various nervous and other normal characters of this function. See also the works on menstruation by Brierre de Boismont, Krieger, etc.
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The psychic condition during the menstruation period in ordinary health is well summarised by Dr. Clouston: — " It has a psychology of its own, of which the main features generally are a slight irritability or tendency toward lack of mental inhibition just before the process commences each month, a slight diminu- tion of energy or tendency to mental paralysis and depression during the first day or two of its continuance, and a very con- siderable excess of energising power and excitation of feeling during the first week or ten days after it has entirely ceased, the last phase being coincident with woman's period of highest conceptive power and keenest generative nisus." {Menial Diseases^ 1887, p. 480.) It seems to me very probable that the superstitions regarding the evil influences exercised by women at their periods on the food, etc., they prepare may be supported by an actual decreased success in such operations at this time, due merely to a physiological decrease in energy and skill.
So far I have been careful to speak only of those phenomena of the menstrual cycle which can fairly be regarded as strictly normal and physiological. It is instructive to glance at the cases in which menstrua- tion produces abnormal and diseased conditions, be- cause what we see under such conditions is simply an exaggeration of what takes place under ordinary con- ditions. There may be so high a degree of physical pain and disability that the woman is really an invalid for several days every month. All sorts of slight visceral affections, of a congestive character, may be directly due to menstruation, and recur periodically. 1 On the mental side the irritability or depression may be so pronounced as to amount to insanity. Mi- graine is a disorder common at this period; hysterical and epileptic fits often occur. 2 Erotomania, dipso- mania, and kleptomania are also specially liable to be developed at this time, and of all forms of insanity melancholia is the most liable to occur. Whenever a woman commits a deed of criminal 1 See a paper by Plicque on "Visceral Affections of Menstrual Origin," Gazette des Hdpitaux, 19th Oct. 1893.
2 Thus Dr. Fisher found that out of 60 epileptic women, in 16 the menstrual period was either the only time at which the attacks took place, or they were much increased in frequency at that time. (New York Med. News, November 1891.)
Google THE FUNCTIONAL PERIODICITY OF WOMEN. 255 violence it is extremely probable that she is at her monthly period; it is unfortunately difficult to give precise figures, as there is often neglect to ascertain this point Lombroso, however, found that out of 80 women arrested for opposition to the police, or for assault, only 9 were not at the menstrual period. 1 Legrand du Saulle found that out of 56 women detected in theft at shops in Paris, 35 were menstruat- ing, and 12 had already passed the term of sexual life. There is no doubt whatever that suicide in women is specially liable to take place at this period; Krugelstein stated that in all cases (107) of suicide in a woman he had met with, the act was committed during this period, and although this cannot be accepted as a general rule (especially when we bear in mind the frequency of suicide in old age), Esquirol, Brierre de Boismont, Coste, Moreau de Tours, R. Barnes, and many others have noted the frequency of the suicidal tendency at this period. 8 Women in prison, again, are apt to exhibit periodic outbursts of unmotived and apparently uncontrollable violence: these " breakings out," as Nicolson, Nacke, and others have observed, are especially liable to occur at the menstrual epoch. Among the insane, finally, the fact is universally recognised that during the monthly period the insane impulse becomes more marked, if, indeed, it may not appear only at that period. "The melancholies are more depressed," as Clouston puts it, "the maniacal more restless, the delusional more under the influence of their delusions in their conduct; those subject to hallucinations have them more intensely, the impulsive cases are more uncontrollable, the cases of stupor more stupid, and the demented tend to be excited." 8 These facts of 1 La Donna Delinquente, p. 373.
1 A full and careful statement of the present state of knowledge regarding the mental condition of women during the menstrual period will be found in Icard, La Fernme Pendant la Piriode Mcnstruellt % Paris, 189a Google 256 MAN AND WOMAN.
morbid psychology are very significant; they em- phasise the fact that even in the healthiest woman a worm, however harmless and unperceived, gnaws periodically at the roots of life.
We see, therefore, that instead of being an isolated and temporary process, menstruation is a continuous process, and one which permeates the whole of a woman's physical and psychic organism. A woman during her reproductive life is always menstruating, as Dr. Harry Campbell puts it, just as the moon is always changing. " Souvent femme varie," it may be said, is a physiological fact; it is not the result of wilful caprice. The fact is one of considerable import- ance, not only to the physician and the medico-legal expert, but to the man of science generally, to the sociologist, and indeed to the whole community. It is a matter of some importance that in the exact investi- gation of any fact in a woman's life or organism, we ought to know its exact position in the woman's cyclic life. If we have to investigate the comparative reaction of a man and a woman to any scientific test, we have to recognise that the woman lives on a curve, and that her exact position on the curve at a given moment may affect her superiority or infe- riority to the man. In trials of skill or strength among women (as in a swimming match, for instance) everything may depend on a woman's position in her monthly cycle; her full possession of strength, nerve, and precision will depend to some extent, even if she is in perfect health, on the time of month, and a few days sooner or later may even make it impossible for her to engage in the contest; it is needless to add that this fact opens the door to considerable intrigue. Again, whenever a woman has committed any offence of violence against the law, it is essential that the relation of the act to her monthly cycle should be ascertained as a matter of routine; it is a fact that control is physiologically lessened at the menstrual period even in health, while it is very much more Google THE FUNCTIONAL PERIODICITY OF WOMEN. 257 lessened in the neurotic and unbalanced; it must be clearly recognised that guilt also is lessened.
Google CHAPTER XII.
HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA.
THE VARIOUS PHENOMENA HERE INCLUDED UNDER THIS TERM — SOMNAMBULISM — HYPNOTISM — ECSTASY TRANCE — CATALEPSY — MAGICAL PHENOMENA — WOMEN HAVE PLAYED A LARGER PART IN NEARLY ALU DREAMS — WOMEN AS DREAMERS AMONG PRIMITIVE RACES — IN THE MIDDLE AGES — IN MODERN TIMES — RESULTS OBTAINED BY HEERWAGEN, JASTROW, AND CHILD.
HALLUCINATIONS IN THE SANE — SIDGWICK's INVESTIGA- TIONS—GREATER PREVALENCE AMONG WOMEN.
THE ACTION OF ANAESTHETICS — NITROUS OXIDE — SILK'S OBSERVATIONS — ABNORMAL ACTION UNDER ANESTHESIA OCCURS ON THE WHOLE CHIEFLY IN WOMEN.
METEOROLOGIC SENSIBILITY — SUICIDE — INSANITY — CON- CLUSION AS TO SEXUAL DIFFERENCE DOUBTFUL — PERIODICITY IN GROWTH.
NEURASTHENIA AND HYSTERIA — BOTH MORE FREQUENT IN WOMEN — DESCRIPTION OF NEURASTHENIA — DEFINI- TION OF HYSTERIA — ITS CHARACTERISTICS — SUGGESTI- BILITY — RELATIVE FREQUENCY IN THE SEXES.
RELIGIOUS HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA — NATURE OF THE PART PLAYED BY WOMEN IN RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS — SHAKERS — THEOSOPHISTS — DANCING MANIA CAMI- SARDS — MODERN HYSTERICAL RELIGIOUS EPIDEMICS — CHRISTS — SKOPTSY — HYPNOTIC RELIGIOUS PHENOMENA AMONG UNCIVILISED RACES — NATURE AND CAUSATION.
We may use the term " hypnotic phenomena " as a convenient expression to include not merely the condition of artificially-produced sleep, or hypnotism Google HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 259 in the narrow sense of the term, but all those groups of psychic phenomena which are characterised by a decreased control of the higher nervous centres, Google 260 MAN AND WOMAN.
women. Women have most easily fallen under their influence, and the chief advances in our knowledge of hypnotism have come through investigations on womea One or two enthusiasts have declared that most persons, taken at random and irrespective of sex (80 per cent according to Li£bault), are hypno- tisable. It is probably true that, with the exercise of sufficient skill and patience, the phenomena might be elicited in every one possessing a fair degree of mental health (for it is notoriously difficult to hypnotise the insane even with the exercise of very considerable skill and patience), but it remains true that, in the experience of the most skilful investigators, women more easily fall into the hypnotic condition, and exhibit the phenomena in a more marked form. In every hypnotic clinique we find women in a great majority. Thus Pitres, a chief authority, finds that even with the greatest persuasion only two-thirds of hysterical women, and only one-fifth of hysterical men, can be hypnotised. 1 Again, B£rillon, an enthu- siastic and at the same time judicious believer in hypnotic therapeutics, during 1890 and the early part of 1 89 1 (as he stated at the Berlin International Medical Congress) treated 360 patients by hypnotism; of these 265 were women, 45 were children, only 50 were men — a statement agreeing with my own recol- lections of Dr. B£rillon's clinique at about the same period. These figures do not necessarily indicate the sexual proportion of hypnotisable persons among the general population, but they at least show that a comparatively small proportion of men can be treated by hypnotism with any chance of success. It may be added that children may easily be put into the hypnotic state: Beaunis found that out of 100 children between seven and fourteen years of age, 55 are hypnotisable, and B^rillon considers that this is below the truth, as he finds that most children 1 Zefons cliniques, etc., torn. ii. p. 404.
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The hypnotic and " magical " aptitude of women is chiefly a fact of their organisation. But its development in the past has certainly been favoured by the wonder excited by the physical mystery of womanhood, to which reference was made in Chapter I. Women in savage and barbarous stages of existence are believed to have a strange influence over the whole of nature. Thus Pliny (Natural History, Book vii. c. 13) tells us that "on the approach of a woman in this state [the menstrual], meat will become sour, seeds which are touched by her become sterile, grafts wither away, garden-plants are withered up, and the fruit will fall from the tree beneath which she sits," etc. At Bordeaux and on the Rhine women must still avoid entering wine-cellars during their periods. (A. Bastian in the " Vorwort," and notes to his Inselgruppen in Oceanien, Berlin, 1883, has collected a large number of similar beliefs.) It was not only when in this state that a woman possessed this magical in- fluence; in another part of his work (Book xxviii. c. 23) Pliny writes: — " Hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightning even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her. The same, too, with all other kinds of tempestuous weather; and out at sea a storm may be lulled by a woman uncovering her body merely,. even though not menstruating at the time. At any other time, also, if a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin will fall from off the ears of corn." Many of these beliefs survive in Italy (and in other parts of the world) up to the present day; thus at Belluno, according to Bastanzi, it is customary for a priest and for a naked young girl to go (separately as a rule) early in the morning into the fields to drive away the caterpillars. (The introduction of the priest is merely an example of the way in which Christianity has sought to sanctify the Pagan rites it could not eradicate.) Similar customs may be found all over the world Thus the wonder excited by women has in the past, if not in the present, powerfully reinforced the influence they have gained through what I have here broadly termed u hypnotic phenomena."
A large part of the fascination which women possess for men lies in their liability to such hypnotic explosions as we have here to consider. It has been a mystery which men have never grown tired of contemplating, and which has left an inefface- able mark on the literature produced by men.
The mystery has been sympathetically described by Diderot, who himself combined the man's temperament and the Google HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 263 woman's, in his rhapsodical fragment Sur les Femmes: — " It is especially in the passion of love, the attack of jealousy, the transports of natural tenderness, the instincts of super- stition, the way in which they share popular epidemic emotions, that women astonish us, beautiful as Klopstock's seraphim, terrible as Milton's angels of darkness. I have seen love, jealousy, superstition, anger in women carried to heights which man ha« n#»v#»r rparhpH _. A man npvw sat af Dplnhi nn 264 MAN AND WOMAN.
they are usually delivered in a frenzied state. 1 It seems clear, however, from the description given of the emotional and other phenomena accompanying the delivery of these oracles that they are largely manifestations of hysteria. Nor, if we take savage races generally, can it be said that these phenomena are more common among women; we find them fully developed among men.
It is not until we turn to races which have reached a high degree of barbarism that we find clear evidence concerning the relative frequency of dreaming in the sexes. The old French epic cycles furnish us with interesting material for the study of this question in mediaeval Europe; and the dreams of the Arthurian and Karolian epics have been carefully studied by Mentz. 8 Dreams are represented throughout these cycles as of great importance and significance; they are visions from God. Heroes and princes were great dreamers; heathens rarely or never. The greatest dreamer of all was Karl the Great, though only when he was young and vigorous. But women dreamed much, and Mentz argues from this that they must have been highly thought of. "These poets have with special preference attributed dreams to women, and this is shown not only by the numhcr of examples of women dreaming, but by some very remarkable cases. For example, when any common misfortune overtakes a married couple or two lovers, it is always the woman who receives information of the misfortune, as when Tristram and Yseult were found asleep in the wood by King Mark, who first thought to slay them, but afterwards merely left behind his sword and his ring as a token that he had been there." After giving numerous other examples, 1 James Macdonald, " East Central African Customs," Journal of the Anthropological Institute^ Aug. 1892, p. 105.
2 Richard Mentz, Die Traume in den altfranzosischen Karls- und Artus-epen, 1888. (Stengel's Ausgaben und Abhandlungen aus den Gebiete der romanischen Philologie t lxxiii. ) Google HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 265 Mentz adds: " I have not found a single case in which, on such an occasion, the dream has come to the father or the husband; the dreamers are always women. Women's parts are filled with dreams, which otherwise are only imparted to heroes and princes."
In modern times dreams have lost all divine significance, although they have acquired a new scientific value as helping to furnish the key to many psychological problems of the past and the present There can be no doubt whatever that women are greater dreamers than men. While men, as they reach adult age, usually find that their dreams become rarer and less vivid, receding into a dim background where they can with difficulty be perceived, though doubtless always present, in women dreams usually remain frequent and vivid. This fact is familiar to all who have inquired into psychological phenomena, and it has often been confirmed by statistical in- vestigation. Thus Heerwagen 1 found that women dream more than men, whilst male students stand as a class between other men and women. Dreaming reaches its maximum intensity at from 20 to 25 years of age. Married women, according to Heerwagen, dream less than the unmarried. A dreamful sleep, Heerwagen found, is in women more likely to be prolonged than a dreamless sleep; but it is not so in men. Men, it may be added, sleep more soundly than women, while sleep is soundest in childhood.
Professor Jastrow, in an interesting study of the dreams of the blind, 2 gives statistical information as to the dreams of 183 blind persons. There is reason to believe that the blind are not, on the whole, such good dreamers as the sighted, but the sexual difference probably remains un- impaired. While of the males 54.5 per cent dream 1 Friedrich Heerwagen, Statistische Untersuchungen iiber TrSume und Schlaf, Wundt's Philosophische Studien, v. 2. I have only seen abstracts of this investigation. - 8 " The Dreams of the Blind," New Princeton Review, Jan. 1888.
Google 266 MAN AND WOMAN.
seldom, 19.2 per cent frequently, and 7.1 per cent every night, similar numbers for the females are 29.8, 26.2, and 8.3 per cent — ie. 9 the females include more "frequent" and fewer "occasional" dreamers. Professor Jastrow remarks: " This favours the view that it is the vividness of the emotional back- ground elaborated by the imagination that furnishes the predominant characteristic and tendency to dreams; for it is in the development of just these qualities that women excel men; the same view is favoured by the prevalence of dreams to age. In my tables there is a loss of the total amount of dreaming in passing from the period of five to nine years to that of from ten to fourteen years. A slighter decrease is noted in passing from the latter period to that of the next five years, and this very gradual decrease seems to continue from then on. Childhood, the period of the lively imagination and highly tinged emotional life, brings the richest harvest of dreams."
As to sexual differences in the character of dreams and the modes of dreaming, we possess at present little definite evidence. I will only allude to a study of "The Statistics of ' Unconscious Cerebration ' n {American Journal of Psychology 9 Nov. 1892, vol. v. No. 2), by Mr. Charles M. Child of Wesleyan University, U.S.A. This investigation, carried out under the superintendence of Professor A. C. Armstrong, was made on 200 college students (151 men and 49 women). It does not refer exclusively to dreaming, but various points bearing on dreams came within its scope. Thus it was found that only 12 per cent, of the women remember having any logical or connected train of thought in a half-sleep, but the general percentage is twice as large. The low percentage of the women here may be connected with the fact, which was also brought out in this investigation, that a very large percentage of women wake directly. On the other hand, 24 per cent of the women reach results which are at least fairly accurate, this being rather above the general percentage (17). The per- centages for different ages do not vary much, nor with any regularity. It was found that the dreams of women are more affected by position than those of men, and that a larger per- centage of women than of men are conscious of a moral sense when dreaming. Possibly the greater vividness of women's Google HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 267 dreams may account for this. After 30 years of age conscious- ness of moral sense in dreams diminishes. Persons under 25 are least affected by position, probably because at this age dreaming is a more constant and normal phenomenon. There was found to be a continuous decrease with age in the number of those who dream, although sexual differences in the number of students who dream (apart from the vividness, etc., of the dreams) was found to be trifling, a result which is fairly in accordance with Heerwagen's conclusions. The figures show a slightly larger proportion of men than of women who talk in their sleep, but the percentage of women who answer questions when asleep is much larger than that of men (56 per cent as against 32 in men). While the men can usually only answer questions on the subject they are talking about, the women can more often answer questions on any subject The percentage of those who talk in their sleep is much higher under 25 years of age than above, and the ability to answer questions also diminishes with age.
HALLUCINATIONS IN THE SANE.
Hallucinations of the senses occurring under ordin- ary conditions, when the subject is in fair health and otherwise sane, are very closely allied to the dreams that occur during sleep. Their occasional occurrence has often been recorded, more especially in men of genius or in persons under mental stress. 1 They may also be produced as a kind of embryonic hypnotic suggestion in ordinary life, and Professor Jung has found that such hallucinations are more easily pro- duced in women, children, and the uneducated, although by no means exclusively in them. 2 Our chief source of statistical information at present concerning their frequency in the general population is the " Inquiry into the Nature and Frequency of Hallu- cinations of the Senses occurring to Sane Persons," conducted by Professor Henry Sidgwick. 8 As the 1 See, for instance, Lombroso, Man of Genius, pp. 56, 57.
1 " Des Hallucinations sugg&ees a l'etat de veille," Rev. de PHypno- tismc, 1889.
8 This Report was presented at the London International Congress of Psychology, and will, I understand, be published in detail by the Society for Psychic Research during 1894.
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affirmative or negative experiences of 17,000 persons (comprising men and women in nearly equal propor- tions) are recorded in Professor Sidgwick's tables, they carry considerable weight It was found that 656 (or 7.8 per cent) of the men and 1033 (or 12.0 per cent) of the women affirmed that they had at some time experienced an hallucinatioa It is prob- able that this proportion approximates to the facts; at the same time it is quite possible that women are more easily persuaded than men that they have ex- perienced an hallucination, and also that women are more ready to confess to such an experience. Some deduction may perhaps have to be made on this account from the feminine percentage, but a greater liability to hallucination in women is in harmony with the greater prevalence of other allied phenomena in the same sex. A classification of the answers according to the competence of the collectors strengthens rather than weakens the preponderance of women, for if we separate 1649 answers which were obtained by scientific inquirers only, psycho- logists or medical men, we find that the percentage of women is nearly double that of the men — i.e., 9.0 per cent men against 17.1 per cent women.
It may be added that the persons investigated were chiefly English, or at least English-speaking, but there were a certain proportion of foreigners, more especially nearly 600 Russians and 200 Brazil- ians, and the differences according to nationality were considerable. Thus, if we take the English- speaking alone, we find that 7.3 per cent men and 1 1.4 per cent women give affirmative answers. If we take the Russians, we find that 10.2 per cent men and 21.4 per cent women give affirmative answers. And if we take the Brazilians, we find that 23.0 per cent men and 27.7 per cent women give affirmative answers. Hallucinations, therefore, taking these three nationalities, appear to be least prevalent among the English, most prevalent among the Brazilians; while Google HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 269 the Russians show the maximum, and the Brazilians the minimum sexual difference.
THE ACTION OF ANAESTHETICS.
The physiology of anaesthesia, as produced by chloroform, nitrous oxide, and other anaesthetics, is not yet fully understood. Nitrous oxide is the anaesthetic that is probably best understood, and what is here said will chiefly apply to that anaesthetic. In both the brain and spinal cord there appears to be first a period of excitement with increased pulsation of blood-vessels; then a period of disordered action; and finally a period of sedative action. The highest centres are most rapidly lulled; in the lower centres there is a greater tendency to excited actioa The spinal centres are liberated, perhaps stimulated. There is usually dilatation of the pupils, which always indi- cates either paralysis of the higher or stimulation of the lower centres; and this dilatation, especially in the anaemic or hysterical, may be considerable even at a very early stage of anaesthesia. 1 Such being the influence of anaesthesia on the nervous system, it is easy to observe its intimate connection with the phenomena here called hypnotic. Such phenomena involve the comparative quiescence of the highest centres, or else their inco-ordination, leading to disordered action. It is precisely to such a result that an anaesthetic like nitrous oxide leads. We may therefore regard it as an easily controllable agent for the production and study of hypnotic phenomena. If the administration of nitrous oxide for dental purposes were carefully observed and re- corded on a large scale, we should possess a valuable and exact key for the study of many of the most 1 See, for instance, T. F. W. Silk, Manual of Nitrous Oxide Anas- thesia, London, 1888; also Dudley Buxton, "A Note on Ankle- Clonus," Brit. Med. Journal, 24th Sept 1887.
Google MAN AND WOMAN.
important sexual nervous differences, for during the evolution of the anaesthetic process we have the secret mechanism that underlies psychic action laid bare in an objective manner which we can never under any circumstances hope for during the subject's con- scious life.
It can scarcely be said that the importance of this field for such research has yet been adequately realised. There are, however, certain observations and results recorded by scientific investigators which throw considerable light on our present inquiry.
It is usually considered that women yield rapidly to the influence of anaesthetics generally; pregnant women take them well; and although they yield so rapidly, there is no reason to suppose that women are more exposed to danger from anaesthesia; it seems more probable that they are less exposed. Children also fall rapidly and deeply under chloroform and other anaesthetics; but they bear them well and recover with equal facility. 1 A committee appointed by the Odontological Association found the following average times for nitrous oxide anaesthesia: — Time going off.
Duration.
Time from commencement to recovery.
Males i min. 21 sees.
24 sees.
I min. 55 sees.
Females Children (under 15) The exact duration of anaesthesia is not, however, easy of very exact determination.
We have seen that the effect of an anaesthetic such as nitrous oxide is practically to lull the higher nervous centres and to give the lower nervous centres the 2 D. W. Buxton, Anastketics, London, 1892; Maurice Perrin. Art. " Anesth&ie," Diet. etuy. des Set. Mid.
Googk HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA. 271 opportunity of indulging in an orgy. Is it the nervous system of men or of women that most readily takes advantage of this opportunity?
It has frequently been noted, as a general observa- tion, that various phenomena which may occur during anaesthesia are more common in women. Thus chloroform, ether, nitrous oxide, cocaine, and possibly other anaesthetics, possess the property of exciting the sexual emotions. Women are especially liable to these erotic hallucinations during anaesthesia, and it has sometimes been almost impossible to convince them that their subjective sensations have had no objective cause. 1 Those who have to administer anaesthetics are well aware of the risks they may thus incur. It has also been noted (as by Perrin) that ' women are more liable to dream under anaesthesia. General muscular excitement, both in the earlier and in the later stages of nitrous oxide anaesthesia, have been observed to be more common in women. Among girls and women, especially if of hysterical temperament, Dr. Silk remarks that during the usually quiet early stage of anaesthesia " every variety of antic may at times be indulged in, of which singing and kicking are the most common;" while just as they are passing fully under the influence of the gas, girls who have hitherto been quiet may begin to scream and kick in a manner that is usually entirely reflex and automatic; " during the stage of recovery, too, the period of excitement is often very marked, especially in females. Hallucinations with a desire to go somewhere or do something are very common; there may be also more or less violent screaming,