des Sciences Medicales, Art., “Menstruation,” p. 694) speak of intermenstrual symptoms, and even actual flow, as occurring in women who are in a perfect state of health, and constituting genuine “regles surnumeraries.”  The condition is, however, said to have been first fully described by Valleix; then, in 18725 by Sir William Priestley; and subsequently by Fehling, Fasbender, Sorel, Halliday Croom, Findley, Addinsell, and others. (See, for instance, “Mittelschmerz,” by J. Halliday Croom, Transactions of Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, vol. xxi, 1896.  Also, Krieger, Menstruation, pp. 68-69.) Fliess (Die Beziehungen zwischen Nase und weiblichen Geschlechts-Organen, p. 118) goes so far as to assert that an intermenstrual period of menstrual symptoms—­which he terms Nebenmenstruation—­is “a phenomenon well known to most healthy women.”  Observations are at present too few to allow any definite conclusions, and in some of the cases so far recorded a pathological condition of the sexual organs has been found to exist.  Rosner, of Cracow, however, found that only in one case out of twelve was there any disease present (La Gynecologie, June, 1905), and Storer, who has met with twenty cases, insists on the remarkable and definite regularity of the manifestations, wholly unlike those of neuralgia (Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April 19, 1900).  There is no agreement as to the cause of Mittelschmerz.  Addinsell attributed it to disease of the Fallopian tubes.  This, however, is denied by such competent authorities as Cullingworth and Bland Sutton.  Others, like Priestley, and subsequently Marsh (American Journal of Obstetrics, July, 1897), have sought to find the explanation in the occurrence of ovulation.  This theory is, however, unsupported by facts, and eventually rests on the exploded belief that ovulation is the cause of menstruation.  Rosner, following Richelet, vaguely attributes it to the diffused hyperaemia which is generally present.  Van de Velde also attributes it to an abnormal fall of vascular tone, causing passive congestion of the pelvic viscera.  Others again, like Armand Routh and MacLean, in the course of an interesting discussion on Mittelschmerz at the Obstetric Society of London, on the second day of March, 1898, believe that we may trace here a double menstruation, and would explain the phenomenon by assuming that in certain cases there is an intermenstrual as well as a menstrual cycle.  The question is not yet ripe for settlement, though it is fully evident that, looking broadly at the phenomena of rut and menstruation, the main basis of their increasing frequency as we rise toward civilized man is increase of nutrition, heat and sunlight being factors of nutrition.  When dealing with civilized man, however, we are probably concerned not merely with general nutrition, but with the nervous direction of that nutrition.

At this stage it is natural to inquire what the corresponding