in a series of cases, by inquiries made of their husbands who were patients at a London hospital.  People of this class are not always skilful in observation, and the method adopted would permit many facts to pass unrecorded; it is, therefore, noteworthy that only in one-third of the cases had no connection between menstruation and sexual feeling been observed; in the other two-thirds, sexual feeling was increased, either before, after, or during the flow, or at all of these times; the proportion of cases in which sexual feeling was increased before the flow, to those in which it was increased after, was as three to two. (H.  Campbell, Nervous Organization of Men and Women, p. 203.)

Even this elementary fact of the sexual life has, however, been denied, and, strange to say, by two women doctors.  Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, of New York, who furnished valuable contributions to the physiology of menstruation, wrote some years ago, in a paper on “The Theory of Menstruation,” in reference to the question of the connection between oestrus and menstruation:  “Neither can any such rhythmical alternation of sexual instinct be demonstrated in women as would lead to the inference that the menstrual crisis was an expression of this,” i.e., of oestrus.  Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, again, in her book on The Human Element in Sex, asserts that the menstrual flow itself affords complete relief for the sexual feelings in women (like sexual emissions during sleep in men), and thus practically denies the prevalence of sexual desire in the immediately post-menstrual period, when, on such a theory, sexual feeling should be at its minimum.  It is fair to add that Dr. Blackwell’s opinion is merely the survival of a view which was widely held a century ago, when various writers (Bordeu, Roussel, Duffieux, J. Arnould, etc.), as Icard has pointed out, regarded menstruation as a device of Providence for safeguarding the virginity of women.

FOOTNOTES: 

[75] Thaddeus L. Bolton, “Rhythm,” American Journal of Psychology, January, 1894.

[76] It is scarcely necessary to warn the reader that this statement does not prejudge the question of the inheritance of acquired characters, although it fits in with Semon’s Mnemic theory.  We can, however, very well suppose that the organism became adjusted to the rhythms of its environment by a series of congenital variations.  Or it might be held, on the basis of Weismann’s doctrine, that the germ-plasm has been directly modified by the environment.

[77] Thus, the Papuans, in some districts, believe that the first menstruation is due to an actual connection, during sleep, with the moon in the shape of a man, the girl dreaming that a real man is embracing her. (Reports Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, p. 206.)

[78] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 164.