ated the periodicity of sexual desire in healthy women of
the working classes, 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