isitive observers here and there have
thought they found reason to believe that men, as well as women, present
various signs of a menstrual physiological cycle. It would be possible to
collect a number of opinions in favor of such a monthly physiological
periodicity in men. Precise evidence, however, is, for the most part,
lacking. Men have expended infinite ingenuity in establishing the remote
rhythms of the solar system and the periodicity of comets. They have
disdained to trouble about the simpler task of proving or disproving the
cycles of their own organisms.[117] It is over half a century since
Laycock wrote that "the _scientific_ observation and treatment of disease
are impossible without a knowledge of the mysterious revolutions
continually taking place in the system"; yet the task of summarizing the
whole of our knowledge regarding these "mysterious revolutions" is even
to-day no heavy one. As to the existence of a monthly cycle in the sexual
instincts of men, with a single exception, I am not aware that any attempt
has been made to bring forward definite evidence.[118] A certain interest
and novelty attaches, therefore, to the evidence I am able to produce,
although that evidence will not suffice to settle the question finally.

The great Italian physician, Sanctorius, who was in so many ways the
precursor of our modern methods of physiological research by the means of
instruments of precision, was the first, so far as I am aware, to suggest
a monthly cycle of the organism in men. He had carefully studied the
weight of the body with reference to the amount of excretions, and
believed that a monthly increase in weight to the amount of one or two
pounds occurred in men, followed by a critical discharge of urine, this
crisis being preceded by feelings of heaviness and lassitude.[119] Gall,
another great initiator of modern views, likewise asserted a monthly cycle
in men. He insisted that there is a monthly critical period, more marked
in nervous people than in others, and that at this time the complexion
becomes dull, the breath stronger, digestion more laborious, while there
is sometimes disturbance of the urine, together with general _malaise_, in
which the temper takes part; ideas are formed with more difficulty, and
there is a tendency to melancholy, with unusual irascibility and mental
inertia, lasting a few days. More recently Stephenson, who established the
cyclical wave-theory of menstruation, argued that i