ement of autosuggestion in such a case;
still, the coincidence is noteworthy.

[124] See Durkheim, _Le Suicide_, p. 101.

[125] We must, of course, see here the results of the disorganization
produced by holidays, and the exhaustion produced by the week's labor; but
such influences are still the social effects of the cosmic week.

[126] E. Smith, _Health and Disease_, Chapter III. I may remark that,
according to Kemsoes (_Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift_, January 20,
1908, and _British Medical Journal_, January 29, 1898), school-children
work best on Monday and Tuesday.

[127] See Appendix B.

III.

The Annual Sexual Rhythm--In Animals--In Man--Tendency of the Sexual
Impulse to become Heightened in Spring and Autumn--The Prevalence of
Seasonal Erotic Festivals--The Feast of Fools--The Easter and Midsummer
Bonfires--The Seasonal Variations in Birthrate--The Causes of those
Variations--The Typical Conception-rate Curve for Europe--The Seasonal
Periodicity of Seminal Emissions During Sleep--Original
Observations--Spring and Autumn the Chief Periods of Involuntary Sexual
Excitement--The Seasonal Periodicity of Rapes--Of Outbreaks among
Prisoners--The Seasonal Curves of Insanity and Suicide--The Growth of
Children According to Season--The Annual Curve of Bread-consumption in
Prisons--Seasonal Periodicity of Scarlet Fever--The Underlying Causes of
these Seasonal Phenomena.

That there are annual seasonal changes in the human organism, especially
connected with the sexual function, is a statement that has been made by
physiologists and others from time to time, and the statement has even
reached the poets, who have frequently declared that spring is the season
of love.

Thus, sixty years ago, Laycock, an acute pioneer in the
investigation of the working of the human organism, brought
together (in a chapter on "The Periodic Movements in the
Reproductive Organs of Woman," in his _Nervous Diseases of
Women_, 1840, pp. 61-70) much interesting evidence to show that
the system undergoes changes about the vernal and autumnal
equinoxes, and that these changes are largely sexual.

Edward Smith, also a notable pioneer in this field of human
periodicity, and, indeed, the first to make definite observations
on a number of points bearing on it, sums up, in his remarkable
book, _Health and Disease as Influenced by Daily, Seasonal, and
Other Cyclical Changes in the Human