read operations during the catamenial
period. Such, at all events, is the opinion of a distinguished authority,
Dr. William Goodell, who wrote in 1891[372]: "I have learned to unlearn
the teaching that women must not be subjected to a surgical operation
during the monthly flux. Our forefathers, from time immemorial, have
thought and taught that the presence of a menstruating woman would pollute
solemn religious rites, would sour milk, spoil the fermentation in
wine-vats, and much other mischief in a general way. Influenced by hoary
tradition, modern physicians very generally postpone all operative
treatment until the flow has ceased. But why this delay, if time is
precious, and it enters as an important factor in the case? I have found
menstruation to be the very best time to curette away fungous vegetations
of the endometrium, for, being swollen then by the afflux of blood, they
are larger than at any other time, and can the more readily be removed.
There is, indeed, no surer way of checking or of stopping a metrorrhagia
than by curetting the womb during the very flow. While I do not select
this period for the removal of ovarian cysts, or for other abdominal work,
such as the extirpation of the ovaries, or a kidney, or breaking up
intestinal adhesions, etc., yet I have not hesitated to perform these
operations at such a time, and have never had reason to regret the course.
The only operations that I should dislike to perform during menstruation
would be those involving the womb itself."

It must be added to this that we still have to take into consideration not
merely the surviving influence of ancient primitive beliefs, but the
possible existence of actual nervous conditions during the menstrual
period, producing what may be described as an abnormal nervous tension. In
this way, we are doubtless concerned with a tissue of phenomena,
inextricably woven of folk-lore, autosuggestion, false observation, and
real mental and nervous abnormality. Laurent (loc. cit.) has brought
forward several cases which may illustrate this point. Thus, he speaks of
two young girls of about 16 and 17, slightly neuropathic, but without
definite hysterical symptoms, who, during the menstrual period, feel
themselves in a sort of electrical state, "with tingling and prickling
sensations and feelings of attraction or repulsion at the contact of
various objects." These girls believe their garments stick to their skin
during the periods; it was onl