Phenomenes
Mecaniques produits au moment de la Menstruation," _Annales des Sciences
Psychiques_, September and October, 1897.

[371] _Journal Anthropological Society of Bombay_, 1890, p. 403. Even the
glance of a menstruating woman is widely believed to have serious results.
See Tuchmann, "La Fascination," _Melasine_, 1888, pp. 347 _et seq._

[372] As quoted in the _Provincial Medical Journal_, April, 1891.

APPENDIX B.

SEXUAL PERIODICITY IN MEN.

BY F.H. PERRY-COSTE, B. Sc. (LOND.).

In a recent _brochure_ on the "Rhythm of the Pulse"[373] I showed _inter
alia_ that the readings of the pulse, in both man and woman, if arranged
in lunar monthly periods, and averaged over several years, displayed a
clear, and sometimes very strongly marked and symmetrical, rhythm.[374]
After pointing out that, in at any rate some cases, the male and female
pulse-curves, both monthly and annual, seemed to be converse to one
another, I added: "It is difficult to ignore the suggestion that in this
tracing of the monthly rhythm of the pulse we have a history of the
monthly function in women; and that, if so, the tracing of the male pulse
may eventually afford us some help in discovering a corresponding monthly
period in men: the existence of which has been suggested by Mr. Havelock
Ellis and Professor Stanley Hall, among other writers. Certainly the mere
fact that we can trace a clear monthly rhythm in man's pulse seems to
point strongly to the existence of a monthly physiological period in him
also."

Obviously, however, it is only indirectly and by inference that we can
argue from a monthly rhythm of the pulse in men to a male sexual
periodicity; but I am now able to adduce more direct evidence that will
fairly demonstrate the existence of a sexual periodicity in men.

We will start from the fact that celibacy is profoundly unnatural,
and is, therefore, a physical--as well as an emotional and
intellectual--abnormality. This being so, it is entirety in accord with
all that we know of physiology that, when relief to the sexual secretory
system by Nature's means is denied, and when, in consequence, a certain
degree of tension or pressure has been attained, the system should relieve
itself by a spontaneous discharge--such discharge being, of course, in the
strict sense of the term, pathological, since it would never occur in any
animal that followed the strict law of its physical being without any
regard to other and higher