ans know that there are in very
many cases a most unpleasant train of symptoms which characterize this
epoch in the physical life of woman. They are alarming, painful, often
entailing sad consequences, though rarely fatal. All physicians are,
however, not intelligent; and there are too many who are inclined to
ridicule such complaints, to impute them to fancy, and to think that
they have done their full duty when they tell the sufferer that such
sensations are merely indicative of her age, and that in a year or two
they will all pass away. Such medical attendants do not appreciate the
gravity of the sufferings they have been called to relieve. Says a
distinguished writer on the subject, after entering into some details in
the matter: 'I would not dwell on things apparently so trivial as these,
had I not seen some of the worst misery this world witnesses induced
thereby.' Such a conviction should be in the mind of the physician, and
lead him to attach their full weight to the vague, transitory, unstable,
but most distressing symptoms described to him.

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS.

We shall speak of the various signs and symptoms which occur at and mark
the change; and in commencing so to do, we call attention to an
interesting illustration of the rhythm which controls the laws of life.
As in old age, when we draw near the last scene of all, we re-enter
childhood, and grow into second infancy, so the woman, finishing her
pilgrimage of sexual life, encounters the same landmarks and stations
which greeted her when she first set out. She obeys at eve the voice of
her own nature which she obeyed at prime. The same diseases and
disorders, the same nervous and mental sensations, the same pains and
weaknesses which preceded the first appearance of her monthly illness,
will in all probability precede its cessation. Even those affections of
the skin or of the brain, as epilepsy, which were suffered in childhood,
and which disappeared as soon as the periodical function was
established, may be expected to reappear when the function has reached
its natural termination. Therefore if a woman past the change notices
that she suffers from bleeding at the nose, headache, boils, or some
skin disease, let her bethink herself whether it is not a repetition of
some similar trouble with which she was plagued before the eventful
period which metamorphosed her from a girl into a woman.

So true is what we have just said, that in detailing the sympto