ns of having been benefited by
what has occurred. Those of a _sanguine_ temperament are more liable to
floodings and to head symptoms; but such disorders with them usually
readily yield to treatment. The _bilious_ temperament predisposes to
disorders of the stomach and liver at this epoch; while the union of the
nervous with the bilious temperament seems to predispose to mental
diseases. The most suffering at this time of life is experienced by
women of a _nervous_ temperament.

The social position exerts an influence on the pain and the tendency to
disease at this epoch. The poor who are forced to labor beyond their
strength and who are exhausted by fatigue, anxiety, and want, suffer
much. So also do those who have recently been exposed to some great
sorrow. As the poet says:--

Danger, long travel, want, or woe,
Soon change the form that best we know----
For deadly fear can time out-go,
And blanch at once the hair.
Hard toil can roughen form and face,
And want can quell the eye's bright grace,
Nor does old age a wrinkle trace
More deeply than despair.

The occupations of women also have an influence upon the change of life.
Washerwomen are said in particular to suffer more than others on account
of the exposure to which they are subject by their trade. Those who are
confined many hours a day in close or damp rooms are unfavorably
situated for passing through the various stages of the 'grand
climacteric.' The rich, with plenty of time and means to care for
themselves, often blindly or obstinately create an atmosphere about them
and follow a mode of life, quite as deleterious as the enforced
surroundings of their poorer sisters.

DISEASES AND DISCOMFORTS.

In rather more than one out of every four cases the change of life is
either ushered in or accompanied by considerable flooding. When this
occurs at the regular period, and is not in sufficient quantity to cause
debility, and is not associated with much pain, it need not give rise to
any alarm. It is an effort of nature to relieve the impending plethora
of the system, to drain away the excessive amount of blood which would
otherwise accumulate by the cessation of the flow. When it is remembered
that every month, for some thirty years of life, the woman of forty-five
has been moderately bled, we need not wonder that suddenly to break off
this long habit would bring about a plethora, which would in turn be the
sourc