Married Love/Appendix

​Note 1.—(See p. 24.)

For suffering and even death of unmated females, see e.g. MARSHALL, in Quarterly Journal Microscopical Society, Vol. 48, 1904, P.323.

PARSONS, in British Medical Journal, October, 1904.

Note 2.—(See p. 31.)

A frequent mistake (made even by gynæcologists) is to confuse menstruation with the "period of desire," which is generally called "heat" in animals. Even in the most authoritative recent text books, such phrases as "heat and menstruation" are very common, thus coupling heat and menstruation as though they were equivalents, while the older books quite explicitly look on the menstrual period in women as corresponding to desire of "heat" in animals. This error has even been repeated very recently in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine.^[1]

Some physiologists have studied this subject in several of the higher animals, and now realise that the time of desire is physiologically distinct from the phase which is represented by menstruation in women. It seems to be fairly well established that in women menstruation is caused by an internal secretion of the ovaries (c.f. p. 61), and is not directly due to ovulation, though it must have some connection with it.^[2]

The most that modern science appears to have attained is briefly summarised in the following quotation from Marshall ("The Physiology of Reproduction," p. 69): ​"According to Martin and certain other writers, the human female often experiences a distinct post-menstrual œstrus [Modern research has recognised a period when the female animal is ready for impregnation, which is called the œstrus, and a preparatory series of physiologicol changes called the pro-estrous phase.—M.C.S.], at which sexual desire is greater than at other times; so that, although conception can occur throughout the intermenstrual periods, it would seem probable that originally coition was restricted to definite periods of œstrus following menstrual or pro-estrous periods in women, as in females of other mammalia. On this point Heape write as follows: 'This special time for œstrus in the human female has very frequently been denied, and, no doubt, modern civilisation and modern social life do much to check the natural sexual instinct where there is undue strain on the constitution, or to stimulate it at other times where extreme vigour is the result. For these reasons a definite period of œstrus may readily be interfered with, but the instinct is, I am convinced, still marked.'"

In nearly all wild animals there is a definite period for sexual excitement, very commonly just at that time of the year which fits into the span of gestation, so that the young are born at the season which gives them the best chance to grow up. In animals the period of desire, the ovulation (or setting free of the female germ or unfertilised egg-cell) and the time of the birth of the young, are all co-related harmoniously. The male animal is only allowed to approach the female when the natural longing for union is upon her. Among human beings, the only race which seems to have long periods of sexual quiescence at all comparable with those natural to the animals are the Esquimaux, who appear to pass many months without any unions of the men and women.