So it is with this great and mysterious thing--the blood. The sight of it nearly always produces emotion and excitement, but if these emotions are not accompanied by an unreasoning joy and delight, they may result in equally unreasoning and uncontrollable disgust, horror, and often a sudden and unaccountable collapse. Some time ago in a popular lecture on the colouring matter of the blood I had no sooner said the word "blood" than a gentleman in the front row fainted and had to be carried out. Men are more susceptible to this curious effect of the sight or thought of blood than women. Often they do not know that they are so, and are as astonished and perplexed by the sudden fainting as are onlookers and as are, for the matter of that, physiologists and psychologists. It is a common experience of medical men who vaccinate adults, when there is a scare about smallpox, that at the sight of a tiny drop of blood caused by scratching the arm with a lancet, men frequently faint, whilst women rarely do so. Great, burly, red-coated soldiers, and also athletic schoolboys, have been especially noted as fainting when vaccinated. Maid-servants rarely faint under this absurdly trivial ordeal, whilst the butler and the valet much more frequently do so. Here is, indeed, a curious and unexpected difference between men and women which I commend to the consideration of those who are discussing the desirability of admitting women to the parliamentary franchise. It is an unexplained instance of the influence of the mind on the body, and until it is better understood, one must not conclude that the difference is a proof of superior fitness for participation in political affairs.