The condition of marriage is doubtless the normal one for both sexes, and, as a rule, a larger degree of physical health is enjoyed by persons who live in this relation. In no other is the discharge of the natural functions of the sexual organs possible. As society is at present constituted, however, more especially in the older civilizations, marriage and its consequent responsibilities become more and more difficult, and the female is the larger sufferer by a failure to consummate this relation. All those instinctive yearnings for objects of affection and love in the way of husband and children; all the outgoing of longing for all that is implied in home, the care of it, and all connected with it; with no one to cling to and depend upon in hours of sickness and trial; the turning back, keeping down, and putting forever away into darkness all those natural desires and passions which arise and tend to press forward for recognition from time to time;--in short, the failure to develop and bring into its mutual relation to other portions of the system this, which is arranged and designed by nature to play so significant a part in the female economy of life, can but tend in no small degree to cause a somewhat abnormal condition and activity of the general nervous system. Persons become nervous, capricious, irritable, and hysterical. A feeling of lassitude and weariness results from any considerable physical effort, and they are unable to endure the friction and annoyances of ordinary daily life without much complaint. They feel badly without knowing why, and are unable to long apply the mind to any particular task, or persistently to carry forward any kind of employment. An experience of a year or two, more or less, of this kind of nervous debility and suffering generally lands many of these persons in the hands of the physician, and no small number in those of the gynæcologist. On examination there is frequently found to exist uterine derangement of one kind or another: it may be congestion or a sub-acute inflammatory condition of the neck of the uterus; in some cases there is endo-metritis, or peri-metritis, abrasive ulceration attended with discharge, or there may be displacement in the way of any of the flexions. Or again, there may be defective, or irregular menstrual discharge, dysmenorrhoea, or amenorrhoea. My impression is that some one of these various lesions of the uterus will be found to exist in a large number of females who have exhibited, for some time, such physical and mental conditions and symptoms as have been detailed above.