This also explains why women become prematurely old so much more frequently than men, for their ovaries are much sooner exhausted, in consequence of their activity being much greater than that of the male sexual glands. There is a much greater demand not only on the female sexual glands, but also on the female thyroid, which enlarges every month in many women, and is greatly exhausted by each pregnancy. As Hertoghe[163] says, with reference to this exhaustion of the thyroid by pregnancies, “each child demands one tooth.” Footnote 163: Hertoghe: “Die Erkrankungen der Schilddrüse und der chronische gutartige Hypothyreoidismu,” München, Lehmann, 1900. According to Hertoghe, pregnancies are especially apt to produce degenerated conditions of the thyroid gland. Sexual excesses, on account of the concomitant nervous excitement, are also very prejudicial to the adrenals, for just as frequent nervous excitement in general, they produce alterations in the blood-pressure and favor the development of arteriosclerosis. Sexual excesses are also very harmful to men, although their action on the thyroid, in men, has not yet been ascertained. It is a fact, however, that they diminish the resistance to infections, and favor the onset of neurasthenia and arteriosclerosis. Changes in the thyroid also become manifest during the climacteric, and the troublesome nervous manifestations at this period are largely due to this fact. Later, on account of the degeneration of the thyroid and ovaries in many of these women, there is an accumulation of fat, of a bacon-like character, in the same situations as was described above in women after many pregnancies and sexual excesses—_viz._, the breasts, the hips, and the abdomen. The facial appearance of these women who become obese after the climacteric resembles that of a typical case of early myxœdema. In the later stages, as old age advances, just as in myxœdema, the fat may disappear and be replaced by great thinness and emaciation—the cachectic stage of myxœdema. This is less frequently seen now-a-days, on account of the improvement and checking of the disease by thyroid treatment. It is a very strange fact that although sexual abuses soon bring about symptoms of old age, as do also many pregnancies, clinical observations show that total suppression of sexual activity is also, if not still more, a powerful factor in the production of premature senility. There is no denying the fact that spinsters, after the age of thirty or forty, often look older than married women with small families. See also our chapter on the “Hygiene of the Sexual Glands” on this subject, in which we show by experimental evidence the dangers of the total suppression of sexual activity.