This recoil of fear interferes with the circulation in the functioning organs, just as fear blanches the face or hinders digestion. There is several times as much blood in the stomach when it is full of food as there is between meals, but we do not for this reason fancy that we have a pain after each meal. There is more blood in the generative organs during their functioning, but this means pain only when fear ties up the circulation and causes undue congestion. Fear acts further on the sturdy muscle of the womb, tying it up into just such knots as we feel in the esophagus when we say that we have a lump in the throat. It is safe to say that ninety-five cases of painful menstruation out of every hundred are caused by fear and by the expectation of pain. The cysts and tumors responsible for pain are so rare as to be fairly negligible, when compared with these other causes. Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher of Stanford University has for many years carried on careful investigations among the students of the university. After describing in detail certain physical exercises which she has found of value, she continues: But more important even than this is an alteration of the morbid attitude of women themselves toward this function; and almost equally essential is a fundamental change in the habit of mind on our part as physicians; for do we not tend to translate too much, the whole of a woman's life into terms of menstruation? If every young girl were taught that menstruation is not normally a "bad time" and that pain or incapacity at that period is as discreditable and unnecessary as bad breath due to decaying teeth, we might almost look for a revolution in the physical life of women.... In my experience the traditional treatment of rest in bed, directing the attention solely to the sex-zone of the body, and the accepted theory that it is an inevitable illness while at the same time the mind is without occupation, produces a morbid attitude and favors the development and exaggeration of whatever symptoms there may be.[56] [Footnote 56: Clelia Duel Mosher: _Health and the Woman Movement_, pp. 25, 26, 19.] =Pre-Menstrual Discomfort.= If it be objected that women often feel badly for a day or two before the period begins, before they know that it is due, and that this feeling of discomfort could not be caused by fear and expectation, it is easy to reply that the subconscious mind knows perfectly what is happening within the body. The emotion of fear, working within the subconscious, is able to translate all the varying bodily sensations into feelings of distress without any knowledge on the part of the conscious mind.