[264] _Man and Woman_, 4th ed., p. 326. A distinguished gynæcologist, Matthews Duncan, had remarked some years earlier (_Lancet_, May 18, 1889) that hysteria, though not a womb disease, "especially attaches itself to the generative system, because the genital system, more than any other, exerts emotional power over the individual, power also in morals, power in social questions." [265] Gilles de la Tourette, _Archives de Tocologie et de Gynécologie_, June, 1895. [266] _Rivista Sperimentale di Freniatria_, 1897, p. 290; summarized in the _Journal of Mental Science_, January, 1898. [267] From the earliest times it was held that menstruation favors hysteria; more recently, Landouzy recorded a number of observations showing that hysterical attacks coincide with perfectly healthy menstruation; while Ball has maintained that it is only during menstruation that hysteria appears in its true color. See the opinions collected by Icard, _La Femme pendant la Période Menstruelle_, pp. 75-81. [268] Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber Neurosen und Psychosen durch Sexuelle Abstinenz," _Jahrbücher für Psychiatrie_, vol. iii, 1888. It must, however, be added that the relief of hysteria by sexual satisfaction is not rare, and that Rosenthal finds that the convulsions are thus diminished. (_Allgemeine Wiener Medizinal-Zeitung_, Nos. 46 and 47, 1887.) So they are also, in simple and uncomplicated cases, according to Mongeri, by pregnancy. [269] "All doctors who have patients in convents," remarks Marro (_La Pubertà_, p. 338), "know how hysteria dominates among them;" he adds that his own experience confirms that of Raciborski, who found that nuns devoted to the contemplative life are more liable to hysteria than those who are occupied in teaching or in nursing. It must be added, however, that there is not unanimity as to the prevalence of hysteria in convents. Brachet was of the same opinion as Briquet, and so considered it rare. Imbert-Goubeyre, also (_La Stigmatisation_, p. 436) states that during more than forty years of medical life, though he has been connected with a number of religious communities, he has not found in them a single hysterical subject, the reason being, he remarks, that the unbalanced and extravagant are refused admission to the cloister. [270] Parent-Duchâtelet, _De la Prostitution_, vol. i, p. 242. [271] It may not be unnecessary to point out that here and throughout, in speaking of the psychic mechanism of hysteria, I do not admit that any process can be _purely_ psychic. As Féré puts it in an admirable study of hysteria (_Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine_, 1897, vol. x, p. 556): "In the genesis of hysterical troubles everything takes place as if the psychical and the somatic phenomena were two aspects of the same biological fact."