"Women will occasionally be found to hide diseases and symptoms from a bashfulness and modesty so great and perverse as to be hardly credible," writes Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, an experienced coroner. "I have known several cases of female deaths, reported as sudden, and of cause unknown, when the medical man called in during the latter hours of life has been quite unaware that his lady patient was dying of gangrene of a strangulated femoral hernia, or was bleeding to death from the bowel, or from ruptured varices of the vulva." (_British Medical Journal_, Feb. 29, 1908.) The foregoing selection of facts might, of course, be indefinitely enlarged, since I have not generally quoted from any previous collection of facts bearing on the question of modesty. Such collections may be found in Ploss and Max Bartels _Das Weib_, a work that is constantly appearing in new and enlarged editions; Herbert Spencer, _Descriptive Sociology_ (especially under such headings as "Clothing," "Moral Sentiments," and "Æsthetic Products"); W.G. Sumner, _Folkways_, Ch. XI; Mantegazza, _Amori degli Uomini_, Chapter II; Westermarck, _Marriage_, Chapter IX; Letourneau, _L'Evolution de la Morale_, pp. 126 et seq.; G. Mortimer, _Chapters on Human Love_, Chapter IV; and in the general anthropological works of Waitz-Gerland, Peschel, Ratzel and others. FOOTNOTES: [1] The earliest theory I have met with is that of St. Augustine, who states (_De Civitate Dei_, Bk. XIV, Ch. XVII) that erections of the penis never occurred until after the Fall of Man. It was the occurrence of this "shameless novelty" which made nakedness indecent. This theory fails to account for modesty in women. [2] Guyau, _L'Irreligion de l'Avenir_, Ch. VII. [3] Timidity, as understood by Dugas, in his interesting essay on that subject, is probably most remote. Dr. H. Campbell's "morbid shyness" (_British Medical Journal_, September 26, 1896) is, in part, identical with timidity, in part, with modesty. The matter is further complicated by the fact that modesty itself has in English (like virtue) two distinct meanings. In its original form it has no special connection with sex or women, but may rather be considered as a masculine virtue. Cicero regards "modestia" as the equivalent of the Greek sôphrosunê. This is the "modesty" which Mary Wollstonecraft eulogized in the last century, the outcome of knowledge and reflection, "soberness of mind," "the graceful calm virtue of maturity." In French, it is possible to avoid the confusion, and _modestie_ is entirely distinct from _pudeur_. It is, of course, mainly with _pudeur_ that I am here concerned. II.