fifty years, the period of life in which the struggle for existence is fiercest. _Hegar_, on the other hand, is a firm opponent of the view that the favourable influence of marriage is overrated. According to this author, the favourable effect of marriage in respect of mental disorders is to be found, not in the gratification of the sexual impulse, but in the ethical factors of marriage. Statistics show that even in the favourable circumstances of marriage, sexual gratification has in women an unfavourable influence, inasmuch as the proportion of sufferers from mental disorders is higher among married women than it is among married men. A study of the mental disorders which in women are especially associated with the process of reproduction (puerperal mania) confirms this impression. _Hegar_ insists that he has never seen nymphomania arise in women in consequence of forcible repression of the sexual impulse; but that he has not infrequently seen this disorder result from unnatural excesses or from long-continued sexual irritation, especially in hereditarily predisposed persons. Such unnatural stimulation of the female is not infrequently practiced by the male—by the lover and even by the husband—it may be because he himself derives pleasure from such perverted practices, and wishes to obtain sexual gratification without the risk of impregnation, or because he is himself incompetent for normal complete intercourse. _Hegar_ is further of opinion that in the causation of hysteria and also in that of chlorosis the repression of the sexual impulse plays a quite subordinate rôle. And he regards as pure fable the belief that continence in women is liable to lead to the formation of mammary, uterine, or ovarian tumors. He would more readily incline to the contrary opinion; the reproductive process being in this respect distinctly disadvantageous to the female sex. The unfavorable influence of the reproductive process is shown most clearly in the case of carcinoma of the uterus; the majority of the patients suffering from this disease are either married or widowed, and many of them have given birth to a large number of children. “Gratification of the sexual impulse, and more particularly the reproductive process, give rise in women to the formation and growth of tumors, cause numerous mechanical disturbances, and open the way to infection with various pathogenic organisms.”