The intimate relationship believed to exist between chlorosis and the sexual life of woman finds expression in the opinion, which dates back to the days of antiquity, and has been widely held even by physicians, that the disease (hence designated _morbus virgineus_ or _febris amatoria_) is due to sexual abstinence in individuals with powerful sexual impulse, and that for this reason chlorosis is often cured by marriage. This result of marriage, which, though apparent merely, may indeed often be witnessed, is explained by _Kahane_ on the ground, that in very many cases, the symptoms of chlorosis become less severe after the first five years have elapsed since the commencement of puberty, the improvement occurring quite independently of the marriage or continued celibacy of the sufferer. The influence of marriage in curing chlorosis is thus apparent merely to this extent, that a very common age for marriage in women is precisely in the twentieth, twenty-first, or twenty-second year, when five years have passed since menstruation began. By this time the organism will to a large extent have become accommodated to the demands made upon it by the processes of puberty. Experience also shows that chlorotic girls sometimes continue to suffer from the various symptoms of chlorosis even after they have become wives, and that chlorosis is not infrequently rendered more severe by the puerperium—but in a wife it is no longer customary to describe such symptoms by the name of chlorosis, they are called anæmia, hysteria, nervousness, etc. Further, in order to give the doctrine of morbus virgineus its death-stroke, _Kahane_ directs attention to the fact that numerous cases of chlorosis are met with in young girls who are far from practicing sexual abstinence, especially, for instance, amongst the lower classes, amongst whom it is hardly customary to wait for marriage before beginning sexual intercourse. The connection between masturbation and chlorosis, which has also been widely alleged from the etiological standpoint, is moreover one that cannot be admitted. On the other hand it is easy to understand that the erotic reveries which are so often seen in chlorotic girls are very likely to induce the habit of masturbation. In young girls at the time of the menarche, especially in those who suffer from amenorrhœa or from irregular menstruation, the anæmic form of obesity not infrequently develops. Such patients at the time of puberty exhibit signs of marked anæmia in association with a notable increase in fat. The skin in such cases is always strikingly pale and of a whitish-yellow color; in bodies which are in other respects beautiful the bust may have the appearance of a marble statue. Such girls are strikingly stout, but the fatty tissue is flaccid, soft, and spongy, and dependent parts readily become œdematous; the muscular system is generally feeble.