English poetry -- 19th century; Women -- History; Women -- Social conditions; Women -- Suffrage
_Id._... “Ainsi l’évacuation menstruelle une fois introduite dans
l’espèce, se sera communiquée par une filiation non interrompue; de
sorte qu’on peut dire qu’une femme a maintenant des règles, par la seule
raison que sa mère les a eues, comme elle aurait été phthisique peut
être, si sa mère l’eût été; il y a plus, elle peut être sujette au flux
menstruel, même quoique la cause primitive qui introduisit ce besoin ne
subsiste plus en elle.”—Roussel (“Système de la Femme,” p. 134).
_Id._... “Il y a eu des auteurs qui ne voulaient pas considérer la
menstruation comme une fonction inhérente à la nature de la femme, mais
comme une fonction acquise, continuant par l’habitude.”—Raciborski
(“Traité de la Menstruation,” p. 17).
_Id._... “The ‘set’ of mind, as Professor Tyndall well calls it,
whether, as he says, ‘impressed upon the molecules of the brain,’ or
conveyed in any other way, is quite as much a human as an animal
phenomenon. Perhaps the greater part of those qualities which we call
the characteristics of race are nothing else but the ‘set’ of the minds
of men transmitted from generation to generation, stronger and more
marked when the deeds are repeated, weaker and fainter as they fall into
disuse.... Tyndall says: ‘No mother can wash or suckle her baby without
having a “set” towards washing and suckling impressed upon the molecules
of her brain, and this set, according to the laws of hereditary
transmission, is passed on to her daughter. Not only, therefore, does
the woman at the present day suffer deflection from intellectual
pursuits through her proper motherly instincts, but inherited
proclivities act upon her mind like a multiplying galvanometer, to
augment indefinitely the amount of the deflection. _Tendency_ is
immanent even in spinsters, to warp them from intellect to baby-love.’
(Essay: “Odds and Ends of Alpine Life.”) Thus, if we could, by preaching
our pet ideal, or in any other way induce one generation of women to
turn to a new pursuit, we should have accomplished a step towards
bending all future womanhood in the same direction.”—Frances Power Cobbe
(Essay: “The Final Cause of Woman”).
See also Note XXVI., 7.
6.—“... _e’en the virgin_ ...”
An experienced gynæcologist writes:—“For want of proper information in
this matter, many a frightened girl has resorted to every conceivable
device to check what she supposed to be an unnatural and dangerous
hæmorrhage, and thereby inaugurated menstrual derangements which have
prematurely terminated her life, or enfeebled her womanhood. I have been
consulted by women of all ages, who frankly attributed their physical
infirmities to the fact of their having applied ice, or made other cold
applications locally, in their frantic endeavours to arrest the first
menstrual flow.”
What general practitioner has not met with analogous instances in the
circle of his own patients?
7.—“... _ere fit_ ...”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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