_Id._... “Then there is the inner consciousness—the psyche—that has never yet been brought to bear upon life and its questions. Besides which, there is a supersensuous reason. Observation is perhaps more powerful an organon than either experiment or empiricism. If the eye is always watching, and the mind on the alert, ultimately chance supplies the solution.”—Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. X.). _Id._... “Women only want hints, finger-boards, and finding these, will follow them to Nature. The quick-glancing intellect will gather up, as it moves over the ground, the almost invisible ends and threads of thought, so that a single volume may convey to the mind of woman truths which man would require to have elaborated in four or six.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 420). 3.—“... _futile mannish pleas_ ...” Roussel details fully some nine of these main theories or explanations of the habitude. (“Système,” Note A.) 6.—“_In blindness born_ ...” “Tous ces faits nous induisent fortement à conjecturer qu’il a dû exister un temps ou les femmes n’étaient point assujettiés à ce tribut incommode; que le flux menstruel bien loin d’être une institution naturelle, est au contraire un besoin factice contracté dans l’état sociale.”—Roussel (_Op. cit._, Chap. II.). Note that menstruation (scriptural “sickness”) remains a pathological incident, not, as child-birth, an indubitably natural and normal physical function. See also Note XXX., 4. _Id._—“... _in error fostered_ ...” Not only the habit itself, but its causes. And this by medical, _i.e._, assumedly curative, practitioners. As to which “fostering,” medical and clinical manuals afford abundant spontaneous and ingenuous testimony, and also of other professional practices of instigation, or condonation, or complicity, at which a future age will look aghast. _Conf._ the following from Whitehead, “On the Causes and Treatment of Abortion and Sterility” (Churchill, 1847):— “In a case under my care of pregnancy in a woman, with _extreme deformity of the pelvis_, wherein it was considered advisable to _procure abortion_ in the fifth month of the process, the ergot alone was employed, and, at first, with the desired effect.” [The italics are not in the doctor’s book; he remarks nothing wrong or immoral, and—in an unprofessional person—illegal, and open to severest penalty; he is simply detailing the effects of a specified medicament.] “It was given in _three successive_ pregnancies, and in each instance labour pains came on after eight or ten doses had been administered, and expulsion was effected by the end of the third day. It was perseveringly tried in a fourth pregnancy in the same individual, and failed completely” (p. 254). There is an ominous silence as to whether the patient’s health or life also “failed completely.” See further a case noted on p. 264, _op. cit._:—