English poetry -- 19th century; Women -- History; Women -- Social conditions; Women -- Suffrage
“... the soul
Which grows within a child makes the child grow.”
The physiologists and psychologists, as is not unusual, tardily follow
in the wake of the poets. At the International Congress of Experimental
Psychology, London, 1892, “Professor Delbœuf said that at all times the
mind of man had been capable of influencing the body, but it was only in
recent times that this action had been scientifically put in
evidence.”—(_Times_, August 3rd, 1892.)
And Dr. Albert Moll, of Berlin, had written the year previously,
that—“When the practical importance of mental influences becomes more
generally recognised, physicians will be obliged to acknowledge that
psychology is as important as physiology. Psychology and psychical
therapeutics will be the basis of a rational treatment of neuroses. The
other methods must group themselves around this; it will be the centre,
and no longer a sort of Cinderella of science, which now admits only the
influence of the body on the mind, and not that of the mind on the
body.”—(“Hypnotism,” p. 328.) See also Note XXVIII., 5.
XXXII.
2.—“... _woo the absent curse_.”
Even Raciborski condemns this common error of treatment:—“... quand les
jeunes filles de cette catégorie paraissent souffrantes, quel que soit
le caractère des souffrances, on est disposé à les attribuer au défaut
du flux menstruel, on le regrette, on l’invoque, et l’on tente tout pour
le provoquer. Ces idées sont aujourd’hui encore très profondément
enracinées dans le public, et sont souvent la cause des entraves au
traitement rationnel proposé par les médecins.”—(Traité, &c., ed. 1868,
p. 377.)
And Mrs. E. B. Duffey very sensibly says:—
“Nature ... is very easily perverted: and the girl who begins by
imagining she is ill or ought to be at such times will end by being
really so.” (“No Sex in Education,” Philadelphia, 1874, p. 79.)
3.—“... _counter-effort_ ...”
“Forel and many others mention that there are certain popular methods of
slightly retarding menstruation. In one town many of the young women tie
something round their little finger if they wish to delay menstruation
for a few days in order to go to a ball, &c. The method is generally
effectual, but when faith ceases, the effect also ceases.”—Dr. Albert
Moll (“Hypnotism,” p. 226).
Before quitting this special subject it may be well to remark that
little more than the fringe is here indicated of an enormous mass of
evidence which affords more than presumptive confirmation and support
for the position here taken in the whole question of this “abnormal
habit.”
4.—“... _custom_ ...”—See Note XXIV., 6.
XXXIII.
2.—“... _newer vigour to the brain_.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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