We often see girls who are not yet thirteen, who still wear short
clothes and go to school, that menstruate regularly, but with this
precocious menstruation there is also a corresponding development of
the body which gives them a womanly appearance. Such girls should not
be permitted to expose themselves to the inclemency of the weather,
because they are much more liable to take cold, which may result in
inflammations, than girls in whom the menses have not appeared.
Girls of a scrofulous taint or other hereditary habits of constitution,
often begin to menstruate prematurely; outdoor exercise and cod liver
oil with cold sponging on retiring at night are the proper resources
for building them up.
AMENORRHŒA.
This term is employed for the purpose of designating an absence of the
menstrual flow in persons who are old enough to menstruate, and in whom
there is no physiological reason for its suppression, such as being too
young, after the change of life, or during pregnancy and while nursing
the child on the breasts.
We find this disorder of the natural function of menstruation more
among the women of the rich and affluent whose lives are spent in
indolence and luxury; this is to be ascribed to lack of sufficient
exercise to stimulate the nervous and sanguineous systems to the
performance of their healthy functions.
The amenorrhœa, or a retarded menstruation in young girls, is oftener
the result of a general debility than of a disease of either the womb
or ovaries. We have here again about the same causes playing their
pernicious role as in precocious menstruation in weakly children;
that is, that the same causes produce directly opposite results. The
scrofulous and hereditary taints always interfere with the proper and
healthy development of the system; in amenorrhœa they appear to be a
hindrance to the formation and growth of the red blood corpuscles.
In some girls the suppression of the courses appears to be a wise
conservative provision of nature, because the girls are already
so weak and bloodless that even the loss of a very small amount
would only increase the anæmia, so that in these cases it is not so
much a question of “bringing on the courses” as of building up the
constitution, and enriching the blood in order to bring about the
desired result.
Chlorosis, or the green sickness, is not simply an anæmia or a
bloodlessness, but a physiological incapacity of the system to prepare
the required blood cells for the sanguineous fluid, and this is,
indeed, the most frequent cause of the disorder under consideration.
Chlorosis is a disease that is peculiar to the female sex, beginning as
a rule at the age of approaching puberty, between the fourteenth and
twentieth year, so that there appears to be a physiological relation
between the blood genesis on the one hand, and the development of
womanhood on the other.