Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/288

274, which entails a change in the mental character of the child. It instinctively exercises its new function of prehension, and is as prone to bite as a woman is to love.

And here let me recall what I said at the opening of this paper upon errors of structure. This process of dentition will illustrate it, and render its application to the diseases of ovarian function apparent. It is during the formative process of dentition that the function may be perverted, the shape and growth retarded. During this slow development it is at the mercy of faulty nutrition and hygiene. Perfect nutrition and ceaseless care are necessary to avert the dangers of dentition. The effort to ward off these disasters would be useless which confined itself to the completion of the act, to the neglect of the formative process. And yet this is the manner in which the sexual completion of woman is treated. How much we hear of the woman, and how little of the child!

Mental changes are described as taking place as suddenly as those of the body. There are of course some subjective mental impressions which may be traced to the new ovarian function—the sense of completion, and the new relation it establishes with others, and the consciousness that half a lifetime will be under the dominion of a strange periodicity, a mystery to herself. Aside from these there are no newly-developed mental attributes which may be traced to sex. Any thing new in mental vigor which may present itself at this period of life is more clearly explained by the general maturity of mind and body than by the action of a special function, and the state of remote organs.

It has been believed until recently that the removal of the ovaries, by operation or disease, would unsex the woman; that the features would become thin and masculine, the voice harsh, and even a beard develop. This is now known to be a wrong belief. It is true that the removal of these organs has been over-estimated; is it not possible that the commencement of their functional activity has been given undue importance in their reflex effect upon mind and body? This is answered by the fact that so gradual is the growth of mind, and the expanding of the intellectual limits, that the closest observer will not detect the dividing line between childhood and womanhood. Look back, if you will, at the young woman who has grown up under your daily notice, and point out the period of her life—be it one of months or a year—in which sex has become, objectively, a part of brain-fibre. For myself it is impossible to perceive the era of this change, so gradually are the various stages of development merged into each other.

A few words about the function itself concerning which so much is being said. The periodic presence is regarded as an expression of ovarian activity alone. This is in a great measure true; but it is not all the truth. Facts which have been coming to the light in the last few years show that forces not of ovarian origin are engaged in