Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/289

Rh the function and its periodical character. Women from whom both ovaria have been removed have lived on with this function in lull force, identical, as to quantity and time, to the function previous to the removal (Peaslee, "Ovarian Tumors," p. 527). Cases have occurred in which the ovaria have never passed out of the rudimentary state, and yet the general character of these women is decidedly feminine, "and never reminds us of viragos" (Klob, "Pathological Anatomy of the Female Pelvic Organs," p. 14). So far as external sexual traits are concerned, such a woman differs in no manner from one who is functionally perfect. The natural inference is, that forces, other than those which spring from the ovaria and their function, are capable of directing development, and that there is a certain amount of sex, that of the general configuration of the body especially, which develops independently of ovarian stimulus.

We may also gain a knowledge, inferentially, of the establishment of ovulation by observing the manner of cessation of this function. Its decline and extinction is a slow and gradual process. This period has a mean duration of nearly three years (Tilt, "Change of Life," p. 65). There are also anatomical changes, which, if taken into account, would greatly extend this time. The gradual decline of the ovarian function is a type of its equally gradual inception. It is a reasonable inference that, whatever takes time in throwing down, also requires time in the building up. So far as the importance of the change of life and the beginning of ovulation are concerned, the latter greatly exceeds the former—I am speaking of the two phenomena as physiological acts—and yet we see the former always attended by anatomical preparation, and by a functional activity so slowly diminished, that even the subject herself is unconscious of the crisis through which she is passing. I have already alluded to the fact that paroxysm, or rapidity in the establishment of a function, is an evidence of disease, and not the healthy way Nature has of doing this work.

In an article of this kind many facts which have a direct bearing upon this question cannot be mentioned in detail. Such a fact is the early vice of a peculiar nature to which very young children become addicted. The impulse to this is generally ascribed to emotions which result from ovarian stimulus; but, on the contrary, the tendency to vice exists long anterior to the development of this function. I can only state the fact that the presence of the passions antedates the appearance of ovulation by months and years; thus, the interest mutually excited in children of opposite sex is not confined to nubile years. In support of this I can appeal to the common experience of adults.

The conclusions at which I arrive are briefly these:

That sex, structurally and functionally, from infancy to puberty, is in a state of slow and progressive evolution.