The psychology of marriage / by Walter M. Gallichan.

  • Walter M. Gallichan
Date:
[1917]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of marriage / by Walter M. Gallichan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    babe in the days when her arms served as auxiliary feet. In assuming the commanding erect posture of humanity of to-day, she has paid for the privilege in increased lia¬ bility to displacement of the womb (uterus), and become exposed to innumerable maladies. The savage head passes almost easily through the pelvic girdle, the gateway of life, with not much more pain to mother and child than in the birth of the higher mammals. To-day this ring is often too narrow for the larger skulls of homo sapiens, and the infant cannot enter life normally, but must be assisted by mechanical means. The adoption of the majestic human biped erect attitude has immensely affected the function of motherhood. Physiological progress has imposed a periodic trial upon woman, which in their ancestors occurred less fre¬ quently, and with less effect upon the body, mind and emo¬ tions. The monthly recurrence marks a high stage of evolution, but it is an advance gained at considerable cost in the way of discomfort, affectability to disorder, nervous symptoms, and occasional unbalancing of the mind and the emotional nature. This phenomenon has been likened by some writers to disease, and for ages there has been a tendency to regard women as chronic invalids, or at least as valetudinarians. De Boismont estimated that out of 360 women 278 suffer more or less pain once a month. This function, which plays so great a part in the life of woman, is manifested about the age of fourteen, and occasionally earlier. It is a singular fact that an immense number, probably the majority, of girls are unprepared for the onset of the period, and know nothing of its purpose. A young girl who threw herself into the Seine, at her first menstrual crisis, said that she wished to die because she was suffering from a terrible unknown disease. Extreme alarm, depression, insanity, hysteria, even suicide, may be the results of ignorance. Tilt states that in his practice he found 25 per cent, of women quite unprepared for the first occurrence. Most of them were shocked, and some had hysterical fits, while others imagined that they had a serious and sudden malady. In the case of all who were frightened health was injured. Dr. Helen Kennedy, in America, as cited by Ellis, found
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