The critical age of woman / by Walter M. Gallichan.

  • Walter M. Gallichan
Date:
[1920]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The critical age of woman / by Walter M. Gallichan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    replied that he must inquire from an older woman. I know a mental physician who has found the auto-erotic habit in a woman of over seventy. Several famous and much-admired women, such as Ninon de L’Enclos, had love affairs in old age. We have seen that the monthly function may be renewed long after middle age and the climacteric change. The girl who begins to menstruate freely at thirteen shows a great interest in the other sex, and is addicted to flirting and coquetry, is powerfully sexed, and will retain her vigour to an older age than one who is undeveloped, whose first monthly period is delayed, who suffers from scanty or repressed menstruation, and is not attracted by men. Can we lay down exactly the same rule of sexual life for both of these common types of woman¬ hood? The first is evidently a favourite of Nature, who has formed her for racial functions, and the other may be sub¬ normal sexually, or wanting in erotic emotion. We know that sex power in both sexes is usually accompanied by energy in other matters, and is, in all normal cases, a sign of health. Prolonged disuse of organs and functions tends to derangement, pre¬ mature loss of sex capacity, and in some
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