The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    465/546 (page 435)
    DELAYED MENARCHE MORBID were demonstrably hypoplastic. Hypoplasia may be considered a definite barrier in some 400,000 American marriages.” And he adds that, despite its frequency, this defect “ has engaged the interest of the medical profession hardly at all.” 1 Then, in enumerating the symptoms of genital hypoplasia, he makes these important statements :— “ The most important type of menstrual disturbance is, in our opinion, delayed menarche.” 2 And what does he mean by delayed menarche ? In America, that land of infertile women, he says, the onset of menstruation in 80 per cent of girls occurs before the fifteenth birthday. That is to say, according to statistics which I have not seen, but which I suspect of having yielded averages in no sense equivalent to the normal , he regards the onset of menstruation after 15 as delayed menarche, and he says : “ Many of the residual 20 per cent . . . can be demonstrated to have constitutional dis abilities capable of retarding development.” He calls this condition “ menstrual misbehaviour ”, and de clares that it “ is nearly always the symptom that first draws attention to the need for thorough investigation.” 3 But, over and above these witnesses of the fact that delayed menarche is associated with inferior health (from what cause soever), there is the evidence adduced in a previous chapter 4 to the effect that sexual vigour is correlated with the early onset of the catamenia. The conclusion that the vigour and duration of a function are an index to its normality seems, ceteris paribus , ineluctable, and, since it appears to be established that the early (/ do not mean the precocious ) onset of menstruation is associated with a longer sexual fife in the female, we are justified (apart from the other evidence adduced above) in regarding early menarche rather than delayed menarche as normal. On these grounds I conclude :— (1) That, contrary to the opinion expressed to me by medical women, the age of onset of menstruation is most important. (2) That it may be considered normal in English girls at about 13, but not later than 14. 6 1 J.A.M.A., 16.8.30, p. 468. 2 Ibid., p. 470. 3 Ibid. 4 See pp. 371-372 supra. 6 In this respect it is interesting to find that Albrecht yon Haller, a noted medical man of the eighteenth century, and also a traveller, set the usual age for onset of menstruation in English, German and Swiss girls, between 12 and 13 years (D.W., I, p. 668).