A further contribution to the doctrine of the undulatory movement of the vital processes in woman is to be found in my own observations that pathological symptoms which have become manifest before and at the time of the first onset of menstruation, and have given but little trouble throughout the period of developed and regular sexual activity, are apt when menstruation ceases to recrudesce, and to become as prominent as they were at the commencement of the sexual life. Women who at the time of puberty suffered from cardiac troubles, from digestive disturbances, or from various forms of nervous irritation, and in whom as they grew up these disorders passed more or less into abeyance, are apt at the climacteric period to exhibit, as I have frequently been able to observe, a violent return of these symptoms, in the form, as the case may be, of tachycardia, of dyspeptic troubles, or of psychoneuroses. In this connection we may mention an observation of _Potain’s_, who distinguishes a peculiar form of chlorosis, occurring in individuals of delicate constitution, which, though apparently cured, reappears at the menopause.
Related to the sexual life of woman is another attribute, one intimately connected with the idea of the female sex, and one which since the primeval days of humanity has filled men with delight and poets with inspiration—the attribute of beauty.
The beauty of woman, a prominent secondary sexual character, makes its first appearance at puberty, when the girl’s form, hitherto undifferentiated in its external bodily configuration, begins to assume a soft and rounded appearance, when the features become regular, the breasts enlarge, and the pubic hair begins to grow—when, in short, to the primary sexual characters already existing, the secondary sexual characters are superadded.
Feminine beauty continues to increase until the attainment of sexual maturity. In her third decade woman arrives at the acme of her sexual life and at the same time attains the perfection of her beauty.
The ensuing sexual phases, pregnancy, parturition, and lactation, entail a decline in beauty, not rapid indeed, but advancing gradually, with the slow yet sure-footed pace of time. The organic revolutions accompanying these processes leave traces recorded upon the surface of the body in conspicuous and indelible characters. The illnesses, also, which so often accompany the fulfilment of sexual functions, in injuring health impair also beauty.