about visiting the closet when there are men in the household. The movements of the bowels occur at irregular hours, and gradually these girls become habitually constipated. In my opinion, the impaction of feces and accompanying straining at stool is a more important factor in the production of uterine displacements than falls or any form of physical exercise that a woman can take. More good can be done by correcting the habit of constipation or rather preventing its formation than by anything we can do for her during menstruation. Very little is said on this subject in the text-books in spite of the fact that it is such a common and so important a factor in the causation of uterine trouble. If we can educate a woman to properly regulate her bowels we have accomplished a great deal. I regard it as one of the most difficult things which gynecologists have to do. Dress of Young Girls and Women.-The modern costumes of women, especially among the well-to-do classes, is and has been bad for many generations. It obstructs freedom of action and lessens the good effects of wholesome exercise. Lacing is especially bad. I am sure its bad influence on the lower ribs and certain organs is more or less transmitted from mother to daughter, that is, abnormally small waists, with defective lower ribs and muscles of the chest are more common among those whose parents for generations have worn corsets and the accompanying restraining costumes; and it is largely in this class that we find loose kidneys, prolapsed and dragging stomachs, omentums and intestines and small anteflexed uteri or retroverted imperfectly developed generative organs. Many of this class do not need to lace to have a small waist, for they either inherit it or they have failed to develop to normal proportions these important tissues and organs, by freedom of action and normal, invigorating exercise out of doors, etc. If a girl's general health is kept good and she is allowed or taught to take a normal amount of free exercise and does not wear corsets or restrain by pressure the lower ribs and abdominal muscles, until she is fully developed, say at eighteen or twenty, corsets do little harm without giving great discomfort. Whereas, if worn before development is completed, while the tissues are soft and yielding, the bad effects are induced so gradually that even truthful girls will declare they never lace; for in a large measure they unconsciously restrain and prevent normal development. Therefore, without doubt, many cases of uterine disease would be prevented if women wore costumes that gave the same freedom from restraint to normal action of the whole body as that of the dress of the average man of to-day. Should a young woman rest during menstruation? I would say yes, if rest is indicated by symptoms, such as pain, excessive flowing, dragging sensations when up and about her usual vocations, but normally developed girls in good general health do not have these symptoms, and in my opinion are not benefited by rest in bed or their rooms, nor even by confinement to the house during menstruation. the is Te is old. Until girls are fairly well developed and the function of menstruarador tion is pretty fully proven to be normal, a certain amount of care should be enforced as to severe or trying exercise or work of any kind. Of course, more care should be given to delicate, imperfectly developed young women, but in my opinion it is wrong to regard normal menstruation in a healthy woman as a sickness and that little good, and sometimes harm, comes from keeping girls indoors under unnecessary restraint. I protest against the use of hot gin and other stimulants for pain during menstruation, and especially against the use of opium, particularly the ready use of the hypodermic injections of morphine at such times. Too much reliance on tonics and drugs merely upsets the digestion and further delays full, normal development and may make local treatment a necessity. In girls under sixteen or seventeen years of age, with rare exceptions, the disorders of menstruation can be cured by freedom from enforced study, or indoor life, and mental and emotional excitement, with plenty of good, wholesome food, out-of door exercise and diversion by contact with children as young or younger than themselves. Laxatives and sometimes partly digested or easily assimilated food, and occasionally iron or some simple tonic, such as olive oil, cod liver oil may be useful. But to give medicine and keep these patients under the same mental and physical environment certainly does not prevent disease of the generative organs, but rather tends to insure their falling later into the hands of specialists; the frequency of which event, in a measure, accounts for the craze of all young doctors to take up the specialty of operative gynecology. THE SOUTHERN NEGRO-HIS RECENT EROTIC TENDEN- TO PREVENTION.* BY S. C. BAKER, M.D.. In discussing this subject I shall confine myself to that phase of it which deals with the tendency of the negro man to commit rape upon the white woman, a tendency that is the terror (and justly so) of every white woman's heart-a very present evil especially in the lonely districts of our country neighborhoods. The frequency of these outbursts of erotic passion in the past few years would indicate that the negro's tendency in that direction is on the increase rather than on the decrease, as might have been hoped. Within the period stated instances too numerous to mention have occurred in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, and in every other State in which the negro forms a large proportion of the population. The history of the Sam Hose case in Georgia less *Read before the Tri-State Medical Association of the Carolinas and Virginia. Annual meeting, Charleston, S. C., February 20, 1900. than a year ago with the terrible retribution that was visited upon the culprit is fresh in our memories. Only on Saturday last a case of "Lynching for the Usual Crime" occurred in Aiken county, this State. The report of the Attorney General of South Carolina for 1899 shows that there have been thirteen convictions for rape and for assault with intent to ravish twelve convictions during that year. All of them except one were cases of negro men against white women, the exception being the case of a negro man against a negro woman. I have not been able to learn the numbers in North Carolina and Virginia, but presume they are approximately the same. In order to thoroughly appreciate the causes that underlie these manifestations of erotic passion, it is necessary to study the negro since his implantation in America and to note particularly his proclivities in this special direction. There are three epochs through which, considered as a race, he has passed, in each of which he has manifested well defined racial peculiarities and traits, viz.: first as a slave, from his importation in colonial times to his emancipation in 1865; second, as a freedman—the transition stage-from 1865 up to about 1895, by which time most of the second class had died out; and third, as a free-man, the children of these freedmen, the generation now arrived at manhood. 1st. As slave-when first brought to this country the negro inherited the traits and characteristics of his African progenitors. Of these it is not necessary for me to speak at length, as they have already been so ably dealt with. All law in his savage state was limited to restraint of individual liberty for the passing moment by mere brute force, and he understood no other reason for obedience. The spirit of obedience to law because it is right was wanting, and incomprehensible to him. But here, under the patriarchal system of slavery, he was constantly under supervision and restraint. It became the duty and interest of the master to see to it that the vices and natural evil propensities should be eradicated if possible, and if not possible then that they be prevented from criminal expression to the injury of others. His going and coming-his very life almostwas at his master's behest and he learned soon to look up to him as to a being of a superior order. This may have, probably did engender in some feelings of envy or resentment, but as a rule the negro, as a slave, was content and docile, was kindly dealt with and entertained a sincere regard and affection for his owner. He was not educated as a rule in book-learning, but gained knowledge in an industrial school which limited its curriculum to a study of the economic uses of the plough, the hoe and the blacksmith's hammer. A few house-boys could read a little, generally out of the Bible, and these we now have with us as the "local preachers" and "class lead. ers" of the passing generation. Their religious teaching was at the mistress' knee or seated in the gallery of his master's church on Sundays, where he participated in the same services as his owner. The crimes ascribable to them were petty thefts to satify their appetites or else the clandestine visitation to the negro quarter of a neighboring plantation at night to be with some admired negress. Prior to their emancipation the crime of rape was almost unheard of. I have been able to learn of but one instance of even attempted rape, in this State, and that was unsuccessful. 2d. As Freedman-Inheriting the traits of his aboriginal ancestors, but modified by nearly three hundred years of contact with the restraining influences of the then institutions, he was, in 1865, without preparation and without ardently desiring it, thrown upon civil liberty, which, to him, meant license, and for a season there reigned the anarchy of after-the-war times when, to a certain extent, revenge held sway. Even then rape of white women was rarely chargeable to the ex-slave. The reconstruction era was upon the South. The marriage of a negro man and white woman was recognized as admissable by our ready-made laws and the adoption of this plan possibly acted as a safety valve for the licentious proclivities of the liberated slave. The repeal of the law came after a time, but its baneful effects remain, in that the white woman, heretofore placed upon a pedestal and held to be unapproachable and far above even their desire, was brought down, and the image, once dethroned, was ever afterwards deemed within their reach. Fortunately for those of that period, the negro is not by nature revengeful, and his misdemeanors generally took the form of theft, or, at most, barn-burning. ous training still held the very large majority in bounds and freedom failed to entirely break the chain of old associations. For a year or two their habitat was unsettled, many having wandered off from their old homes in the trail of their liberators or led a shittless, thievish life, but soon they settled down in their old haunts under their former masters as laborers or tenants and still freely and in compliment gave the title of old master and old mistress, young master and young mistress to their former owners. This class is now rapidly dying out. Thirty-five years have passed since emancipation. Previ 3d. As Freeman-All of us know well the difference of bearing between the submissive, respectful, more or less industrious ex-slave, with simple wants and no learning, and his free-born children, the generation just grown to manhood, the stubborn, impudent, shiftless personage with nameless cravings and a smattering of book learning. Resentful, seeking offense, brooding over the imagined wrongs of their fathers. In the towns, found idling around street corners, drinking in the back lots, gazing at and discussing the pictures of the half nude ballet dancers on the theater billboards or reading in the negro barber shops or cobblers' stalls such papers as the Police Gazette, with its lascivious pictures and suggestive attitudes. With imaginations heated with such sights and conversation and with passions often fired with whiskey, of such is the rapist of to-day, with such are our criminal dockets crowded. The court stenographer of the Third Judicial Circuit of this State furnishes me the following information on the subject for the past ten years, as applying to his circuit. It may be remarked that the third circiut is about an average of the circuits of the State as to density of population and its complexion, as to urban and rural inhabitants, intelligence and education of negroes and so forth, and South Carolina is possibly about an average of the Southern States in these particulars. He says: "About twenty-five cases of rape have come up for trial in this circuit during the past ten years besides about five others which did not come to trial because of the lynching of the accused. In all of these, with one exception, the negroes implicated were under thirty years of age. In the excepted case there were several negroes implicated, one being an older man who seemed to have been led on by the younger ones. For the crime of assault with intent to ravish I recall about ten cases occurring in the same length of time and all by negroes under thirty years of age. I am of the opinion that 95 per cent. of all crime in the Third Circuit is committed by the negro, and of the 95 per cent. committed by the negro 90 per cent. is committed by the free-born negro. It is very rare that you see an old slave charged with any crime. The majority of criminals are from 15 to 30 years old." CAUSES. Granted then that rape is on the increase and that it, as well as other forms of crime, is committed almost exclusively by the free-born negro, some of the causes at least must be chargeable to the change in his environment and training since freedom. With this retrospect, let us consider some of the leading characteristics of this younger generation. The negro of to-day is naturally and by inheritance of bestial bent. Unrestrained by moral sense of right and wrong and incapable of intellectual recreation, like the animal, he seeks pleasure either in satisfying his hunger or his sexual appetite and afterwards falls to sleep until roused by the cravings of nature. Their sense of modesty is of the slightest. On the plantations when the weather is warm enough, the children, male and female, up to 6 or 8 years of age, go without clothing. Any one who has seen a crowd of naked negro boys on the banks of a bathing pool has observed their lascivious antics and is familiar with the nature of their conversation. Nine times out of ten their talk will turn upon their sexual organs and he will be the most envied who can show the greatest development. Hear a crowd of plow hands at work together joke an associate as to his prowess or the lack of it in some amorous escapade. In the country, especially, his whole thought, from the child to the man, aside from the procuring of food, is in the line of licentious indulgence Remembering these characteristics, which play the role of first cause we can appreciate better the other factors, more or less remote, which share in the final result. IMPROVIDENCE. Of all races he is the most improvident. Hailing from a tropical climate where nature provides his every want, he |