dioscorea. But he is quite oblivious of the fact that though the diseases in both cases are called colic, the conditions present are diametrically opposed to each other. Now, homeopaths and eclectics might as well try to batter down Gibraltar by butting it, as to try to convert a regular schoolman, who has had this experience, to their way of thinking about colocynth and dioscorea, unless they can present some better arguments than they have hitherto been able to do. He has but one reason for his obstinacy, and wants nor needs any better-" I've tried 'em both, and they are no good."

A homeopath is called to a patient with colic due to an overstimulated Auerbach's plexus. He knows that colocynth in a minute dose will sometimes cure colic, and persists in its administration without benefit until his fear of dismissal from the case induces him to try dioscorea. His training and his faith in dynamization teach him erroneously that if dioscorea will cure at all, it will do so in the minute dose. He therefore gives it in the first or higher dilution, instead of from five to thirty drops as an eclectic would, and he meets with absolutely no results. In this instance, at least, his theory of dynamization fails him, but instead of realizing the fallacy of his theory, he is filled with disgust for eclectic therapeutics. If a true homeopath and honest, regular school therapeutics are, of course, entirely out of the question.

An eclectic knows that dioscorea sometimes cures colic, but when it fails because of a depressed Auerbach's plexus, he tries colocynth in the homeopathic dose with success, knowing little and caring less as to the reason why. But when a regular schoolman urges him to use morphia, and points out its beauties when introduced through a hypodermic needle, he laughs him to scorn; and, if pressed for his reason, exclaims: "What! make my patients drunk with morphia to cure cramp? I don't have to."

Is it not clear that narrowness of view dissipates energy and prevents progress in this instance?

While the facts just presented can easily be substantiated, the reasons adduced for their existence, as far as the writer is aware, are original with him, and as the use of colocynth in the minute dose and the use of dioscorea in any dose may not be familiar to some, it may be wise to illustrate the principle involved by as old and respectable a drug as ipecacuanha. The laity, as well as all three schools of medicine, have long been familiar with its power to produce emesis, in large doses. It was this power that induced Hahnemann to use it to cure vomiting in the minute dose. This use of it was made widely known to the regular profession twenty or more years ago, by Sidney Ringer, and has been adopted by both regulars and eclectics. The U. S. Dispensatory

says that "Ipecacuanha, in small doses, is a stimulant to the stomach."

We will now assume a normal organism, and begin to administer the drug in gradually increasing doses. At first the dose is so small that no appreciable effect is produced, but at a certain point, as the dose is increased, a sense of warmth is experienced in the stomach. As the dose continues to increase, we have successively nausea, secretion of mucus, emesis, paralysis of over-stimulation, the last effect being used medicinally by regular schoolmen to relieve dysenteric tenesmus. Now, assuming we have an organism in which the nerve force in the stomach is depressed enough to produce nausea and vomiting, we will begin to give ipecacuanha. In the minute dose which, in the normal organism, produced no appreciable effects, its stimulating or irritating action gradually raises the nerve force in the stomach to the norm, and nausea and vomiting cease. Increase the dose and they will be reproduced from an over-stimulated condition of the nerve force.

Ringer wrote in his handbook: "Few remedies are so efficacious as ipecacuanha in checking certain forms of vomiting." As to the kinds of vomiting, he says that in adults they are (1) vomiting of pregnancy; (2) nausea and vomiting during lactation; (3) nausea and vomiting at menstrual periods; (4) the morning vomiting of drunkards; (5) morning vomiting of general weakness, met with in convalescents. Hare, in his "Practical Therapeutics," p. 235, 1897, confirms these observations. The one etiological element which is common to all these conditions, is the depressed nerve force in the stomach, manifesting itself by nausea and vomiting. Ipecacuanha, through its local stimulating effects, removes this etiological factor, and thus makes directly for cure in all these conditions, so long as the dose is kept just too small to stimulate the stomach beyond the normal, producing over-stimulation. In the latter event the symptoms would be reproduced.

Should the nausea and vomiting be caused in the first instance by an irritant, over-stimulation is already present, and therefore ipecacuanha, in any dose, is useless as a means of relief, if it does not increase the difficulty. If this be true of ipecacuanha, there are many drugs that act on the same principles. Does there seem to be any good reason why all three schools should not adopt all three methods of administration, where the interests of the patient dictate, and the characteristics of the drug permit, in the same way that ipecacuanha has been adopted?

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL GENERATIVE CYCLE OF WOMAN.*

BY JENNIE G. DRENNAN, M.D., ST. THOMAS, ONT.

Br those who believe in evolution,, and there are surely few in the scientific world of to-day who do not, there is observed a constant, slow and gradual changing of the functions and structures of the animal in accordance with changes in its environment. -"structure is determined and preceded by function," and funetion is determined by environment. If an animal is to live in the water it must swim, therefore it must have structures to enable it to do so. In the generative system, as well as in any of the other systems of which the animal is composed, changes in structure due to changes in environment occur. Adaptation and heredity are the two factors which cause the changes wrought by evolution. If the environment be a good one, the adaptation to it improves the animal, and it is wise that the results of such an adaptation be handed down; but if the environment be a pernicious one, it is a misfortune for adaptation to it to occur, and also a misfortune that such shall be handed down to posterity. Unfortunately, evolution works backwards as well as forwards, and adaptation to error, as well as to right, occurs. Every people passes through its stages of "uncivilization, civilization, and decivilization." In this our day of vaunted enlightenment, we are prone to overlook errors of environment, and to fancy that we are always adapting ourselves to what is for our good; and that there can be no stage of decivilization for us. "A greater nation there hath not been." Nations may come and nations may go, but we are to remain forever; but as surely as the sands of time flow slowly away, it will be our fate, unless-and this does not seem probable we bend our minds diligently and sincerely to the task of ordering our lives according to natural law, to our beneficial environment.

In every phase of life evolution is manifested, but it is to it in the generative system of woman that I shall confine my thoughts. The physiological, generative cycle is comprised of three factors: ovulation, pregnancy, and lactation, one of these being completed before another is commenced. When ovulation, the first factor in this cycle, is in progress, the greater portion of the blood in the generative, circulatory system is directed to the ovaries, which are in a condition of physiological congestion; every normal physiological act is accompanied by a physiological hyperemia. Ovulation being completed and fecundation having occurred, the con

Read at meeting of the Canadian Medical Association, London, Ont., September, 1903.

gestion is transferred to the uterus, and, upon the termination of pregnancy, is transferred to the mammary glands for the performance of the function of lactation by them. To every one of these three organs, ovaries, uterus and mammary glands, an active hyperaemia, under the control of a healthy nervous system, is necessary for the free and normal performance of its functions. If from any cause this normal cycle is interfered with, and more blood than is required to keep the non-functionating organs, or those which should at this time be in a non-functionating state, in health, is directed to them, then the one supposed to be in an actively functionating state is deprived of its normal amount of blood, and its functionating power is lessened.

Ovulation, with its attending sexual excitement, is to the mammal what blossoming is to the plant, an evidence on the part of each that a seed is ready for impregnation. With mammals other than the human species, ovulation is confined to distinct seasons-the mating times of the year or years. Among the lower forms of mammalian life, fecundation usually occurs and is followed by pregnancy and lactation; on the termination of the last, ovulation again occurs, the time between two ovulations being determined by the length of time necessary for pregnancy and lactation, the lowest orders requiring shorter periods for development in utero, and for sustenance by their mammary secretion after birth. This is the physiological, generative cycle of mammals; but in the female mammal-woman-this physiological cycle is interrupted by a lesser cycle, a monthly one, ovulation and menstruation, which is a pathological condition arising out of a non-adherence to natural law. In the most primitive humans this lesser cycle occurs only occasionally, and the normal physiological cycle is generally maintained; but as the scale of civilization is ascended, the reverse occurs, and the lesser cycle predominates. Ovulation precedes menstruation, and the latter is an evidence that impregnation has not occurred; it is the depletion of a hyperemic, uterine mucous membrane, which, on the occurrence of ovulation, was being prepared for the reception of the impregnated ovum; every menstruation is the sign of a disappointed pregnancy, and is therefore an abnormal state. It does not occur in the other forms of mammals, save in a few anthropoid apes living in captivity.

There has been much discussion as to when ovulation occurs in the human mammal. My own opinion is that it occurs at the middle of the intermenstrual period, about 12 or 14 days from the commencement of the previous menstruation. This opinion has been formed by observing cases of intermenstrual pain; in noting in cases of chronic and acute pelvic disease marked exacerbations of symptoms at this time; and in the apparently healthy, slight

leucorrheal discharge, or mammary tenderness and enlargement, generally of one gland, leading one to believe that ovulation is a unilateral function; the human uterus, moreover, shows evidences of being intended to normally house but one fetus at a pregnancy. By some this leucorrheal discharge at this time is considered to be due to the discharge of the unimpregnated ovum from the uterus; but this, I think, occurs about two weeks later at the menstrual period, and that the intermenstrual discharge is due, as are also all of the other above-mentioned menstrual symptoms, to a compensatory congestion induced in these other organs to relieve ovaries, which, in a pathological state, cannot accommodate the physiological hyperemia incident upon ovulation. In the perfectly healthy woman this would not occur; but where in civilization is she always to be found? In neurotic patients one may notice an exhilaration or depression as the individual case may be, corresponding to this period; the Levitical law is another indication in favor of the occurrence of ovulation at this time. In the civilized human we find thirteen menstruations during the year, denoting that thirteen ovulations have occurred, this order being interfered with only by the interruption of the greater cycle. Ovulation, then, is a monthly phenomenon in woman. Why this more frequent occurrence in an animal whose offspring requires a longer time for development in utero, and for sustenance by the mammary secretion after birth? Should one not naturally expect ovulation to occur at very much longer intervals? Such would be the case if natural law had been, and were now, obeyed; if an adaptation to a pernicious environment had not occurred, and if this adaptation had not been handed down by heredity.

We have seen that in the lower forms of mammalia ovulation occurs at distinct periods of the year, and occurs at no others. There is every reason to believe that in primitive woman such also occurs; the fact that even in civilization more births occur in the spring and autumn, indicates an adherence to natural law. In Europe the maximum number of conceptions occurs in May and December, and the results of the May conceptions possess a greater amount of vitality than those of any other month, those of September having the least. Mating with primitive woman is much the same as it is with the brute creation; as soon as she is sexually mature she marries and enters upon the physiological, generative cycle of a mammal, one factor of this cycle following the other as night the day and day the night. As she nourishes her child by her mammary secretion for two years at the least, ovulation then would not re-occur until the end of the period of lactation; that is, ovulation would occur about once every three years. Primitive people do not produce large families the production of such is a sign of the non-adherence to