It is in the domain of disease that the most strenuous and, on the whole,
the most successful efforts have been made to discover a menstrual cycle
in men. Such a field seems promising at the outset, for many morbid
exaggerations or defects of the nervous system might be expected to
emphasize, or to free from inhibition, fundamental rhythmical processes of
the organism which in health, and under the varying conditions of social
existence, are overlaid by the higher mental activities and the pressure
of external stimuli. In the eighteenth century Erasmus Darwin wrote a
remarkable and interesting chapter on "The Periods of Disease," dealing
with solar and lunar influence on biological processes.[121] Since then,
many writers have brought forward evidence, especially in the domain of
nervous and mental disease, which seems to justify a belief that, under
pathological conditions, a tendency to a male menstrual rhythm may be
clearly laid bare.
We should expect an organ so primitive in character as the heart, and with
so powerful a rhythm already stamped upon its nervous organization, to be
peculiarly apt to display a menstrual rhythm under the stress of abnormal
conditions. This expectation might be strengthened by the menstrual rhythm
which Mr. Perry-Coste has found reason to suspect in pulse-frequency
during health. I am able to present a case in which such a periodicity
seems to be indicated.
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