That there are annual seasonal changes in the human organism, especially
connected with the sexual function, is a statement that has been made by
physiologists and others from time to time, and the statement has even
reached the poets, who have frequently declared that spring is the season
of love.
Thus, sixty years ago, Laycock, an acute pioneer in the
investigation of the working of the human organism, brought
together (in a chapter on "The Periodic Movements in the
Reproductive Organs of Woman," in his _Nervous Diseases of
Women_, 1840, pp. 61-70) much interesting evidence to show that
the system undergoes changes about the vernal and autumnal
equinoxes, and that these changes are largely sexual.
Edward Smith, also a notable pioneer in this field of human
periodicity, and, indeed, the first to make definite observations
on a number of points bearing on it, sums up, in his remarkable
book, _Health and Disease as Influenced by Daily, Seasonal, and
Other Cyclical Changes in the Human System_ (1861), to the effect
that season is a more powerful influence on the system than
temperature or atmospheric pressure; "in the early and middle
parts of spring every function of the body is in its highest
degree of efficiency," while autumn is "essentially a period of
change from the minimum toward the maximum of vital conditions.
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