emotional sensibility. And here, again, our anticipations are realized by the figures. The interval between twenty and forty years constitutes this period in women. For these ages inclusive we have 1,923 cases of insanity against 1,297 cases for all other ages. It therefore follows that more than one-half the cases of insanity for this period were of melancholia. We can gain a clearer idea of the intensity of emotional activity in women by extending further the same line of comparison in regard to men. For the ages between twenty and forty inclusive we have 2,172 cases of insanity, and but 832 cases of melancholia for all ages. This shows a marked contrast in the liability of the sexes to this form of mental disease; for, at this period, the number of male cases exceeding the female by 200, yet the percentage of melancholia is thirty-three against fifty-three per cent, for women.
I do not believe that I err when I say that this excess in the emotional nature of woman over that of man is the outcome of physical and functional sexual traits, and is, consequently, another phase of sexual cerebration.
The above throws considerable light upon that peculiarity in woman's character so gracefully alluded to by George Eliot, and which I had so much difficulty in defining in the opening part of this article. This gentleness springs from woman's exquisite emotional susceptibility, as it is from the play of the emotions that this character becomes manifest. Having in view its origin in the emotions, and reaching its greatest development at the period of completion in woman's sexual genesis, the evidence of its existence as a form of sexual cerebration becomes complete. Were it otherwise, we would expect to see it obeying laws other than those of sexual development, and not existing in equal intensity during childhood, developed in excess of the male at womanhood, to disappear in the placidity of old age.
I have been using these statistics of insanity for the purpose of showing the extent of normal differences in the mental constitution of the sexes, and consequently of normal sexual cerebration. If we were to consider this in its abnormal phases, we would have opened before us another great field of investigation, the study of which would throw much light upon many problems of sex. Puerperal and gestational mania, the singular perversion of the maternal emotion attending lactation, are of special importance with reference to abnormal sexual cerebration. Hysteria, peculiarly a feminine disease, undoubtedly has its origin in sexual functional derangement, and is a striking example of the extent to which the emotional nature may be perverted by the abnormal actions of certain organs. Those cases of the social evil which break out from the purest domestic surroundings, and which defy all attempts at reform, are evidently due to the perversion of a healthful psychical state. The services of a skilled physician are needed to reform this class, and not the sentimental aid of reform societies, or the visits of the colporteur.
