The Fraud of Feminism 5

The Fraud of Feminism 5

“It is not uncommon to find hysteria in females accompanied by an

utter indifference and insensibility to sexual relations. Premature

cessation of ovulation is a frequent determining cause. In cases where

the ovaries are absent the change from girl to woman, which normally

takes place at puberty, does not occur. The girl grows but does not

develop, a masculine appearance supervenes, the voice becomes manly

and harsh, sexual passion is absent, the health remains good. The most

violent instances of hysteria are in young women of the most robust and

masculine constitution” (John Mason Good, M.D., “Study of Medicine,”

1822). Other determining causes are given, as painful impressions,

long fasting, strong emotions, imitation, luxury, ill-directed

education and unhappy surroundings, celibacy, where not of choice

but enforced by circumstances, unfortunate marriages, long-continued

trouble, fright, worry, overwork, disappointment and such like nervous

perturbations, all which causes predispose to hysteria. “It attacks

childless women more frequently than mothers and particularly young

widows,” and, says Dr J. Mason Good, “more especially still those who

are constitutionally inclined to that morbid salacity which has often

been called nymphomania . . . the surest remedy is a happy marriage”

(“Study of Medicine,” 1822, iii. 531). Hysteria is, in common with

other nervous disorders, essentially a hereditary malady, and Briquet

(“Traité de l’hysterie,” 1899) gives statistics to show that in nine

cases out of ten hysterical parents have hysterical children. Dr Paul

Sainton of the Faculty of Medicine, Paris, says: “The appearance of

a symptom of hysteria generally proves that the malady has already

existed for some time though latent. The name of a provocative agent of

hysteria is given to any circumstance which suddenly reveals the malady

but the real cause of the disorder is a hereditary disposition. If the

real cause is unique, the provocative agents are numberless. The moral

emotions, grief, fright, anger and other psychic disturbances are the

most frequent causes of hysterical affections and in every walk of life

subjects are equally liable to attacks.”

 

Hysteria may appear at any age. It is common with children, especially

during the five or six years preceding puberty. Of thirty-three cases

under twelve years which came under Dr Still’s notice, twenty-three

were in children over eight years. Hysteria in women is most frequent

between the ages of fifteen and thirty, and most frequently of all

between fifteen and twenty. As a rule there is a tendency to cessation

after the “change.” It frequently happens, however, that the disease is

continued into an advanced period of life.

 

“There is a constant change,” says Professor Albert Moll (“Das nervöse

Weib,” p. 165), “from a cheerful to a depressed mood. From being free

and merry the woman in a short time becomes sulky and sad. While a

moment before she was capable of entertaining a whole company without

pause, talking to each member about that which interested him, shortly

afterwards she does not speak a word more. I may mention the well-worn

example of the refusal of a new hat as being capable of converting

the most lively mood into its opposite. The weakness of will shows

itself here in that the nervous woman [by “nervous” Dr Moll means

what is commonly termed “hysterical”] cannot, like the normal one,

command the __EXPRESSION__ of her emotions. She can laugh uninterruptedly

over the most indifferent matter until she falls into veritable

laughing fits. The crying fits which we sometimes observe belong to

the same category. When the nervous woman is excited about anything

she exhibits outbreaks of fury wanting all the characteristics of

womanhood, and she is not able to prevent these emotional outbursts.

In the same way just as the emotions weaken the will and the woman

cannot suppress this or that action, it is noticeable in many nervous

women that quite independently of these emotions there is a tendency

to continuous alterations in their way of acting. It has been noticed

as characteristic of many nervous persons that their only consistency

lies in their inconsistency. But this must in no way be applied to all

nervous persons. On this disposition, discoverable in the nature of

so many nervous women, rests the craving for change as manifested in

the continual search for new pleasures, theatres, concerts, parties,

tours, and other things (p. 147). Things that to the normal woman are

indifferent or to which she has, in a sense, accustomed herself, are

to the nervous woman a source of constant worry. Although she may

perfectly well know that the circumstances of herself and her husband

are the most brilliant and that it is unnecessary for her to trouble

herself in the least about her material position as regards the future,

nevertheless the idea of financial ruin constantly troubles her. Thus

if she is a millionaire’s wife she never escapes from constant worry.

Similarly the nervous woman creates troubles out of things that are

unavoidable. If in the course of years she gets more wrinkles, and

her attraction for man diminishes, this may easily become a source of

lasting sorrow for the nervous woman.”

 

We now have to consider a point which is being continually urged by

Feminists in the present day when confronted with the pathological

mental symptoms so commonly observed in women which are usually

regarded as having their origin in hysteria. We often hear it said by

Feminists in answer to arguments based on the above fact: “Oh, but

men can also suffer from hysteria!” “In England,” says Dr Buzzard,

“hysteria is comparatively rarely met with in males, the female sex

being much more prone to the affection.” The proportion of males

to females in hysteria is, according to Dr Pitrè (“Clinical Essay

on Hysteria,” 1891), 1 to 3; according to Bodensheim, 1 to 10; and

according to Briquet, 1 to 20. The author of the article on Hysteria in

_The Encyclopædia Britannica_ (11th edition, 1911) also gives 1 to 20

as the numerical proportion between male and female cases. Dr Pitrè,

in the work above cited, gives 82 per cent. of cases of convulsions in

women as against 22 in men. But in all this, under the concept hysteria

are included, and indeed chiefly referred to, various physical symptoms

of a convulsive and epileptic character which are quite distinct from

the mental conditions rightly or wrongly connected, or even identified,

with hysteria in the popular mind, and by many medical authorities.

But even as regards hysteria in the former sense of the word, a sharp

line of distinction based on a diagnosis of cases was long ago drawn

by medical men between _hysteria masculina_ and _hysteria fœminina_,

and in the present day eminent authorities—_e.g._ Dr Bernard

Holländer—would deny that the symptoms occasionally diagnosed as

hysteria in men are identical with or due to the same causes as the

somewhat similar conditions known in women under the name.

 

After all, this whole question in its broader bearings is more a

question of common-sense observation than one for medical experts.

 

What we are here chiefly concerned with as “hysteria” (in accordance

with popular usage of the term) are certain pathological mental

symptoms in women open to everybody’s observation, and denied by no one

unprejudiced by Feminist views. Every impartial person has only to cast

his eye round his female acquaintance, and to recall the various women,

of all classes, conditions and nationalities, that he may have come in

contact with in the course of his life, to recognise those symptoms

of mental instability commonly called hysterical, as obtaining in at

least a proportion of one to every four or five women he has known, in

a marked and unmistakable degree. The proportion given is, in fact,

stated in an official report to the Prussian Government issued some ten

years back as that noticeable among female clerks, post office servants

and other women employed in the Prussian Civil Service. Certainly as

regards women in general, the observation of the present writer, and

others whom he has questioned on the subject, would seem to indicate

that the proportions given in the Prussian Civil Service report as

regards the number of women afflicted in this way are rather under than

over stated.[44:1] There are many medical men who aver that no woman

is entirely free from such symptoms at least immediately before and

during the menstrual period. The head surgeon at a well-known London

hospital informed a friend of mine that he could always tell when this

period was on or approaching with his nurses, by the mental change

which came over them.

 

[44:1] The insanities mentioned above are the extremes. There

are mental disturbances of less severity constantly occurring

which are connected with the regular menstrual period as

well as with disordered menstruation, with pregnancy, with

parturition, with lactation, and especially with the change of

life.

 

Now these pathological symptoms noticeable in a slight and more or

less unimportant degree in the vast majority, if not indeed in all

women, and in a marked pathological degree in a large proportion of

women, it is scarcely too much to say do not occur at all in men. I

have indeed known, I think, two men, and only two, in the course of my

life, exhibiting mental symptoms analogous to those commonly called

“hysterical” in women. On the other hand my own experience, and it is

not alone, is that very few women with whom I have come into more or

less frequent contact, socially or otherwise, have not at times shown

the symptoms referred to in a marked degree. If, therefore, we are to

admit the bare possibility of men being afflicted in a similar way it

must be conceded that such cases represent such _raræ aves_ as to be

negligible for practical purposes.

 

A curious thing in pronounced examples of this mental instability in

women is that the symptoms are often so very similar in women of quite

different birth, surroundings and nationality. I can recall at the

present moment three cases, each different as regards birth, class, and

in one case nationality, and yet who are liable to develop the same

symptoms under the influence of quite similar _idées fixes_.

 

But it seems hardly necessary to labour the point in question at

greater length. The whole experience of mankind since the dawn of

written records confirmed by, as above said, that of every living

person not specially committed to the theories of Modern Feminism,

bears witness alike to the prevalence of what we may term the

hysterical mind in woman and to her general mental frailty. It is not

for nothing that women and children have always been classed together.

This view, based as it is on the unanimous experience of mankind and

confirmed by the observation of all independent persons, has, I repeat,

not been challenged before the appearance of the present Feminist

Movement and hardly by anyone outside the ranks of that movement.

 

* * * * *

 

It is not proposed here to dilate at length on the fact, often before

insisted upon, of the absence throughout history of the signs of

genius, and, with a few exceptions, of conspicuous talent, in the

human female, in art, science, literature, invention or “affairs.”