water for five minutes.

If of a full habit, they ought to use a spare diet and chiefly of the
vegetable kind, avoiding strong liquors and everything that may tend
to heat the body or increase the quantity of blood; and when the
symptoms appear, should take a dram of powdered nitre in a cup of
water gruel every five or six hours.

In both cases the patient should sleep on a hard mattress and be kept
cool and quiet; the bowels should be kept regular by a pill of white
walnut extract or bitterroot.

CHAPTER IX.

MENSTRUATION.

Though this is not a disease, but a healthy function, and as, from
various causes, derangement of the function occurs, it is proper that
it should be perfectly understood. Menstruation is the term applied to
the phenomenon that attends the rupture of what is called the
_Graafian follicles_ of the ovaries and the discharge of an ova, or
egg. It is a bloody discharge from the female genitals; not differing
from ordinary blood, excepting that it does not coagulate, and in its
peculiar odor. The blood comes from the capillaries of the womb and
vagina.

MENOPHANIA, OR THE FIRST APPEARANCE

of the menses, is usually preceded by a discharge of a fluid whitish
matter from the vagina, by nervous excitement, and by vague pains and
heaviness in the loins and thighs, numbness of the limbs, and swelling
and hardness of the breasts. The first appearance is an evidence of
capacity for conception. It generally appears about the age of
fourteen, but varies from nine to twenty-four years. In warm climates
women begin to menstruate earlier and cease sooner than in temperate
regions; in the cold climates the reverse of this holds as a general
rule. The manifestations of approaching puberty are seen in the
development of the breasts, the expansion of the hips, the rounded
contour of the body and limbs, appearance of the purely feminine
figure, development of the voice, and the child becomes reserved and
exchanges her plays for the pursuits of womanhood.

More or less indisposition and irritability also precede each
successive recurrence of the menstrual flux, such as headache,
lassitude, uneasiness, pain in back, loins, etc. The periods succeed
each other usually about every twenty-eight days, although it may
occur every twenty-two, twenty, eighteen, fifteen, or thirty-two,
thirty-five, or forty days. The most important ele