odern times that coitus during menstruation
engenders monsters.[114]

Notwithstanding all the obstacles that are thus placed in the way of
coitus during menstruation, there is nevertheless good reason to believe
that the first coitus very frequently takes place at this point of least
psychic resistance. When still a student I was struck by the occurrence of
cases in which seduction took place during the menstrual flow, though at
that time they seemed to me inexplicable, except as evidencing brutality
on the part of the seducer. Negrier,[115] in the lying-in wards of the
Hotel-Dieu at Angers, constantly found that the women from the country who
came there pregnant as the result of a single coitus had been impregnated
at or near the menstrual epoch, more especially when the period coincided
with a feast-day, as St. John's Day or Christmas.

Whatever doubt may exist as to the most frequent state of the sexual
emotions during the period of menstruation, there can be no doubt whatever
that immediately before and immediately after, very commonly at both
times,--this varying slightly in different women,--there is usually a
marked heightening of actual desire. It is at this period (and sometimes
during the menstrual flow) that masturbation may take place in women who
at other times have no strong auto-erotic impulse. The only women who do
not show this heightening of sexual emotion seem to be those in whom
sexual feelings have not yet been definitely called into consciousness, or
the small minority, usually suffering from some disorder of sexual or
general health, in whom there is a high degree of sexual anaesthesia.[116]

The majority of authorities admit a heightening of sexual emotion
before or after the menstrual crisis. See e.g., Krafft-Ebing, who
places it at the post-menstrual period (_Psychopathia Sexualis_,
Eng. translation of tenth edition, p. 27). Adler states that
sexual feeling is increased before, during and after menstruation
(_Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes_, 1904, p.
88). Kossmann (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease in
Relation to Marriage_, I, 249), advises intercourse just after
menstruation, or even during the latter days of the flow, as the
period when it is most needed. Guyot says that the eight days
after menstruation are the period of sexual desire in women
(_Breviaire de l'Amour Experimentale_, p. 144). Harry Campbell
investig