s the heart, and with
so powerful a rhythm already stamped upon its nervous organization, to be
peculiarly apt to display a menstrual rhythm under the stress of abnormal
conditions. This expectation might be strengthened by the menstrual rhythm
which Mr. Perry-Coste has found reason to suspect in pulse-frequency
during health. I am able to present a case in which such a periodicity
seems to be indicated. It is that of a gentleman who suffered severely for
some years before his death from valvular disease of the heart, with a
tendency to pulmonary congestion, and attacks of "cardiac asthma." His
wife, a lady of great intelligence, kept notes of her husband's
condition,[122] and at last observed that there was a certain periodicity
in the occurrence of the exacerbations. The periods were not quite
regular, but show a curious tendency to recur at about thirty days'
interval, a few days before the end of every month; it was during one of
these attacks that he finally died. There was also a tendency to minor
attacks about ten days after the major attacks. It is noteworthy that the
subject showed a tendency to periodicity when in health, and once remarked
laughingly before his illness: "I am just like a woman, always most
excitable at a particular time of the month."

Periodicity has been noted in various disorders of nervous
character. Periodic insanity has long been known and studied
(see, e.g., Pilcz, _Die periodischen Geistesstoerungen_, 1901); it
is much commoner in women than in men. Periodicity has been
observed in stammering (a six-weekly period in one case), and
notably in hemicrania or migraine, by Harry Campbell, Osler, etc.
(The periodicity of a case of hemicrania has been studied in
detail by D. Fraser Harris, _Edinburgh Medical Journal_, July,
1902.) But the cycle in these cases is not always, or even
usually, of a menstrual type.

It is now possible to turn to an investigation which, although of very
limited extent, serves to place the question of a male menstrual cycle for
the first time on a sound basis. If there is such a cycle analogous to
menstruation in women, it must be a recurring period of nervous erethism,
and it must be demonstrably accompanied by greater sexual activity. In the
_American Journal of Psychology_ for 1888, Mr. Julius Nelson, afterward
Professor of Biology at the Rutgers College of Agriculture, New Brunswick,
published a study of dreams in which