INTRODUCTORY.

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Prof. Clarke thus reviews the relation of the menstrual function, the salient point of the sexual system, to the health of both stu­dent and operative : The principal organs of elimination, common to both sexes, are the bowels, kidneys, lungs, and skin. A neglect of their functions is punished in each alike. To woman is intrusted the exclusive management of another process of elimina­tion, viz., the catamenial function. This, using the blood for its channel of operation, performs, like the blood, double duty'. It is necessary to ovulation, and to the integrity of every part of the reproductive apparatus; it also serves as a means of elimination for the blood itself. A careless management of this function, at any period of life during its existence, is apt to be followed by r con­sequences that may be serious ; but a neglect of it during the epoch of development, that is, from the age of fourteen to eighteen or twenty, not only produces great evil at the time of neglect, but leaves a large legacy of evil to the future. The system is then

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