[355] In the northern territory of the same colony menstruation is said to be due to a bandicoot scratching the vagina and causing blood to flow (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, p. 177, November, 1894). At Glenelg, and near Portland, in Victoria, the head of a snake was inserted into a virgin's vagina, when not considered large enough for intercourse (Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. ii, p. 319).
[356] Frazer, Golden Bough, vol. ii, p. 231. Crawley (The Mystic Rose, p. 192) also brings together various cases of primitive peoples who believe the bite of a snake to be the cause of menstruation.
[357] Meyners d'Estrez, "Etude ethnographique sur le lézard chez les peuples malais et polynésiens," L'Anthropologie, 1892; see also, as regards the lizard in Samoan folk-lore, Globus, vol. lxxiv, No. 16.
[358] Journal Anthropological Society of Bombay, 1890, p. 589.
[359] Boudin (Etude Anthropologique: Culte du Serpent, Paris, 1864, pp. 66–70) brings forward examples of this aspect of snake-worship.
[360] Attilio de Marchi, Il Culto privato di Roma, p. 74. The association of the power of generation with a god in the form of a serpent is, indeed, common; see, e.g. Sir W. M. Ramsay, Cities of Phrygia, vol. i, p. 94.
[361] It is noteworthy that one of the names for the penis used by the Swahili women of German East Africa, in a kind of private language of their own, is "the snake" (Zache, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, p. 73, 1899). It may be added that Maeder ("Interprétation de Quelques Rêves," Archives de Psychologie, April, 1907) brings forward various items of folk-lore showing the phallic significance of the serpent, as well as evidence indicating that, in the dreams of women of to-day, the snake sometimes has a sexual significance.
[362] W. R. Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 1885, p. 307. The point is elaborated in the same author's Religion of Semites, second edition, Appendix on "Holiness, Uncleanness, and Taboo," pp. 446–54. See also Wellhausen, Reste Arabischen Heidentums, second edition, pp. 167–77. Even to the early Arabians, Wellhausen remarks (p. 168), "clean" meant "profane and allowed," while "unclean" meant "sacred and forbidden." It was the same, as Jastrow remarks (Religion of Babylonia, p. 662), among the Babylonian Semites.
[363] J. C. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Chapter IV.
[364] E. Durkheim, "La Prohibition de l'Inceste et ses Origines," L'Année Sociologique, Première Année, 1898, esp. pp. 44, 46–47, 48, 50–57. Crawley (Mystic Rose, p. 212) opposes Durkheim's view as to the significance of blood in relation to the attitude towards women.
[365] British Association Report on North Western Tribes of Canada, 1890, p. 581.
[366] Laws of Manu, iv, 41.
[367] Pliny, who, in Book VII, Chapter XIII, and Book XXVIII, Chapter XXIII, of his Natural History, gives long lists of the various good and evil influences attributed to menstruation, writes in the latter place: "Hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightnings, even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her. The same, too, with all other kinds of tempestuous weather; and out at sea, a storm may be stilled by a woman uncovering her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time. At any other time, also, if a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin will fall from off the ears of corn."
[368] See Bourke, Scatologic Rites of all Nations, 1891, pp. 217–219, 250 and 254; Ploss and Max Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i; H. L. Strack, Der Blutaberglaube in der Menschheit, fourth edition, 1892, pp. 14–18. The last mentioned refers to the efficacy frequently attributed to menstrual blood in the Middle Ages in curing leprosy, and gives instances, occurring even in Germany to-day, of girls who have administered drops of menstrual blood in coffee to their sweethearts, to make sure of retaining their affections.
[369] See, e.g., Dufour, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. iii, p. 115.
[370] Dr. L. Laurent gives these instances, "De Quelques Phenomènes Mécaniques produits au moment de la Menstruation," Annales des Sciences Psychiques, September and October, 1897.
[371] Journal Anthropological Society of Bombay, 1890, p. 403. Even the glance of a menstruating woman is widely believed to have serious results. See Tuchmann, "La Fascination," Mélasine, 1888, pp. 347 et seq.
[372] As quoted in the Provincial Medical Journal, April, 1891.
APPENDIX B.
SEXUAL PERIODICITY IN MEN.
BY F. H. PERRY-COSTE, B. Sc. (LOND.).
In a recent brochure on the "Rhythm of the Pulse"[373] I showed inter alia that the readings of the pulse, in both man and woman, if arranged in lunar monthly periods, and averaged over several years, displayed a clear, and sometimes very strongly marked and symmetrical, rhythm.[374] After pointing out that, in at any rate some cases, the male and female pulse-curves, both monthly and annual, seemed to be converse to one another, I added: "It is difficult to ignore the suggestion that in this tracing of the monthly rhythm of the pulse we have a history of the monthly function in women; and that, if so, the tracing of the male pulse may eventually afford us some help in discovering a corresponding monthly period in men: the existence of which has been suggested by Mr. Havelock Ellis and Professor Stanley Hall, among other writers. Certainly the mere fact that we can trace a clear monthly rhythm in man's pulse seems to point strongly to the existence of a monthly physiological period in him also."
Obviously, however, it is only indirectly and by inference that we can argue from a monthly rhythm of the pulse in men to a male sexual periodicity; but I am now able to adduce more direct evidence that will fairly demonstrate the existence of a sexual periodicity in men.
We