While some are simply examples of vicarious or compensatory menstruation, and were so explained even by the older writers, there are many that are physiologic curiosities of considerable interest.
Lheritier furnishes the oft-quoted history of the case of a young girl who suffered from suppression of menses, which, instead of flowing through the natural channels, issued periodically from vesicles on the leg for a period of six months, when the seat of the discharge changed to an eruption on the left arm, and continued in this location for one year; then the discharge shifted to a sore on the thumb, and at the end of another six months again changed, the next location being on the upper eyelid; here it continued for a period of two years.

Brierre de Boismont and Meisner describe a case apparently identical with the foregoing, though not quoting the source.
Haller, in a collection of physiologic curiosities covering a period of a century and a half, cites 18 instances of menstruation from the skin.
Parrot has also mentioned several cases of this nature.

Chambers speaks of bloody sweat occurring periodically in a woman of twenty-seven; the intervals, however, were occasionally but a week or a fortnight, and the exudation was not confined to any one locality.

Van Swieten quotes the history of a case of suppression of the menstrual function in which there were convulsive contractions of the body, followed by paralysis of the right arm.

Later on, the patient received a blow on the left eye causing amaurosis; swelling of this organ followed, and one month later blood issued from it, and subsequently blood oozed from the skin of the nose, and ran in jets from the skin of the fingers and from the nails.
D'Andrade cites an account of a healthy Parsee lady, eighteen years of age, who menstruated regularly from thirteen to fifteen and a half years; the catamenia then became irregular and she suffered occasional hemorrhages from the gums and nose, together with attacks of hematemesis.