The importance of surrounding women with certain precautions during the height of these great functional waves of her existence was appreciated by all peoples living in an approximately natural state, by all races at all times; and among their comparatively few religious customs this one, affording rest to women, was most persistently adhered to." It is among the white races alone that the sexual invalidism of women prevails, and it is the white races alone, which, outgrowing the religious ideas with which the menstrual seclusion of women was associated, have flung away that beneficent seclusion itself, throwing away the baby with the bath in an almost literal sense.[28] In Germany Tobler has investigated the menstrual histories of over one thousand women (_Monatsschrift fuer Geburtshuelfe und Gynaekologie_, July, 1905).

He finds that in the great majority of women at the present day menstruation is associated with distinct deterioration of the general health, and diminution of functional energy.

In 26 per cent.

local pain, general malaise, and mental and nervous anomalies coexisted; in larger proportion come the cases in which local pain, general weak health or psychic abnormality was experienced alone at this period.

In 16 per cent.