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and one which should he mistrusted. Sometimes,
blood appears on return of coition, when females have
not indulged for a long time. Rondelon cites an instance
of this. It occurred in a lady from whom her
husband had been absent for three years: at the end
of this period, he returned. The frequency of coition
the lirst night caused excessive uterine hemorrhage.
A similar accident may result from this act, and a fortiori
from its abuse, during or just before the menstrual
period. Very serious hemorrhages have often occurred
in consequence of excessive copulations. Tissot
states — In 1746, a girl, twenty-three years old, submitted
to the embraces of six Spanish dragoons, at a
house near the gates of Montpelier. She died the
next day, from excessive hemorrhage of the uterus.
A similar case has been related by Virey. We know
(said lie) that a public woman, who submitted in one
night to twenty-one soldiers, the next day died, with
hemorrhage 01 the uterus. This was a dark, thin
woman, in the flower of her age.(Dict. des Sc. Med.,
vol. xiv., p. 339.) Onanism causes in young women,
and even in children, a discharge of blood from the
vulva. This fact was mentioned by Duges. The
blood lost is then never abundant, and the occurrence
is by no means serious.
The irritation produced or kept up by too frequent coition, is very often the cause of sterility. Even as, generally speaking, an inflamed surface refuses to absorb substances applied to it, so irritation of the uterus and vagina renders them unfit for impregnation. Thus, then, libertinism, instead of adding, as we might think, to the chances of fecundation, acts in a contrary manner. Marc remarks, that two hundred public girls do not produce more than two or three children annually. Farther: it seems well ascertained, that if these girls resume a regular life, they again become fruitful. The English, wishing to people Botany Bay, transported there a large number of public women. Those who were sterile in their own country proved fruitful,
when subjected to the rigid laws of marriage. Is it not notorious, too, that among the public girls, those
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