Читать книгу Old Age Deferred. The causes of old age and its postponement by hygienic and therapeutic measures онлайн

35 страница из 141

Indeed it has been shown by the earliest authors on myxœdema, that this disease is very frequently caused by too frequent pregnancies, especially if connected with prolonged lactation (Ord, Morvan, Combe). This will also explain why women more frequently show the symptoms of precocious senility than men, whose sexual glands are not put to such constant activity and change as are the female sexual glands. Similarly women, after frequent pregnancies, especially with prolonged lactation, or women with diseases of the ovaries, and also those addicted to habitual sexual excess, such as prostitutes, very soon become fat and fade before their time. Thus we may see symptoms of precocious senility in such women even before the end of the third decade, especially if they have begun to lead an immoral life at an early age. Even young girls may look much older through the abuse of their ovaries from sexual excesses. Their breasts become large and pendulous, and their faces bloated and relaxed. Menstruation may likewise be made to appear in early childhood by sexual abuses, as Pauline Tarnowska^[19] has found through the examination in St. Petersburg of 150 very young prostitutes.