Medicine: Dangerous Days

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Doctors know that the menstruating woman tends to be irritable, lethargic, depressed, violent or in rare cases, suicidal. She is less punctual and more forgetful; she may even be temporarily less intelligent. Last week, in the British Medical Journal, Dr. Katharina Dalton suggested that menstruation makes a woman more likely to be involved in an accident.

In four London general hospitals. Dr. Dalton questioned 84 female accident victims (age range: 15 to 55), all of whom had normal, 28-day menstrual cycles. Her findings: 52% of the accidents occurred to women who were within four days, either way, of the beginning of menstruation. On a purely random basis, the rate would have been only 28.5% for the same eight days. Childless women, noted Dr. Dalton, appear to be abnormally accident-prone just before menstruation, while women who have borne children are vulnerable over the whole premenstrual and menstrual period.

Premenstrual and menstrual lethargy relaxes judgment and slows reaction time, said Dr. Dalton. "These findings," she concluded, "cause one to consider the wisdom of administering tranquilizers for premenstrual tension, which may well increase accident-proneness at the most dangerous time of the menstrual cycle."