70% of women menstruate in the 28- day cycle, but some women take slightly longer or slightly less period. The late or early menstruation is due to some defects in the womb, hormonal disturbances, uterine irritation, congestion, inflammation and abnormal contraction (especially menopause). Sometimes, irregularities of menstruation may take place due to endometritis, endocervicitis, cancerous growth in the uterus, or formation of tumour in the muscular wall of the womb, anger, cold wet exposure and repeated mechanical abortion. Due to anemia, anger and cold wet exposure of the body there may be amenorrhoea or dysmenorrhoea; due to endometritis, metritis, infection of the womb or cancerous growth there may be dysmenorrhoea, menorrhagia or metrorrhagia and infection may cause irregular, scanty, tardy, delayed, watery, profuse, protracted flow of menses. 

Menstruation is often delayed beyond the period at which we have reason to expect it in healthy females, or when it does appear, it is frequently preceded by much suffering, and followed by hysterics and other complaints. Complaints attendant on the cessation of the menses are still more serious. These complaints are generally produced by diseases which existed previously, and can only be cured by the continued attendance of a homoeopathic physician. Affections of this class frequently find their origin and support in the mode of living; we can often trace them to insufficiency of clothing, which, especially in a variable climate like ours, is very injurious; many of the attendant complaints arise from other causes, which medicine alone can remove. 

The age at which this function first makes its appearance, in temperate climates, is about the fifteenth year; though in some instances it occurs at a much earlier age, and in others again it is protracted several years later. In warm climates it generally appears as early as the ninth or tenth year, and in cold ones not often earlier than the twentieth. 

The average duration of a menstrual period is about five days; it varies considerably, however, in different individuals, in some continuing for seven or eight days, and in others not more than two or three. It generally returns regularly in healthy females, every twenty-eight days, and usually continues until about the forty-fifth year, when its final cessation takes place, which is usually attended with a good deal of disturbance of the general health, as well as of irregularity of this function; hence this period of life has been called the "critical age," or "change of life."
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Menses of excessive duration 
The principal remedies are : With the following indications : 

Aconitum napellus 
Congestion of the head and heart, with stinging pains, full and hard pulse; blurred and bright-red blood, coagulating readily; moral and nervous excitements; feverish heat with red cheeks, or weakness, fainting turns and pale face when raising herself from a recumbent posture. 

China officinalis 
Weakness, with pale face, rings around the eyes, blur before them, ringing in the ears; labor-pains; swollen feet; sleeplessness or restless sleep, with nightly headache; nervousness and irritable mood. 

Cuprum metallicum 
The menses are too profuse, with abdominal cramps, congestion of the head, pressive headache at the vertex, red face and eyes, frequent nausea with vomiting, palpitation of the heart. 

Ignatia amara 
The menses last too long, followed by hysterical symptoms, with discharge of coagula. During the menses : abdominal spasms, headache with heaviness and heat in the head, photophobia, contractive colic, anguish, palpitation of the heart, and weakness unto fainting. 

Lycopodium clavatum 
Profuse menses, reappearing several times, even after having ceased to flow; before the menses : shuddering, malaise, sadness, lowness of spirits, apprehensive mood; during the menses : sour taste in the mouth, nausea. 

Natrium muriaticum 
Menses last too long, with profuse discharge, headache, sadness, abdominal cramps, shivering, frequent yawning. 

Nux vomica 
Premature menses; they last too long, reappear several times after having ceased to flow, with uterine cramps, frontal headache, vertigo, constipation, nausea, dyspepsia, and irritable mood. 

Platinum metallicum 
Profuse menses, with pressure on the parts, thick and black or else slimy and sticky blood, sexual excitement, also of the parts. 

Secale cornutum 
Profuse menses, with violent cramps; all the symptoms are worse during and before the menses; tingling in the legs, weakness; nocturnal cramps in the calves and soles of the feet. 

Sulphur 
When the foregoing remedies are insufficient, with discharge of an acrid, black and corrosive blood; eruptions and tetter on the skin here and there. 


Dose 
Of these different medicines give four to six globules dry on the tongue, or one or two drops of attenuated tincture in a teaspoonful of water or on a little sugar, a few days after the menses ceases to flow, and repeat the dose every week until the next menstrual period is about to set in. 
 

Morbid changes in the menstrual blood
The normal menstrual blood is red, liquid, a little sticky, almost resembling arterial blood; according to some authors, it should not coagulate, whereas others look upon the presence of coagula in the menstrual fluid as something quite natural. As a general rule the menstrual blood, as regards color, quantity, intensity of the flow, differs a good deal from one period to the other. It is successively very red, less red, pale like water, black, thick, viscous or fluid. Sometimes those changes can be traced to distinct causes, such as a keen disappointment, after which the flow becomes either more scanty or more copious, or the color of the blood changes; in spasmodic affections the blood is paler; in scrofulous persons it is scanty, paler, less consistent, or else thick and black. Among chlorotic individuals it is almost always watery, pale, causing scarcely a yellow stain. In syphilitic affections it is likewise very often discoloured and pale. In eruptive, scorbutic, typhoid affections, the blood is sometimes blackish and fetid. If the blood is retained in the uterus for some time, it becomes black, thin, inodorous. In cancerous or herpetic affections, the menstrual blood has been known to possess deleterious characters, and to communicate by intercourse non-syphilitic discharges from the urethra. But in most cases it is impossible to account for the changes which take place in the menstrual blood. Hence these changes seem of very little avail in establishing a general diagnosis; but they help to point out the remedy which is most adapted to some peculiar menstrual irregularity.

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