Nymphomania, Anæsthesia and Psychopathia Sexualis.
The sexual impulse in women is subject to morbid changes, both in the way of increase and of diminution, exhibiting abnormal violent increase (nymphomania), or declining to the state of complete frigidity and sexual indifference, or, finally, manifesting itself in some perverse manner (psychopathia sexualis).
Psychopathically increased sexual impulse in woman is known as nymphomania or uteromania. In such women there is a dominant state of psychical hyperæthesia, principally in the genital sphere. The most indifferent perceptions give rise to erotic sensations and to lascivious impulses. All sensory perceptions obtain a sexual content, and induce stimulation of the cerebral cortex. All sensation and all activity in such unhappy beings ultimately concentrates itself in the act of copulation, or in some other form of sexual gratification, the greatest perversities of sexual practice frequently arising, masturbation, tribadism, and, for the most part, prostitution, even in the case of married women.
The nymphomaniacal woman, says von Krafft-Ebing, endeavors to allure men by means of exposure of the genital organs or indecent gestures; the sight of man produces intense sexual excitement, which is gratified by masturbation or by stimulatory movements of the pelvis. According to this author, nymphomania is not very infrequent at the climacteric period; it may even occur in old age. Abstinence in association with simultaneous excitement of the sexual sphere by mental or by peripheral stimuli (pruritus pudendi, oxyuris, etc.), may induce these states, probably, however, only in those hereditarily predisposed.
The history of antiquity contains records of the corrupt practices of nymphomaniacal empresses. Thus, Messalina furnishes a well-known historical example of the abnormal violence of a pathologically intensified sexual impulse in woman. She was given the agnomen of invicta, having received the embraces of fourteen athletes. Pliny says of her, die ac nocte superavit quinto et vicessimo concubitu; and Juvenal writes of her the verses,
... tamen ultima cellam
Clausit, adhuc ardens rigidæ tintigine vulvæ
Et resupina jacens multorum absorbuit ictus
Et lassata viris, necdum satiata, recessit.
In corrupt Rome, Messalina was not the only woman necdum satiata, ever insatiable; we need only refer to the orgies of an Aggripina, a Livia, a Mallonia, or a Poppæa; and Seneca hurls against the women of his day the reproach, adeo perversum commentæ genus impudicitiæ viros ineunt. And of Cleopatra, the beautiful Egyptian queen, Marcus Antonius writes in a letter to his physician, Soranus, that she had such violent sexual desire as to lead to her having connection in a brothel with 106 men.
Through the report of Herodotus it is well known that the pyramid of Cheops was built by the numerous lovers of the daughter of this king, who raised this enormous monument in recognition of the innumerable times she had yielded herself to their desires. On record also are the sexual excesses of the Roman ladies at the festival of Saturn, the festival of the Bona Dea, and the festival of Priapus; indeed, many of these women allowed themselves to be debauched in the temples (Ploss and Bartels).
But returning to the present day, both gynecologists and alienists record numerous cases of great pathological increase in the intensity of the sexual impulse in women. According to Lombroso, such continued ardency of sexual desire occurs chiefly in women with an inherited tendency to crime and to prostitution, whose natures exhibit a commingling of lasciviousness with barbarism. He gives examples of such women, one of whom surrendered herself to her husband’s laborers; another had as her lovers all the desperadoes of Texas; a third had intercourse with all the herdsmen of her village; a fourth, though her husband occupied a good social position, led the life of a prostitute; a fifth, a cultured and intelligent woman, entertained a common bricklayer, and wrote to him letters full of shameless declarations of her sexual passion; further he writes of a series of criminals, in whom, indeed, increased sexual desire is a common phenomenon; one of these, a thief, experienced sexual excitement at a mere glance at a good-looking man; a murderess, in whom lascivious feeling induced masturbation whenever she saw a man, and who made experiments in sexual intercourse with dogs; another, who often took to bed with her, in addition to her son, three or four men selected at random from the streets; and many others. Jolly reports the case of a widow, a celebrated lionne of the demi-monde, who kept in her desk, side by side with devotional literature, a number of lascivious books and preparations of cantharides, and entertained quite a number of powerfully-built lovers drawn from the lowest canaille.
In hysterical women the sexual impulse is frequently excessive, and may increase to such a degree as to produce hallucinations of coitus; sometimes, on the other hand, the impulse is extinguished, or psychopathically metamorphosed, passing in a most paradoxical manner from sexual frigidity to lascivious reflections and continuous occupation with sexual affairs; not uncommon in such women are false accusations of indecent assaults of which they assert themselves the victims.
Lombroso gives several examples of the increase of the sexual impulse in hysterical women: “A hysterical girl visited a physician, and said to him: ‘I am still a virgin, take me;’ she submitted him to the utmost extremity of provocation, and asserted afterward that she had been violated. Another hysterical subject, a rich young lady, met a workman in the street, offered herself to him, was accepted, and when she returned home related the affair with laughter. A third sought men from the street in order to find one suffering from syphilis, her object being to infect her own husband with the disease.”
According to the observations of Schüle, young married, hysterical women not infrequently run away with a waiter during the honeymoon journey. This author also points out that in women moral insanity is especially apt to manifest itself during the first years of married life. Many advocate a far-reaching libertinism, and threaten to enter a brothel. In these forms we observe, in addition to ill-temper and malignity, especially obscenity and tribadism.
Such a case, observed by Giraud and quoted by von Krafft-Ebing, is the following: Marianne L., of Bordeaux, during the night, while her master was sleeping soundly under the influence of narcotics she had administered, was in the habit of giving up her master’s children to her lover for his sexual gratification, and made them witnesses of the most immoral scenes. It appeared that L. was hysterical, suffering from hemianæsthesia and convulsive seizures, and that before her illness she had been a sensible and trustworthy individual. After the illness, however, she prostituted herself in the most shameless manner and completely lost her moral sense.
Galen relates of his own mother that she suffered from nymphomania, and that in the attacks she bit her female slaves like a wild animal.
As a negative aspect of the sexual impulse in woman we must regard the absence of the impulse, or anæsthesia sexualis, and also the deficiency of the sensation of pleasure during the act of copulation, or dyspareunia.
Of dyspareunia we shall speak more at length later, in connection with the pathology of copulation. As regards the entire lack of the sexual impulse, however, in women whose genital organs are normally developed and normal in the performance of their functions, and whose cerebral condition is also normal, we must consider such lack an extremely rare condition, if indeed it ever occurs. It is only in cases in which the female genital organs are wanting, wholly or to a considerable extent, or in which there are important cerebral disturbances or states of mental degeneration, that the sexual impulse is wanting.
Normally, in the young, sexually unspoiled girl, the sexual instinct[[34]] slumbers in the cerebral cortex, but becomes active, as sensation, perception, and impulse, as soon as the cerebral centre has been aroused by mental impressions or by physical peripheral stimulation of the genital organs and their environment. Among stimuli of the latter class must be reckoned the menstrual stimulus, set on foot by the developmental processes of puberty. These stimuli arouse in the cerebral cortex sensations and perceptions which, rising to specific sexual feelings, produce an impulse to increase the intensity of these feelings by purposive action; thus is awakened the sexual impulse, the strength of which is extremely variable.
Only when the cerebral cortex, as the place of origin of sensations and perceptions, fails to perform its functions in the manner just described, or when the anatomico-physiological processes in the genital organs which normally act as peripheral stimuli fail to occur, or when there is a failure in the conducting tracts, are sexual perceptions and impulses lacking. Such anomalies may be congenital. A milder form is that, likewise congenital, in which a woman has a sexually “cold nature;” in these cases the sexual impulse is not completely wanting, but it is so slight in intensity that it can be awakened only by very powerful stimuli, and in her normal state the woman so affected is quite free from any wish for sexual gratification.
Such congenital subnormal intensity or entire lack of the sexual impulse may be due to very various causes. According to von Krafft-Ebing, these causes may be organic or functional, mental or physical, and central or peripheral. The declining intensity of the sexual impulse with the advance of years, and the temporary disappearance of that impulse after the sexual act, are both physiological occurrences. Education and mode of life have a marked influence on the intensity of the vita sexualis. Strenuous mental activity, earnest study, severe physical exertion, mental depression, and sexual continence, notably diminish the excitability of the sexual impulse. At first, indeed, abstinence leads to an increase in the intensity of the impulse, but sooner or later the functional activity of the organs of generation declines, and therewith also the intensity of the sexual impulse. As peripheral causes of diminution or disappearance of the sexual impulse, von Krafft-Ebing mentions oöphorectomy, degeneration of the reproductive glands, marasmus, sexual excess, whether in the form of coitus or of masturbation, and alcoholism. In like manner is to be interpreted the disappearance of the sexual impulse in general disorders of nutrition (diabetes, morphinism, etc.).
A decline in the intensity of the sexual impulse in consequence of degeneration of the conducting tracts, is found, according to von Krafft-Ebing, in diseases of the brain and the spinal cord. Central affection of the sexual impulse may be due to organic disease of the cerebral cortex (dementia paralytica, general paralysis of the insane, in the later stages), or it may be due to functional disorder, such as hysteria, or to mental diseases (melancholia or hypochondriasis).
Finally, in some instances, the sexual impulse in women manifests itself, not in the normal manner with copulation with the male as its goal, but in a form demanding some abnormal kind of gratification (psychopathia sexualis), whether it be because sexual intercourse with the male affords the woman no enjoyment, or simply because no opportunity exists for such intercourse.
Masturbation is very frequent; the habit having been acquired from bad example by the girl during the menarche, it is sometimes continued by the wife during married life. In these cases we often find distinct changes in the genital organs, such as hypertrophy of the clitoris, enlargement and bluish discoloration of the nymphæ, retroversion of the uterus, tenderness and displacement of the ovaries, considerable vaginal discharge, and sometimes menorrhagia.
Kussmaul draws attention to the connection between masturbation and nymphomania, on the one hand, and imperfect development of the uterus and the other genital organs, on the other. Campbell records the case of a woman addicted to masturbation, who had never menstruated, and who, in addition to imperfectly developed genital organs, had a dermoid cyst of the ovary. In a young woman who indulged in masturbation, Aran found that the uterus and its annexa were imperfectly developed. Vaddington also describes a case of abnormal sexual impulse which was associated with absence of the uterus.
Troggler reports the case of a woman twenty years of age, who had been six months married to a healthy, potent man, was herself healthy and blooming, with a good family history, and had never suffered from any severe illness. At the age of thirteen she had learned to masturbate, effecting this by stimulation of the clitoris. Now she found no gratification in coitus, so that she continued to masturbate, and during coitus obtained satisfaction by manual friction of the clitoris. Examination showed that the clitoris was strikingly large, the vagina flaccid, and that there was some vaginal discharge; in other respects the genital organs were normal.
Not infrequent, it may be in those whose mental condition is in other respects fairly normal or it may be in psychopathic subjects, is the existence of contrary sexual sensation, or sexual inversion, a condition which has been described by Casper, Westphal, von Krafft-Ebing, and Moll, and has indeed been well known since the days of antiquity. In the case of a considerable number of notable women, homosexual practices have been recorded. According to the observations of Coffignon, in Paris the homosexual instinct, when occurring in other women than prostitutes, is found chiefly among the ladies of the aristocracy.
Of homosexually inclined women, some engage in the practice of tribadism, familiar to the ancient world, and recorded by Martial in a satire, in which sexual gratification is obtained by mutual friction of the genital organs, or by penetration of one woman’s clitoris into the vagina of the other; whilst some indulge in the amor lesbicus, in which gratification is obtained lambendo linguâ genitalia, a very ancient practice indeed, transported from Phœnicia to Greece (where in especial it was indulged in by the women of Lesbos), and later from Syria to Italy, where it was widely diffused among the Romans of the imperial age. Sappho, celebrated as the tenth muse, is supposed to have been addicted to the practice of Lesbian love.
All such homosexual (female) individuals are, then, endowed with the perverse instinct toward sexual connection with women instead of with men. In such cases, the genitals are usually quite normal; sometimes, however, the woman thus affected is markedly of a male type, being called by von Krafft-Ebing a gynandrist, the affection itself being termed gynandry; when the woman concerned not only possesses a homosexual impulse, but also in other respects exhibits tendencies properly characteristic of the male sex, she is called virago, and the affection is termed viraginity.
I had under my care such a woman, belonging to the upper circles of society, who had been married sixteen years before, had lived a married life for six years (during which she remained barren), and had then separated from her husband. She was of a very masculine disposition, smoked, gamed, drank like a student, and preferred to wear men’s clothing, and she bestowed her affections on a female companion. Examination of the genital organs disclosed no abnormality beyond a slight vaginal catarrh. Menstruation was regular, and the general appearance showed no departure, with the exception of a slight moustache that shaded the upper lip, from that of a normal feminine beauty.
Mantegazza is of opinion that in the case of many unhappy marriages, in which the source of the unhappiness is obscure, the trouble is to be found in the homosexual inclination of the wife. Martineau and Moll report that married women who are homosexually inclined, indulge in sexual intercourse with other women behind their husbands’ back. Duhousset, at a meeting of the Anthropological Society at Paris in 1877, related the almost incredible case of a married homosexual woman who, in intercourse with another woman, transferred to the latter her husband’s semen, so as to induce pregnancy.
Many writers on forensic medicine, Tardieu, Pfaff, Schauenstein, Wald, and Mantegazza, for instance, have recorded that in numerous circles of European society women practice masturbation and tribadism (sodomy, so called) with dogs and monkeys; and Plutarch’s statement is well known regarding Egyptian women and the sacred goat, Mendes, that the women who were locked in with this animal practiced sodomy therewith; and again it is asserted that the serpents in the temple of Æsculapius and also in private houses were employed in the practice of sodomy.
Von Maschka records a case which came before the courts a few years ago in Prague, in which a woman forty-four years old confessed that “in consequence of the very ardent temperament she possessed, she had, perhaps, as often as six times indulged herself with her house dog, which jumped between her legs and licked her; that she took the animal between her bare legs, stroked its belly until its penis became erect; then, supporting herself on the back of a chair, she pressed the animal against herself, introduced its penis between her labia majora, and let it continue its movements until its semen had been ejaculated.” Examination of the genital organs of this woman disclosed no abnormality.
Schauenstein reports the case of a girl who carried out unchaste practices with a little dog to an utterly immoderate extent, so that after the lapse of some years she died in an asylum. In a case recorded by Wald, a maid servant was observed in lewd practices with a poodle; she supported herself on elbows and knees, while the dog copulated with her from behind.
A woman about thirty years of age, who had lived with her husband in sterile marriage for nine years, complained to me that she had not for a long time had sexual intercourse, since during copulation she not only experienced no sexual pleasure, but actually felt a loathing to the act; on the other hand, she was subject to an uncontrollable impulse to handle the genital organs of children, both of the male and of the female sex, and this performance gave her sexual gratification; during the menstrual period, this impulse overpowered her will. Local examination in this patient showed that the uterus was enlarged and retroflexed, and that there was anæsthesia of the vagina.
Anjel reports the following case of periodic psychopathia sexualis, associated with menstruation. A lady of quiet disposition, near the climacteric. Serious congenital predisposition. During youth suffered from attacks of minor epilepsy. Married, but childless. Several years ago, after violent emotional disturbance, she had a hystero-epileptic seizure, followed by post-epileptic mania lasting several weeks. Thereafter, insomnia for several months. As a sequel, continually recurrent menstrual insomnia, accompanied by an impulse to embrace boys under ten years of age, to kiss them, and to handle their genital organs. Impulse toward coitus, to close sexual contact with a grown man, non-existent at this time. The patient often speaks openly of her morbid impulse, and begs that she may be supervised, as she feels unable to answer for her own conduct. In the intervals, however, she carefully avoids all reference to the matter, is strictly decent in her conduct, and in no way sexually ardent.
Tribadism is frequently mentioned by the writers of classical antiquity, especially by those of Greece, where the cult of naked beauty encouraged sexual excitement of this character. This form of unchastity was common among the flute-playing girls of Greece, and at the secret festivals of such associates Aphrodite Peribasia was invoked. Lucian, in his dialogues of hetairai, depicts the intensely passionate nature of these homosexual unions between girls. Lombroso reproduces Juvenal’s description of such a love-feast. “When the flute calls to the dance, the mænads, inflamed with wine and beer, loosen their long tresses, they sigh languishingly and eagerly, and an ardent desire draws them one to another, the desire and the passion of the dance gives their voices an alluring sound; nothing now can serve to bridle their unrestrained desires. Lacasella swings her wreath, which she has won in the contest of lascivious gestures and movements, but even she must give way before Medullina with her ardent postures. About these games there is no trace of unreality, and the most rigid Spartan, hardened from the very cradle, even old Nestor himself, notwithstanding his hernia, could not fail to be stimulated by such an inflammatory spectacle.”
In the present day, also, the practice of tribadism is more widely diffused than people in general imagine. I have often encountered instances of it in ladies of good position, who were past their first youth, who would not or could not marry, and who undertook extensive and long-enduring journeys with a female “companion,” of similar age, or perhaps a little younger. Their erotic needs, which could not be gratified in normal fashion, led to this sexual perversion—a tendency observable especially in persons with neuropathic predisposition, or with a liability to hysteria or to epilepsy. Sometimes such girls, even before puberty, show an inclination to wear boys’ clothes, to avoid all feminine manual occupations, and to examine and to handle the genital organs of their playmates. Even after puberty, such tribadists like to make a parade of masculine attitudes, they have their hair cut short, wear clothes of a masculine cut, smoke a great deal, and show in their conversation, and still more in their letters, great exaltation of the passions. It not infrequently happens that an elderly lady who has lived well in her day, and from youth upward has had much intercourse with men, comes at last to lament her worthlessness to men, and from this proceeds to the idea of obtaining sexual enjoyment by means of tribadism. The tribadistic union sometimes lasts for several years, but in most cases the alliances are quickly and frequently changed.
According to Taxil, tribadism is fairly common among the married women of Paris, and in upper-class women is extremely prevalent. This author describes with what industry and perseverance many elderly tribadists endeavor to win for themselves and to seduce young girls, just as old women often work hard to gain money for the enjoyment of the favored person.
In these unions, according to the descriptions of Lombroso, very remarkable phenomena occur. A particular jargon arises with tender designations for this or that bodily beauty; a violent jealousy develops, and a newly united pair keep together as much as possible for fear of losing one another’s affection; the “friends” tread always in one another’s footsteps. This author rightly points out that the very numerous romances describing relations of this kind prove the diffusion of this vice in “high life.” Novels of this class are referred to by Mantegazza in his book, “Woman as Criminal and Prostitute.” He mentions: Diderot, “La Religieuse;” Balzac, “La Fille aux Yeux d’Or;” Gautier, “Mademoiselle de Maupin;” Feydeau, “Le Comtesse de Cholis;” Flaubert, “Salammbô;” Bélot, “Mademoiselle Giraud ma Femme;” Willbraud, “Fridolins Heimliche Ehe;” Graf Stadion, “Brick and Brack;” Sacher-Masoch, “Venus im Pelz.” Zola, also, in “Nana” and “La Curée,” and Butti in “L’Antona,” make some reference to this matter.
Sauval relates of the dissolute life at the court of the French king, Francis I, that the women learned also to play the part of men; a princess had a hermaphrodite maid-of-honor, and the court and all Paris gossiped about the Lesbian-loving ladies, whose husbands were delighted, since they were thus quite freed from jealousy, and prized their wives above all on this account. Such a mode of life was so pleasing to many ladies that they refused to marry, and refused also to allow their “friends” to marry.
Tribadism is very common among prostitutes. According to Parent-Duchatelet, tribadism begins only after prostitution has long been practised, between the twenty-fifth and the thirtieth year of life; generally there is a notable difference in age and also in beauty between the two women forming a tribadistic alliance, and as a rule the younger and prettier of the pair is the more passionately sensitive and the more constant. Parent-Duchatelet endeavours to explain the origin of tribadism by referring to the manner in which in brothels and reformatories the women are closely packed together, to the enforced abstinence from normal sexual intercourse (in prisons and reformatories), to the loathing for men sometimes felt by prostitutes, and to the opportunities for mutual observation of the most intimate nudities. Even women who at first object to it most vehemently, commonly give way to this vice after eighteen or twenty months.
Among 103 prostitutes examined by Lombroso, he found tribadism to be practiced by five. He considers the principal cause of tribadism to be in the lascivious search for new and unnatural pleasures, and quotes in illustration the characteristic remark of Catharine II, herself a tribadist, “Why did not nature endow us with a sixth sense?” Female criminals who seduce others to the practice of tribadism have usually themselves acquired the vice during a long term of imprisonment—it is, in fact, the long-sentence criminals, women with a congenital inclination toward crime, that incline also to unnatural vice. The influence of environment is, according to Lombroso, indicated by the fact that the most confirmed criminals, in prisons for women, corrupt in this manner so many of the inmates who are merely “criminaloids,” and corrupt even the wardresses. Further, he is led to conclude, the confinement in close association of so many extremely sensual and prostituted women, leads to the origin of a kind of ferment of new lascivious desires, and causes an increase of one form of degeneracy by means of another. Prostitutes often see one another naked, sleep two or three together in the same bed; similar things occur in boarding-schools. In asylums also we may observe that the admission of a tribadist will result in the infection of all the inmates with this vice.
According to Moll’s estimate, 25 per cent. of the prostitutes of Berlin practice tribadism. According to the experience of this author, in cases in which tribadists live in concubinage, one of them is always a prostitute; the active and the passive rôle are always played by the same respective members of the alliance; the active member is called “papa” or “uncle,” is usually a prostitute, and, like the man in the married state, possesses great comparative freedom in sexual matters, whilst the passive member, the “mother,” is not allowed to form any sexual relations outside the concubinage.
According to Ricardi, many frigid prostitutes practice with pleasure clitoris-masturbation, cunnilictio, and, especially, sapphism, preferring these perversions to the normal sexual act. Moreover, among prostitutes and female criminals there is no lack of lovers of martyrization, of flagellation, even to the drawing of blood, of tyrannical treatment, and of the initiation of children into the mysteries of sex.
[For a detailed account of Sadism and Masochism, see von Krafft-Ebing’s “Psychopathia Sexualis.” These particular perversions, common in men, are rare in women; hence but passing allusion is made to them in the present work.]
Lombroso records on account of its rarity a case of masochism observed by him in a woman thirty-five years of age, who liked being whipped.
Moraglia reports a remarkable instance of sexual perversion in a girl of eighteen, who preferred to coitus, masturbation associated with the stimulating influence of the odor of male urine; this peculiar form of irritability was so powerful as to drive the girl to masturbation in public urinals, notwithstanding the risk of arrest, which indeed often occurred.
According to Carlier, there are four or five brothels in Paris which are not infrequently visited by rich ladies in search of tribadistic enjoyments, and ladies of “high life” assemble there for communal orgies; it is noteworthy that prostitutes surrender themselves for such purposes to these women who are outside their own circle with great reluctance, and only for a very high fee.
Speaking generally, however, sexual perversion is rarer and less intense in women than in men. This fact is explained by Lombroso on the ground that the erotic element in women’s nature is less active, and that women are less often affected by epilepsy, the principal source of these anomalies. In cases in which the genital organs are healthy we must, with Westphal, conclude, with reference to contrary sexual sensation, that the abnormal sexual feelings have a cortical origin.
From von Maschka’s elaborate account of unnatural offences, in his Handbook of Forensic Medicine, we abstract the following passage relating to the female sex: “Lascivious procedures liable under certain circumstances to legal punishment may consist: 1. In handling or other manipulation of the genitals, without actual intercourse. If the genital organs of a female have merely been gently handled, without any more violent manipulations, we shall not, as a rule, either in the case of children or of adults, find any local changes as a result; contrariwise, if the handling has been rough and brutal, if the fingers have been forcibly thrust within the vulval cleft, or if the pudendum has been pulled and rent, we may expect to find excoriations, redness, swelling, laceration of the hymen, or even of the vagina and the perineum. 2. In licking the female genitals (cunnilingere). An analogous process also effected by members of the female sex, whether children or adults, is irrumare, id est, penem in os arrigere; fellare, id est, vel labiis vel lingua perfricandi atque exsugendi officium penis præstare. 3. In introduction of the membrum virile into the rectum, either of children or of adults, pæderasty.” That this form of sexual gratification is not infrequently practiced upon women has been pointed out especially by Parent-Duchatelet, and is asserted by von Maschka from personal knowledge of cases in which it has occurred.
Tribadism and Lesbian love, unnatural vice practiced by two individuals of the female sex, occur, according to von Maschka’s description in the following manner: a.) By masturbation, either one person gratifying the other by manipulation, or mutual masturbation. In a case of this kind recorded by Tardieu, a wife still young repeatedly, and by day as well as by night, introduced her finger deeply into the vagina or the rectum of her little girl, moving it about there sometimes for as long as an hour. According to the child’s account, the mother herself at these times was in a condition of excitement, no doubt sexual, which she gratified in this manner. In another case, several older girls engaged with their own fingers and tongues in lascivious practices with the genital organs of a little girl of seven. According to Krausold, among female prisoners such “forbidden friendships” are extremely common, formed for the purpose of mutual masturbation, and in connection with which the bitterest jealousy and the most ardent love are exhibited. b.) With the assistance of an enlarged clitoris, with which one woman performs the sexual act by introducing the organ within the vagina of another. In France in the nineteenth century a woman is said to have lived whose genital organs were so formed that, on the one hand, as a woman she played the passive part in intercourse with men, and, on the other hand, was able to give sexual gratification to women by assuming the active part of the male. c.) By the employment of an artificial membrum virile. This mode of obtaining satisfaction of sexual desire was known already to the ancients, and such a priapus was by the Greeks termed ὸλισθος. The fact that such articles are manufactured and sold, affords sufficient proof that their use is not unknown in our own day. Von Maschka describes such priapi as being made of india rubber, of the size and shape of an erect penis, perforated longitudinally and fitted at the lower end with a testicle-like attachment, to be filled with warm water or milk, so that by squeezing it an ejaculation can be counterfeited. This priapus is also so constructed that it can be attached to the body by means of a girdle and can thus be employed for the gratification of another individual.
We have already referred to sodomy, unnatural intercourse with the lower animals. Von Maschka gives several instances of this, which we have previously mentioned, and states also that some years before, during his stay in Paris, a female was accustomed to hold a secret exhibition, the entry to which cost ten francs, and at which she had sexual intercourse with a bulldog trained for the purpose.
According to Lombroso, even at the present day, the inmates of licensed brothels frequently hold exhibitions, for admission to which a fee is charged, of tribadistic couples in poses plastiques, and of another prostitute in coitus caninus.
In his widely-celebrated work on Psychopathia Sexualis, von Krafft-Ebing discusses these morbid sexual processes in women. We select certain data from his exposition. Regarding the congenital morbid phenomenon of the lack of sexual feeling in women, as contrasted with perversion of sexual feeling, and the sexual impulse toward an individual of the same sex (antipathic sexual feeling), von Krafft-Ebing writes: “The woman-loving woman feels herself sexually to be a man, she rejoices in the exhibition of courage, of masculine sentiments, since these characteristics make the man desirable to the woman. The female urning,[[35]] therefore, likes to have her hair cut short and her clothes of a masculine cut; and one of her greatest pleasures is when opportunity offers to appear in male attire. Her ideals are notable feminine personalities, distinguished by spirituality and energy; in the theatre and in the circus, it is only the female performers that attract her interest; and in the same way, in collections of pictures and statues, it is only the representations of women that awaken her æsthetic sense and her sensibility.” Von Krafft-Ebing insists that in nearly all cases of antipathic sexual feeling in which a family history was attainable, that history was found to exhibit instances of neuroses, psychoses, stigmata of degeneration, etc. In hysteria, according to this author, the sexual life is especially often abnormal; in cases with neuropathic inheritance, one may say always: “All possible anomalies of the sexual functions occur in such cases, with the utmost variety and the strangest commingling, based upon hereditary degenerative processes, and accompanied by moral imbecility in its most perverse manifestations. * * *. Frequently, in hysterical subjects, the sexual life is morbidly excitable. This excitement may be intermittent (? menstrual). Shameless prostitution may result, even in married women. In cases of a milder type, the sexual impulse is exhibited in the form of onanism, nude perambulations about the room, wearing of male attire, etc. In cases of hysterical mental disorder, the morbidly excited sexual life may manifest itself in the form of maniacal jealousy, baseless complaints against men of indecent assault, hallucinations of coitus, etc. Sometimes there may be frigidity, with lack of sexual pleasure, commonly due to genital anæsthesia.”
Incest in women, dependent upon psychopathic causes, is also alluded to by von Krafft-Ebing; it occurs in those in whom a partial imbecility that leaves the sense of modesty undeveloped is combined with eroticism. Thus, a case reported by Schürmayer is mentioned, in which a mother had, or attempted, intercourse with her son, aged five and one-half years; and again a case reported by Lafarque, in which a girl of seventeen laid her thirteen-year-old brother on herself for the gratification conjunctionis membrorum, while simultaneously masturbating her brother; Magnan’s case, an unmarried woman twenty-nine years of age, who could hardly resist the impulse toward copulation with her nephews as long as they were quite young; Legrand’s cases, in one of which a girl fifteen years of age seduced her brother to the performance of all possible sexual excesses on her body; another, a married woman aged thirty-five, who committed incest with her eighteen-year-old brother; and a third, a mother aged thirty-nine, who committed incest with her son.
According to Moll, women who suffer from antipathic sexual sensation are, in many cases, married; it appears, however, that for the most part they have no inclination to marry. In isolated cases there may exist a psychical hermaphroditism, the woman thus affected having sexual inclination both towards men and towards women. In the case of homosexual women, normal intercourse appears not to furnish complete satisfaction. As regards fetichistic, masochistic, and sadistic inclinations on the part of women with antipathic sexual sensation, Moll was unable to obtain any trustworthy information. Sometimes in women the perverse sexual impulse appears periodically, being then often associated with the appearance of other psychical abnormalities. In some women the perverse impulse is especially active at the menstrual periods; whilst at other times these subjects, even though not quite sexually normal, are still very much quieter. Antipathic sexual sensation in women may depend upon inherited predisposition, and may often be traced back to a very early age. In many cases an exciting cause may be demonstrated.
Mantegazza, who relates that homosexual practices are common among the inmates of harems, believes that antipathic sexual feeling is readily curable in women soon after marriage, but that later a cure is rare.
A perverse form of sexual gratification sometimes met with in women is flagellation. By chastisement with birches, straps, or whips on the bare buttocks, the nerves of the sexual apparatus are stimulated, and these organs become congested, with an effect resembling that of onanism. Such flagellation was practiced by the wanton ladies of ancient Rome. In the Middle Ages, hysterical women derived great pleasure from the stimulatory effect of whippings. It is reported of Catharine de Medici, that she had herself whipped, and that she delighted in seeing the ladies of her court undergoing similar treatment. In the present day many women derive intense sexual pleasure from being birched by their lovers on bared portions of their bodies. In Paris and other large towns there are special places of resort for those who pursue this form of perverse sexual gratification. Sometimes such women are only the active fouetteuses for worn-out, perversely-feeling men.
Among the Greeks, a woman who had remained barren during the early years of marriage would visit the temple of Juno, in order to receive from a priest of Pan the gift of fertility. She stripped naked, and, while thus exposed to the flagellant priests, she received all over the back of her body numerous blows inflicted with thongs of a he-goat’s hide—this process being supposed to induce fertility. The object of this form of flagellation would appear to be to induce an increase of sexual desire.
Sexual neurasthenia is defined by Eulenburg as a neuropsychosis of chronic course, manifesting itself chiefly in the form of excessive irritability of the sensory and psychosensory neuron-systems, in association with excessive tendency to exhaustion of the motor and psychomotor neuron-systems. This exhaustion occurs especially in relation to the genital system, in which we see exhibited the phenomena of irritable weakness, of increased excitability combined with increased tendency to fatigue of the genital nerve apparatus—such chronic morbid disturbances are, according to this author, comparatively rare in women, that is to say, the developed typical picture of the disease does not occur in women, or occurs very rarely. Among 168 patients suffering from sexual neurasthenia, only six were women. Two of these latter were addicted to masturbation, and in the anatomical sense both were still virgins; the rest were married women, not receiving sufficient sexual gratification in their married life, two of these were probably also addicted to masturbation, two indulged in homosexual practices.
Onanism, according to Eulenburg, is the cause of sexual neurasthenia in women as well as in men. If, however, among the relatively very large number of women addicted to masturbation, there appears to be such a very small proportion of instances of sexual neurasthenia, this depends on the fact that from the nature of onanism in women the physical and also as a rule the psychical consequences are as a whole apt to be much less severe than those arising from similar practices in men; but it depends also on the circumstances that neuromental abnormalities of other kinds and denoted by other names, such as dyspareunia, vaginismus, sexual hysteria, nymphomania, feminine sadism, and tribadism, are apt to arise in consequence of onanism. As regards onanism, so also may it be in regard to sexual excesses and aberrations in general; they may be on the one hand causes, but on the other symptoms and sequelæ, of sexual neurasthenia. Early-acquired or inherited homosexual tendencies and habits may, as Eulenburg further points out, lead to sexual neurasthenia only, but then very easily, when such individuals have allowed themselves, against their nature but in obedience to conventional points of view and to the advice of the relatives, to be persuaded into marriage. That sexual abstinence alone is competent to induce sexual neurasthenia must be dismissed as a fable.