I.
The Psychological Significance of Detumescence—The Testis and the Ovary—Sperm Cell and Germ Cell—Development of the Embryo—The External Sexual Organs—Their Wide Range of Variation—Their Nervous Supply—The Penis—Its Racial Variations—The Influence of Exercise—The Scrotum and Testicles—The Mons Veneris—The Vulva—The Labia Majora and their Varieties—The Pubic Hair and Its Characters—The Clitoris and Its Functions—The Anus as an Erogenous Zone—The Nymphæ and their Function—The Vagina—The Hymen—Virginity—The Biological Significance of the Hymen.
In analyzing the sexual impulse we have seen that the process whereby the conjunction of the sexes is achieved falls naturally into two phases: the first phase, of tumescence, during which force is generated in the organism, and the second phase, of detumescence, in which that force is discharged during conjugation.[[72]] Hitherto we have been occupied mainly with the first phase, that of tumescence, and with its associated psychic phenomena. It was inevitable that this should be so, for it is during the slow process of tumescence that sexual selection is decided, the crystallizations of love elaborated, and, to a large extent, the individual erotic symbols determined. But we can by no means altogether pass over the final phase of detumescence. Its consideration, it is true, brings us directly into the field of anatomy and physiology; while tumescence is largely under control of the will, when the moment of detumescence arrives the reins slip from the control of the will; the more fundamental and uncontrollable impulses of the organism gallop on unchecked; the chariot of Phaëthon dashes blindly down into a sea of emotion.
Yet detumescence is the end and climax of the whole drama; it is an anatomico-physiological process, certainly, but one that inevitably touches psychology at every point.[[73]] It is, indeed, the very key to the process of tumescence, and unless we understand and realize very precisely what it is that happens during detumescence, our psychological analysis of the sexual impulse must remain vague and inadequate.
From the point of view we now occupy, a man and a woman are no longer two highly sensitive organisms vibrating, voluptuously it may indeed be, but vaguely and indefinitely, to all kinds of influences and with fluctuating impulses capable of being directed into any channel, even in the highest degree divergent from the proper ends of procreation. They are now two genital organisms who exist to propagate the race, and whatever else they may be, they must be adequately constituted to effect the act by which the future of the race is ensured. We have to consider what are the material conditions which ensure the most satisfactory and complete fulfillment of this act, and how those conditions may be correlated with other circumstances in the organism. In thus approaching the subject we shall find that we have not really abandoned the study of the psychic aspects of sex.
The two most primary sexual organs are the testis and the ovary; it is the object of conjugation to bring into contact the sperm from the testis with the germ from the ovary. There is no reason to suppose that the germ-cell and the sperm-cell are essentially different from each other. Sexual conjugation thus remains a process which is radically the same as the non-sexual mode of propagation which preceded it. The fusion of the nuclei of the two cells was regarded by Van Beneden, who in 1875 first accurately described it, as a process of conjugation comparable to that of the protozoa and the protophyta. Boveri, who has further extended our knowledge of the process, considers that the spermatozoon removes an inhibitory influence preventing the commencement of development in the ovum; the spermatozoon replaces a portion of the ovum which has already undergone degeneration, so that the object of conjugation is chiefly to effect the union of the properties of two cells in one, sexual fertilization achieving a division of labor with reciprocal inhibition; the two cells have renounced their original faculty of separate development in order to attain a fusion of qualities and thus render possible that production of new forms and qualities which has involved the progress of the organized world.[[74]]
While in fishes this conjugation of the male and female elements is usually ensured by the female casting her spawn into an artificial nest outside the body, on to which the male sheds his milt, in all animals (and, to some extent, birds, who occupy an intermediate position) there is an organic nest, or incubation chamber as Bland Sutton terms it, the womb, in the female body, wherein the fertilized egg may develop to a high degree of maturity sheltered from those manifold risks of the external world which make it necessary for the spawn of fishes to be so enormous in amount. Since, however, men and women have descended from remote ancestors who, in the manner of aquatic creatures, exercised functions of sperm-extrusion and germ-extrusion that were exactly analogous in the two sexes, without any specialized female uterine organization, the early stages of human male and female fœtal development still display the comparatively undifferentiated sexual organization of those remote ancestors, and during the first months of fœtal life it is practically impossible to tell by the inspection of the genital regions whether the embryo would have developed into a man or into a woman. If we examine the embryo at an early stage of development we see that the hind end is the body stalk, this stalk in later stages becoming part of the umbilical cord. The urogenital region, formed by the rapid extension of the hind end beyond its original limit, which corresponds to what is later the umbilicus, develops mainly by the gradual differentiation of structures (the Wolffian and Müllerian bodies) which originally exist identically in both sexes. This process of sexual differentiation is highly complex, so that it cannot yet be said that there is complete agreement among investigators as to its details. When some irregularity or arrest of development occurs in the process we have one or other of the numerous malformations which may affect this region. If the arrest occurs at a very early stage we may even find a condition of things which seems to approximate to that which normally exists in the adult reptilia.[[75]] Owing to the fact that both male and female organs develop from more primitive structures which were sexually undifferentiated, a fundamental analogy in the sexual organs of the sexes always remains; the developed organs of one sex exist as rudiments in the other sex; the testicles correspond to the ovaries; the female clitoris is the homologue of the male penis; the scrotum of one sex is the labia majora in the other sex, and so throughout, although it is not always possible at present to be quite certain in regard to these homologics.
Since the object to be attained by the sexual organs in the human species is identical with that which they subserve in their pre-human ancestors, it is not surprising to find that these structures have a clear resemblance to the corresponding structures in the apes, although on the whole there would appear to be in man a higher degree of sexual differentiation. Thus the uterus of various species of semnopithecus seems to show a noteworthy correspondence with the same organ in woman.[[76]] The somewhat less degree of sexual differentiation is well shown in the gorilla; in the male the external organs are in the passive state covered by the wrinkled skin of the abdomen, while in the female, on the contrary, they are very apparent, and in sexual excitement the large clitoris and nymphæ become markedly prominent. The penis of the gorilla, however, more nearly resembles that of man, according to Hartmann, than does that of the other anthropoid apes, which diverge from the human type in this respect more than do the cynocephalic apes and some species of baboon.
From the psychological point of view we are less interested in the internal sexual organs, which are most fundamentally concerned with the production and reception of the sexual elements, than with the more external parts of the genital apparatus which serve as the instruments of sexual excitation, and the channels for the intromission and passage of the seminal fluid. It is these only which can play any part at all in sexual selection; they are the only part of the sexual apparatus which can enter into the formation of either normal or abnormal erotic conceptions; they are the organs most prominently concerned with detumescence; they alone enter normally into the conscious process of sex at any time. It seems desirable, therefore, to discuss them briefly at this point.
Our knowledge of the individual and racial variations of the external sexual organs is still extremely imperfect. A few monographs and collections of data on isolated points may be found in more or less inaccessible publications. As regards women, Ploss and Bartels have devoted a chapter to the sexual organs of women which extends to a hundred pages, but remains scanty and fragmentary. (Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter VI.) The most systematic series of observations have been made in the case of the various kinds of degenerates—idiots, the insane, criminals, etc.—but it would be obviously unsafe to rely too absolutely on such investigations for our knowledge of the sexual organs of the ordinary population.
There can be no doubt, however, that the external sexual organs in normal men and women exhibit a peculiarly wide range of variation. This is indicated not only by the unsystematic results attained by experienced observers, but also by more systematic studies. Thus Herman has shown by detailed measurements that there are great normal variations in the conformation of the parts that form the floor of the female pelvis. He found that the projection of the pelvic floor varied from nothing to as much as two inches, and that in healthy women who had borne no children the distance between the coccyx and anus, the length of the perineum, the distance between the fourchette and the symphysis pubis, and the length of the vagina are subject to wide variations. (Lancet, October 12, 1889.) Even the female urethral opening varies very greatly, as has been shown by Bergh, who investigated it in nearly 700 women and reproduces the various shapes found; while most usually (in about a third of the cases observed), a longitudinal slit, it may be cross-shaped, star-shaped, crescentic, etc.; and while sometimes very small, in about 6 per cent. of the cases it admitted the tip of the little finger. (Bergh, Monatsheft für Praktische Dermatologie, 15 Sept., 1897.)
As regards both sexes, Stanley Hall states that "Dr. F. N. Seerley, who has examined over 2000 normal young men as well as many young women, tells me that in his opinion individual variations in these parts are much greater even than those of face and form, and that the range of adult and apparently normal size and proportion, as well as function, and of both the age and order of development, not only of each of the several parts themselves, but of all their immediate annexes, and in females as well as males, is far greater than has been recognized by any writer. This fact is the basis of the anxieties and fears of morphological abnormality so frequent during adolescence." (G. S. Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 414).
In accordance with the supreme importance of the part they play, and the intimately psychic nature of that part, the sexual organs, both internal and external, are very richly supplied with nerves. While the internal organs are very abundantly furnished with sympathetic nerves and ganglia, the external organs show the highest possible degree of specialization of the various peripheral nervous devices which the organism has developed for receiving, accumulating, and transmitting stimuli to the brain.[[77]]
"The number of conducting cords which attach the genitals to the nervous centers is simply enormous," writes Bryan Robinson; "the pudic nerve is composed of nearly all the third sacral and branches from the second and fourth sacral. As one examines this nerve he is forced to the conclusion that it is an enormous supply for a small organ. The periphery of the pudic nerve spreads itself like a fan over the genitals." The lesser sciatic nerve supplies only one muscle—the gluteus maximus—and then sends the large pudendal branch to the side of the penis, and hence the friction of coitus induces active contraction of the gluteus maximus, "the main muscle of coition." The large pudic and the pudendal constitute the main supply of the external genitals. In women the pudic nerve is equally large, but the pudendal much smaller, possibly, Bryan Robinson suggests, because women take a less active part in coitus. The nerve supply of the clitoris, however, is three or four times as large as that of the penis in proportion to size. (F. B. Robinson, "The Intimate Nervous Connection of the Genito-Urinary Organs With the Cerebro-Spinal and Sympathetic Systems," New York Medical Journal, March 11, 1893; id., The Abdominal Brain, 1899.)
Of all the sexual organs the penis is without doubt that which has most powerfully impressed the human imagination. It is the very emblem of generation, and everywhere men have contemplated it with a mixture of reverence and shuddering awe that has sometimes, even among civilized peoples, amounted to horror and disgust. Its image is worn as an amulet to ward off evil and invoked as a charm to call forth blessing. The sexual organs were once the most sacred object on which a man could place his hands to swear an inviolate oath, just as now he takes up the Testament. Even in the traditions of the great classic civilization which we inherit the penis is fascinus, the symbol of all fascination. In the history of human culture it has had far more than a merely human significance; it has been the symbol of all the generative force of Nature, the embodiment of creative energy in the animal and vegetable worlds alike, an image to be held aloft for worship, the sign of all unconscious ecstasy. As a symbol, the sacred phallus, it has been woven in and out of all the highest and deepest human conceptions, so intimately that it is possible to see it everywhere, that it is possible to fail to see it anywhere.
In correspondence with the importance of the penis is the large number of names which men have everywhere bestowed upon it. In French literature many hundred synonyms may be found. They were also numerous in Latin. In English the literary terms for the penis seem to be comparatively few, but a large number of non-literary synonyms exist in colloquial and perhaps merely local usage. The Latin term penis, which has established itself among us as the most correct designation, is generally considered to be associated with pendere and to be connected therefore with the usually pendent position of the organ. In the middle ages the general literary term throughout Europe was coles (or colis) from caulis, a stalk, and virga, a rod. The only serious English literary term, yard (exactly equivalent to virga), as used by Chaucer—almost the last great English writer whose vocabulary was adequate to the central facts of life—has now fallen out of literary and even colloquial usage.
Pierer and Chaulant, in their anatomical and physiological Real-Lexicon (vol. vi, p. 134), give nearly a hundred synonyms for the penis. Hyrtl (Topographisches Anatomie, seventh edition, vol. ii, pp. 67-69), adds others. Schurig, in his Spermatologia (1720, pp. 89-91), also presents a number of names for the penis; in Chapter III (pp. 189-192) of the same book he discusses the penis generally with more fullness than most authors. Louis de Landes, in his Glossaire Erotique of the French language (pp. 239-242), enumerates several hundred literary synonyms for the penis, though many of them probably only occur once.
There is no thorough and comprehensive modern study of the penis on an anthropological basis (though I should mention a valuable and fully illustrated study of anthropological and pathological variations of the penis in a series of articles by Marandon de Montyel, "Des Anomalies des Organs Génitaux Externes Chez les Aliénées," etc., Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, 1895), and it would be out of place here to attempt to collect the scattered notices regarding racial and other variations. It may suffice to note some of the evidence showing that such variations seem to be numerous and important. The Arab penis (according to Kocher) is slender and long (a third longer than the average European penis) and with a club-shaped glans. It undergoes little change when it enters the erect state. The clothes leaves it quite free, and the Arab practices manual excitement at an early age to favor its development.
Among the Fuegians, also, according to Hyades and Deniker (Cap Horn, vol. vii, p. 153), the average length of the penis is 77 millimeters, which is longer than in Europeans.
In men of black race, also, the penis is decidedly large. Thus Sir H. H. Johnston (British Central Africa, p. 399) states this to be a universal rule. Among the Wankenda of Northern Nyassa, for instance, he remarks that, while the body is of medium size, the penis is generally large. He gives the usual length as about six inches, reaching nine or ten in erection. The prepuce, it is added, is often very long, and circumcision is practiced by many tribes.
Among the American negroes Hrdlicka has found, also (Proceedings American Association for the Advancement of Science, vol. xlvii, p. 475), that the penis in black boys is larger than in white boys.
The passages cited above suggest the question whether the penis becomes larger by exercise of its generative functions. Most old authors assert that frequent erection makes the penis large and long (Schurig, Spermatologia, p. 107). Galen noted that in singers and athletes, who were chaste in order to preserve their strength, the sexual parts were small and rugrose, like those of old men, and that exercise of the organs from youth develops them; Roubaud, quoting this observation (Traité de l'Impuissance, p. 373), agrees with the statement. It seems probable that there is an element of truth in this ancient belief. At the same time it must be remembered that the penis is only to small extent a muscular organ, and that the increase of size produced by frequent congestion of erectile tissues cannot be either rapid or pronounced. Variations in the size of the sexual organs are probably on the whole mainly inherited, though it is impossible to speak decisively on this point until more systematic observations become customary.
The scrotum has usually, in the human imagination, been regarded merely as an appendage of the penis, of secondary importance, although it is the garment of the primary and essential organs of sex, and the fact that it is not the seat of any voluptuous sensation has doubtless helped to confirm this position. Even the name is merely a mediæval perversion of scortum, skin or hide. In classic times it was usually called the pouch or purse. The importance of the testicles has not, however, been altogether ignored, as the very word testis itself shows, for the testis is simply the witness of virility.[[78]]
It is easy to understand why the penis should occupy this special place in man's thoughts as the supreme sexual organ. It is the one conspicuous and prominent portion of the sexual apparatus, while its aptitude for swelling and erecting itself involuntarily, under the influence of sexual emotion, gives it a peculiar and almost unique position in the body. At the same time it is the point at which, in the male body, all voluptuous sensation is concentrated, the only normal masculine center of sex.[[79]]
It is not easy to find any correspondingly conspicuous symbol of sex in the sexual region of women. In the normal position nothing is visible but the peculiarly human cushion of fat picturesquely termed the Mons Veneris (because, as Palfyn said, all those who enroll themselves under the banner of Venus must necessarily scale it), and even that is veiled from view in the adult by the more or less bushy plantation of hair which grows upon it. A triangle of varyingly precise definition is thus formed at the lower apex of the trunk, and this would sometimes appear to have been regarded as a feminine symbol.[[80]] But the more usual and typical symbol of femininity is the idealized ring (by some savages drawn as a lozenge) of the vulvar opening—the yoni corresponding to the masculine lingam—which is normally closed from view by the larger lips arising from beneath the shadow of the mons. It is a symbol that, like the masculine phallus, has a double meaning among primitive peoples and is sometimes used to call down a blessing and sometimes to invoke a curse.[[81]]
This external opening of the feminine genital passage with its two enclosing lips is now generally called the vulva. It would appear that originally (as by Celsus and Pliny) this term included the womb, also, but when the term "uterus" came into use "vulva" was confined (as its sense of folding doors suggests that it should be) to the external entrance. The classic term cunnus for the external genitals was chiefly used by the poets; it has been the etymological source of various European names for this region, such as the old French con, which has now, however, disappeared from literature while even in popular usage it has given place to lapin and similar terms. But there is always a tendency, marked in most parts of the world, for the names of the external female parts to become indecorous. Even in classic antiquity this part was the pudendum, the part to be ashamed of, and among ourselves the mass of the population, still preserving the traditions of primitive times, continue to cherish the same notion.
The anatomy, anthropology, folk-lore, and terminology of the external and to some extent the internal feminine sexual region may be studied in the following publications, among others: Ploss, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter VI; Hyrtl, Topographisches Anatomie, vol. ii, and other publications by the same scholarly anatomist; W. J. Stewart Mackay, History of Ancient Gynæcology, especially pp. 244-250; R. Bergh, "Symbolæ ad Cognitionem Genitalium Externorum Fœminearum" (in Danish), Hospitalstidende, August, 1894; and also in Monatshefte für Praktische Dermatologie, 1897. D. S. Lamb, "The Female External Genital Organs," New York Journal of Gynæcology, August, 1894; R. L. Dickinson, "Hypertrophies of the Labia Minora and Their Significance," American Gynecology, September, 1902; Κρυπτάδια (in various languages), vol. viii, pp. 3-11, 11-13, and many other passages. Several of Schurig's works (especially Gynæcologia, Muliebria, and Parthenologia) contain full summaries of the statements of the early writers.
The external or larger lips, like the mons veneris, are specifically human in their full development, for in the anthropoid apes they are small as is the mons, and in the lower apes absent altogether; they are, moreover, larger in the white than in the other human races. Thus in the negro, and to a less degree in the Japanese (Wernich) and the Javanese (Scherzer) they are less developed than in women of white race. The greater lips develop in the fœtus later than the lesser lips, which are thus at first uncovered; this condition thus constitutes an infantile state which occasionally (in less than 2 per cent. of cases, according to Bergh) persists in the adult. Their generally accepted name, labia majora, is comparatively modern.[[82]]
The outer sides of the labia majora are covered with hair, and on the inner sides, which are smooth and moist, but are not true mucous membrane, there are a few sweat glands and numerous large sebaceous glands. Bergh considers that there is little or no hair on the inner sides of the labia majora, but Lamb states that careful examination shows that from one- to two-thirds of the inner surface in adult women show hairs like those of the external surface. In brunettes and women of dark races this surface is pigmented; in dark races it is usually a slate gray. From an examination of 2200 young Danish prostitutes Bergh has found that there are two main varieties in the shape of the labia majora, with transitional forms. In the first and most frequent form the labia tend to be less marked and more effaced and separated at the upper and anterior part, often being lost in the sides of the mons and presenting a fissure which is broader in its upper part and showing the inner lips more or less bare. In the second form the labia are thicker and more outstanding and the inner edges lie in contact throughout their whole length, showing the rima pudendi as a long narrow fissure. Whatever the form, the labia close more tightly together in virgins and in young individuals generally than in the deflowered and the elderly. In children, as Martineau pointed out, the vulva appears to look directly forward and the clitoris and urinary meatus easily appear, while in adult women, and especially after attempts at coitus have been made, the vulva appears directed more below and behind, and the clitoris and meatus more covered by the labia majora; so that the child urinates forward, while the adult woman is usually able to urinate almost directly downwards in the erect position, though in some cases (as may occasionally be observed in the street) she can only do so when bending slightly forwards. This difference in the direction of the stream formerly furnished one of the methods of diagnosing virginity, an uncertain one, since the difference is largely due to age and individual variation. The main factor in the position and aspect of the vulva is pelvic inclination. (See Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, p. 64; Stratz, Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers, Chapter XII.) In the European woman, according to Stratz, a considerable degree of pelvic inclination is essential to beauty, concealing all but the anterior third of the vulva. In negresses and other women of lower race the vulva, however, usually lies further back, being more conspicuous from behind than in European women; in this respect lower races resemble the apes. Those women of dark race, therefore, whose modesty is focused behind rather than in front thus have sound anatomical considerations on their side.
As Ploss and Bartels remark, a very common variation among European women consists in an unusually posterior position of the vulva and vaginal entrance, so that unless a cushion is placed under the buttocks it is difficult for the man to effect coitus in the usual position without giving much pain to the woman. They add that another anomaly, less easy to remedy, consists in an abnormally anterior position of the vaginal entrance close beneath the pelvic bone, so that, although intromission is easy, the spasmodic contraction of the vagina at the culmination of orgasm presses the penis against the bone and causes intolerable pain to the man.
The mons veneris and the labia majora are, after the age of puberty, always normally covered by a more or less profuse growth of hair. It is notable that the apes, notwithstanding their general tendency to hairiness, show no such special development of hair in this region. We thus see that all the external and more conspicuous portions of the sexual sphere in woman—the mons veneris, the labia majora, and the hair—represent not so much an animal inheritance, such as we commonly misrepresent them to be, but a higher and genuinely human development. As none of these structures subserve any clear practical use, it would appear that they must have developed by sexual selection to satisfy the æsthetic demands of the eye.[[83]]
The character and arrangement of the pubic hair, investigated by Eschricht and Voigt more than half a century ago, have been more recently studied by Bergh. As these observers have pointed out, there are various converging hair streams from above and below, the clitoris seeming to be the center towards which they are directed. The hair-covering thus formed is usually ample and, as a rule, is more so in brunettes than in blondes. It is nearly always bent, curly and more or less spirally twisted.[[84]] There are frequently one or two curls at the commencement of the fissure, rolled outwards, and occasionally a well marked tuft in the middle line. In abundance the pubic hair corresponds with the axillary hair; when one region is defective in hair the other is usually so also. Strong eyebrows also usually indicate a strong development of pubic hair. But the hair of the head usually varies independently, and Bergh found that of 154 women with spare pubic hair 72 had good and often profuse hair on the head. Complete or almost complete absence of pubic hair is in Bergh's experience only found in about 3 per cent. of women; these were all young and blonde.
Rothe, in his investigation of the pubic hair of 1000 Berlin women, found that no two women were really alike in this respect, but there was a tendency to two main types of arrangement, with minor subdivisions, according as the hair tended to grow chiefly in the middle line extending laterally from that line, or to grow equally over the whole extent of the pubic region; these two groups included half the cases investigated.
In men the pubic hair normally ascends anteriorly in a faint line up to the navel, with tendency to form a triangle with the apex above, and posteriorly extends backwards to the anus. In women these anterior and posterior extensions are comparatively rare, or at all events are only represented by a few stray hairs. Rothe found this variation in 4 per cent. of North German women, though a triangle of hair was only found in 2 per cent.; Lombroso found it in 5 per cent, of Italian women; Bergh found it in only 1.6 per cent. among 1000 Danish prostitutes, all sixteen of whom with three exceptions were brunettes. In Vienna, among 600 women, Coe found only 1 per cent, with this distribution of hair, and states that they were women of decidedly masculine type, though Ploss and Bartels, as well as Rothe, find, however, that heterogeny, as they term the masculine distribution, is more common in blondes. The anterior extension of hair is usually accompanied by the posterior extension around the anus, usually very slight, but occasionally as pronounce as in men. (According to Rothe, however, anterior heterogeny comparatively rare.) These masculine variations in the extension of the pubic hair appear to be not uncommonly associated with other physical and psychic anomalies; it is on this account that they have sometimes been regarded as indications of a vicious or a criminal temperament; they are, however, found in quite normal women.
The pubic hair of women is usually shorter than that of men, but thick, and the individual hairs stronger and larger in diameter than those of men, as Pfaff first showed; dark hair is usually stronger than light. In both length and size the individual variations are considerable. The usual length is about 2 inches, or 3-5 centimeters, occasionally reaching about 4 inches, or 9-10 centimeters, in the larger curls. In a series of 100 women attended during confinement in London and the north of England I have only once (in a rather blonde Lancashire woman) found the hair on labia reaching a conspicuous length of several inches and forming an obstruction to the manipulations involved in delivery. But Jahn delivered a woman whose pubic hair was longer than that of her head, reaching below her knee; Paulini also knew a woman whose pubic hair nearly reached her knees and was sold to make wigs; Bartholin mentions a soldier's wife who plaited her pubic hair behind her back; while Brantôme has several references to abnormally long hair in ladies of the French court during the sixteenth century. In 8 cases out of 2200 Bergh found the pubic hair forming a large curly wig extending to the iliac spines. The individual hairs have occasionally been found so stiff and brush-like as to render coitus difficult.
In color the pubic hair, while generally approximating to that of the head, is sometimes (according to Rothe, in Germany, in one-third cases) lighter, and sometimes somewhat darker, as is found to be the case by Coe, especially in brunettes, and also by Bergh, in Denmark. Bergh remarks that it is generally intermediate in color between the eyebrows and the axillary hair, the latter being more or less decolorized by sweat, and that, owing to the influence of the urine and vaginal discharges, the labial hair is paler than that on the mons; blondes with dark eyebrows usually have dark hair on the mons. The hair on this spot, as Aristotle observed, is usually the last to turn gray.
The key to the genital apparatus in women from the psychic point of view, and, indeed, to some extent, its anatomical center, is to be found in the clitoris. Anatomically and developmentally the clitoris is the rudimentary analogue of the masculine penis. Functionally, however, its scope is very much smaller. While the penis both receives and imparts specific voluptuous sensations, and is at the same time both the intromittent organ for the semen and the conduit for the urine, the sole function of the clitoris is to enter into erection under the stress of sexual emotion and receive and transmit the stimulatory voluptuous sensations imparted to it by friction with the masculine genital apparatus. It is so insignificant an organ that it is only within recent times that its homology with the penis has been realized. In 1844 Kobelt wrote in his important book, Die Mannlichen und Weiblichen Wollust-Organe, that in his attempt to show that the female organs are exactly analogous to the male the reader will probably be unable to follow him, while even Johannes Müller, the father of scientific physiology, declared at about the same period that the clitoris is essentially different from the penis. It is indeed but three centuries since the clitoris was so little known that (in 1593) Realdus Columbus actually claimed the honor of discovering it. Columbus was not its discoverer, for Fallopius speedily showed that Avicenna and Albucasis had referred to it.[[85]] The Arabs appear to have been very familiar with it, and, from the various names they gave it, clearly understood the important part it plays in generating voluptuous emotion.[[86]] But it was known in classic antiquity; the Greeks called it μύρτον, the myrtle-berry; Galen and Soranus called it νύμφη because it is covered as a bride is veiled, while the old Latin name was tentigo, from its power of entering into erection, and columella, the little pillar, from its shape. The modern term, which is Greek and refers to the sensitiveness of the part to voluptuous titillation, is said to have originated with Suidas and Pollux.[[87]] It was mentioned, though not adopted, by Rufus.
"The clitoris," declared Haller, "is a part extremely sensible and wonderfully prurient." It is certainly the chief though by no means the only point through which the immediate call to detumescence is conveyed to the female organism. It is, indeed, as Bryan Robinson remarks, "a veritable electrical bell button which, being pressed or irritated, rings up the whole nervous system."
The nervous supply of this little organ is very large, and the dorsal nerve of the clitoris is relatively three or four times larger than that of the penis. Yet the sensitive point of this organ is only 5 to 7 millimeters in extent. The length of the clitoris is usually rather over 2 centimeters (or about an inch) and 3 centimeters when erect; a length of 4 centimeters or more was regarded by Martineau as within the normal range of variation. It is not usual to find the clitoris longer than this in Europe (for among some races like the negro the clitoris is generally large), but all degrees of magnitude may be found as rare exceptions. (See, e.g., Sir J. Y. Simpson, "Hermaphrodites," Obstetric Memoirs and Contributions, vol. ii, pp. 217-226; also Dickinson, loc. cit.) It was formerly thought that the clitoris is easily enlarged by masturbation, and Martineau believed that in this way it might be doubled in length. It is probable that slight enlargement of the clitoris may be caused by very frequent masturbation, but only to an insignificant extent, and it is impossible to diagnose masturbation from the size of the clitoris. Among the women of Lake Nyassa, as well as in the Caroline Islands, special methods are practiced for elongating the clitoris, but in Europe, at all events, it is probable that the variations in the size of the organ are mainly congenital. It may well be that a congenitally large clitoris is associated with an abnormally developed excitability of the sexual apparatus. Tilt stated (On Uterine and Ovarian Inflammation, p. 37) that in his experience there was a frequent though not invariable connection between a large clitoris and sexual proclivity. (Schurig referred to a case of intense and life-long sexual obsession associated with an extremely large clitoris, Gynæcologia, pp. 16-17.) Of recent years considerable importance has been attached by some gynecologists (e.g., R. T. Morris, "Is Evolution Trying to Do Away With the Clitoris?" Transactions American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, vol. v, 1893) to preputial adhesions around the clitoris as a source of nervous disturbance and invalidism in young women.
While the clitoris is anatomically analogous to the penis, its actual mechanism under the stress of sexual excitement is somewhat different. As Liétaud long since pointed out, it cannot rise freely in erection as the penis can; it is apparently bound down by its prepuce and its frenulum. Waldeyer, in his book on the pelvis, states more precisely that, unlike the penis, when erect it retains its angle, only this becomes somewhat rounded so that the organ is to some slight extent lifted and protruded. Waldeyer considered that the clitoris was thus perfectly fitted to fulfill its part as the recipient of erotic stimulation from friction by the penis. Adler, however, has pointed out with considerable justice, that this is not altogether the case. The clitoris was developed in mammals who practiced the posterior mode of coitus; in this position the clitoris was beneath the penis, which was thus easily able in coitus to press it against the pubic bone close beneath which it is situated, and thus impart the compression and friction which the feminine organ craves. But in the human anterior mode of coitus it is not necessarily brought into close contact with the penis during the act of coitus, and thus fails to receive powerful stimulation. Its restricted position, which is an advantage in posterior coitus, is a disadvantage in anterior coitus. Adler observes that it thus comes about that the human method of coitus, while by bringing breast to breast and face to face it has added a new dignity and refinement, a fresh source of enjoyment, to the embrace of the sexes, has not been an unmixed advantage to woman, for while man has lost nothing by the change, woman has now to contend with an increased difficulty in attaining an adequate amount of pressure on that "electric button" which normally sets the whole mechanism in operation.[[88]]
We may well bring into connection with the changed conditions brought about by anterior coitus the interesting fact that while the clitoris remains the most exquisitely sensitive of the sexual centers in woman, voluptuous sensitivity is much more widely diffused in woman than in man. Over the whole body, indeed, it is apt to be more distinctly marked than is usually the case in man. But even if we confine ourselves to the genital region, while in man that portion of the penis which enters the vagina, and especially the glans, is normally the only portion which, even during turgescence, is sensitive to voluptuous contacts, in woman the whole of the region comprised within the larger lips, including even the anus and internally the vagina and the vaginal portion of the womb,[[89]] become sensitive to voluptuous contacts. Deprived of the penis the ability of a man to experience specifically sexual sensations becomes very limited indeed. But the loss of the clitoris or of any other structure involves no correspondingly serious disability on women. Ablation of the clitoris for sexual hyperæsthesia has for this reason been abandoned, except under special circumstances. The members of the Russian Skoptzy sect habitually amputate the clitoris, nymphæ, and breasts, yet many young Skoptzy women told the Russian physician, Guttceit, that they were perfectly well able to enjoy coitus.
Freud believes that in very young girls the clitoris is the exclusive seat of sexual sensation, masturbation at this age being directed to the clitoris alone, and spontaneous sexual excitement being confined to twitchings and erection of this organ, so that young girls are able, from their own experience, to recognize without instruction the signs of sexual excitement in boys. At a later age sexual excitability spreads from the clitoris to other regions—just as the easy inflammability of wood sets light to coal—though in the male the penis remains from first to last normally the almost exclusive seat of specific excitability. (S. Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, p. 62.)
The anus would, however, seem to be sometimes an erogenous zone even at an early age. Titillation of the anus appears to be frequently pleasurable in women; and this is not surprising considering the high degree of erotic sensitivity which is easily developed at the body orifices where skin meets mucous membrane. (Thus the meatus of the urethra is a highly erogenous zone, as is sufficiently shown by the frequency with which hair-pins and other articles used in masturbation find their way into the bladder.) It is in this germinal sensitivity, undoubtedly, that we find a chief key to the practice of pedicatio. Freud attaches great importance to the anus as a sexually erogenous zone at a very early age, and considers that it very frequently makes its influence felt in this respect. He believes that intestinal catarrhs in very early life and hæmorrhoids later tend to develop sensibility in the anus. He finds an indication that the anus has become a sexually erogenous zone when children wish to allow the contents of the rectum to accumulate so that defecation may by its increased difficulty involve voluptuous sensations, and adds that masturbatory excitation of the anus with the fingers is by no means rare in older children. (S. Freud, Op. cit., pp. 40-42.) A medical correspondent in India tells me of a European lady who derived, she said, "quite as much, indeed more," pleasure from digitally titillating her rectum as from vulvo-vaginal titillation; she had several times submitted to pedicatio and enjoyed it, though it was painful during penetration. The anus may retain this erogenous irritability even in old age, and Routh mentions the case of a lady of over 70, the reverse of lustful, who was so excited by the act of defecation that she was invariably compelled to masturbate, although this state of things was a source of great mental misery to her. (C. H. F. Routh, British Gynæcological Journal, February, 1887, p. 48.)
Bölsche has sought the explanation of the erogenous nature of the anus, and the key to pedicatio, in an atavistic return to the very remote amphibian days when the anus was combined with the sexual parts in a common cloaca. But it is unnecessary to invoke any vestigial inheritance from a vastly remote past when we bear in mind that the innervation of these two adjoining regions is inevitably very closely related. The presence of a body exit with its marked and special sensitivity at a point where it can scarcely fail to receive the nervous overflow from an immensely active center of nervous energy quite adequately accounts for the phenomenon in question.
The inner lips, the nymphæ or labia minora, running parallel with the greater lips which enclose them, embrace the clitoris anteriorly and extend backward, enclosing the urethral exit between them as well as the vaginal entrance. They form little wings whence their old Latin name, alæ, and from their resemblance to the cock's comb were by Spigelius termed crista galli. The red and (especially in brunettes) dark appearance of the nymphæ suggests that they are mucous membrane and not integumentary; it is, however, now considered that even on the inner surface they are covered by skin and separated from the mucous membrane by a line.[[90]] In structure, as described by Waldeyer, they consist of fine connective tissue rich in elastic fibers as well as some muscular tissue, and full of large veins, so that they are capable of a considerable degree of turgescence resembling erection during sexual excitement, while Ballantyne finds that the nymphæ are supplied to a notable extent with nervous end-organs.
More than any other part of the sexual apparatus in either sex, the lesser lips, on account of their shape, their position, and their structure, are capable of acquired modifications, more especially hypertrophy and elongation. By stretching, it is stated, a labium can be doubled in its dimensions. The "Hottentot apron," or elongated nymphæ, commonly found among some peoples in South Africa, has long been a familiar phenomenon. In such cases a length or transverse diameter of 3 to 5 centimeters is commonly found. But such elongated nymphæ are by no means confined to one part of the world or to one race; they are quite common among women of European race, and reach a size equal to most of the more reliably recorded Hottentot cases. Dickinson, who has very carefully studied this question in New York, finds that in 1000 consecutive gynæcological cases the labia showed some form of hypertrophy in 36 per cent., or more than 1 in 3; while among 150 of these cases who were neurasthenic, the proportion reached 56 per cent., even when minor or doubtful enlargements were disregarded. Bergh, in about 16 per cent. cases, found very enlarged nymphæ, the height reached in about 5 per cent. of the cases of enlargement being nearly six centimeters. Ploss and Bartels, in a full discussion: of the "Hottentot apron," come to the conclusion that this condition is perhaps in most cases artificially produced. It is known that among the Basutos it is the custom for the elder girls to manipulate the nymphæ of younger children, when alone with them, almost from birth, and on account of the elastic nature of these structures such manipulation quite adequately accounts for the elongation. It is not necessary to suppose that the custom is practiced for the sake of producing sexual stimulation—though this may frequently occur—since there are numerous similar primitive customs involving deformation of the sexual organs without the production of sexual excitement. Dickinson has come to a similar conclusion as regards the corresponding elongation of the nymphæ in civilized European women. In 361 out of 1000 women of good social class he found elongation or thickening, often with a notable degree of wrinkling and pigmentation, and believes that this is always the result of frequently repeated masturbation practiced with the separation of the nymphæ; in 30 per cent. of the cases admission of masturbation was made.[[91]] While this conclusion is probably correct in the main, it requires some qualification. To assert that whenever in women who have not been pregnant the marked protrusion of the inner lips beyond the outer lips means that at some period manipulation has been practiced with or without the production of sexual excitement is to make too absolute a statement. It is highly probable that the nymphæ, like the clitoris, are congenitally more prominent in some of the lower human races, as they are also in the apes; among the Fuegians, for instance, according to Hyades and Deniker, the labia minora descend lower than in Europeans, although there is not the slightest reason to suppose that these women practice any manipulations. Among European women, again, the nymphæ sometimes protrude very prominently beyond the labia majora in women who are organically of somewhat infantile type; this occurs in cases in which we may be convinced that no manipulations have ever been practiced.[[92]]
It is difficult to speak very decisively as to the function of the labia minora. They doubtless exert some amount of protective influence over the entrance to the vagina, and in this way correspond to the lips of the mouth after which they are called. They fulfill, however, one very definite though not obviously important function which is indicated by the mythologic name they have received. There is, indeed, some obscurity in the origin of this term, nymphæ, which has not, I believe, been satisfactorily cleared up. It has been stated that the Greek name νύμφη has been transferred from the clitoris to the labia minora. Any such transfer could only have taken place when the meaning of the word had been forgotten, and νύμφη had become the totally different word nymphæ, the goddesses who presided over streams. The old anatomists were much exercised in their minds as to the meaning of the name, but on the whole were inclined to believe that it referred to the action of the labia minora in directing the urinary stream. The term nymphæ was first applied in the modern sense, according to Bergh, in 1599, by Pinæus, mainly from the influence of these structures on the urinary stream, and he dilated in his De Virginitate on the suitability of the term to designate so poetic a spot.[[93]] In more modern times Luschka and Sir Charles Bell considered that it is one of the uses of the nymphæ to direct the stream of urine, and Lamb from his own observation thinks the same conclusion probable. In reality there cannot be the slightest doubt about the function of the nymphæ, as, in Hyrtl's phrase, "the naiads of the urinary source," and it can be demonstrated by the simplest experiment.[[94]]
The nymphæ form the intermediate portal of the vagina, as the canal which conducts to the womb was in anatomy first termed (according to Hyrtl) by De Graaf.[[95]] It is a secreting, erectile, more or less sensitive canal lined by what is usually considered mucous membrane, though some have regarded it as integument of the same character as that of the external genitals; it certainly resembles such integument more than, for instance, the mucous membrane of the rectum. In the woman who has never had sexual intercourse and has been subjected to no manipulations or accidents affecting this region, the vagina is closed by a last and final gate of delicate membrane—scarcely admitting more than a slender finger—called the hymen.
The poets called the hymen "fios virginitatis," the flower of virginity, whence the medico-legal term defloratio. Notwithstanding the great significance which has long been attached to the phenomena connected with it, the hymen was not accurately known until Vesalius, Fallopius, and Spigelius described and named it. It was, however, recognized by the Arab authors, Avicenna and Averroes. The early literature concerning it is summarized by Schurig, Muliebria, 1729, Section II, cap. V. The same author's Parthenologia is devoted to the various ancient problems connected with the question of virginity.
To say that this delicate piece of membrane is from the non-physical point of view a more important structure than any other part of the body is to convey but a feeble idea of the immense importance of the hymen in the eyes of the men of many past ages and even of our own times and among our own people.[[96]] For the uses of the feminine body, or for its beauty, there is no part which is more absolutely insignificant. But in human estimation it has acquired a spiritual value which has made it far more than a part of the body. It has taken the place of the soul, that whose presence gives all her worth and dignity, even her name, to the unmarried woman, her purity, her sexual desirability, her market value. Without it—though in all physical and mental respects she might remain the same person—she has sometimes been a mark for contempt, a worthless outcast.[[97]]
So fragile a membrane scarcely possesses the reliability which should be possessed by a structure whose presence or absence has often meant so much. Its absence by no means necessarily signifies that a woman has had intercourse with a man. Its presence by no means signifies that she has never had such intercourse.
There are many ways in which the hymen may be destroyed apart from coitus. Among the Chinese (and also, it would appear, in India and some other parts of the East) the female parts are from infancy kept so scrupulously clean by daily washing, the finger being introduced into the vagina, that the hymen rapidly disappears, and its existence is unknown even to Chinese doctors. Among some Brazilian Indians a similar practice exists among mothers as regards their young children, less, however, for the sake of cleanliness than in order to facilitate sexual intercourse in future years. (Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter VI.) The manipulations of vaginal masturbation will, of course, similarly destroy the hymen. It is also quite possible for the hymen to be ruptured by falls and other accidents. (See, e.g., a lengthy study by Nina-Rodrigues, "Des Ruptures de l'Hymen dans les Chutes," Annales d'Hygiène Publique, September, 1903.)
On the other hand, integrity of the hymen is no proof of virginity, apart from the obvious fact that there may be intercourse without penetration. (The case has even been recorded of a prostitute with syphilitic condylomata, a somewhat masculine type of pubic arch, and vulva rather posteriorly placed, whose hymen had never been penetrated.) The hymen may be of a yielding or folding type, so that complete penetration may take place and yet the hymen be afterwards found unruptured. It occasionally happens that the hymen is found intact at the end of pregnancy. In some, though not all, of these cases there has been conception without intromission of the penis. This has occurred even when the entrance was very minute. The possibility of such conception has long been recognized, and Schurig (Syllepsilogia, 1731, Section I, cap. VIII, p. 2) quotes ancient authors who have recorded cases. For some typical modern cases see Guérard (Centralblatt für Gynäkologie, No. 15, 1895), in one of whose cases the hymen of the pregnant woman scarcely admitted a hair; also Braun (ib., No. 23, 1895).
The hymen has played a very definite and pronounced part in the social and moral life of humanity. Until recently it has been more difficult to decide what precise biological function it has exercised to ensure its development and preservation. Sexual selection, no doubt, has worked in its favor, but that influence has been very limited and comparatively very recent. Virginity is not usually of any value among peoples who are entirely primitive. Indeed, even in the classic civilization which we inherit, it is easy to show that the virgin and the admiration for virginity are of late growth; the virgin goddesses were not originally virgins in our modern sense. Diana was the many-breasted patroness of childbirth before she became the chaste and solitary huntress, for the earliest distinction would appear to have been simply between the woman who was attached to a man and the woman who followed an earlier rule of freedom and independence; it was a later notion to suppose that the latter woman was debarred from sexual intercourse. We certainly must not seek the origin of the hymen in sexual selection; we must find it in natural selection. And here it might seem at first sight that we come upon a contradiction in Nature, for Nature is always devising contrivances to secure the maximum amount of fertilization. "Increase and multiply" is so obviously the command of Nature that the Hebrews, with their usual insight, unhesitatingly dared to place it in the mouth of Jehovah. But the hymen is a barrier to fertilization. It has, however, always to be remembered that as we rise in the zoölogical scale, and as the period of gestation lengthens and the possible number of offspring is fewer, it becomes constantly more essential that fertilization shall be effective rather than easy; the fewer the progeny the more necessary it is that they shall be vigorous enough to survive. There can be little doubt that, as one or two writers have already suggested, the hymen owes its development to the fact that its influence is on the side of effective fertilization. It is an obstacle to the impregnation of the young female by immature, aged, or feeble males. The hymen is thus an anatomical expression of that admiration of force which marks the female in her choice of a mate. So regarded, it is an interesting example of the intimate manner in which sexual selection is really based on natural selection. Sexual selection is but the translation into psychic terms of a process which has already found expression in the physical texture of the body.
It may be added that this interpretation of the biological function of the hymen is supported by the facts of its evolution. It is unknown among the lower mammals, with whom fertilization is easy, gestation short and offspring numerous. It only begins to appear among the higher mammals in whom reproduction is already beginning to take on the characters which become fully developed in man. Various authors have found traces of a rudimentary hymen, not only in apes, but in elephants, horses, donkeys, bitches, bears, pigs, hyenas, and giraffes. (Hyrtl, Op. cit., vol. ii, p. 189; G. Gellhoen, "Anatomy and Development of the Hymen," American Journal Obstetrics, August, 1904.) It is in the human species that the tendency to limitation of offspring is most marked, combined at the same time with a greater aptitude for impregnation than exists among any lower mammals. It is here, therefore, that a physical check is of most value, and accordingly we find that in woman alone, of all animals, is the hymen fully developed.
"Analysis of the Sexual Impulse," in vol. iii of these Studies.
"The accomplishment of no other function," Hyrtl remarks, "is so intimately connected with the mind and yet so independent of it."
The process is still, however, but imperfectly understood; see Art. "Fécondation," by Ed. Retterer, in Richet's Dictionnaire de Physiologie, vol. vi, 1905.
Thus a male fœtus showing reptilian characters in sexual ducts was exhibited by Shattock at the Pathological Society of London, February 19, 1895.
J. Kohlbrugge, "Die Umgestaltung des Uterus der Affen nach den Geburt," Zeitschrift für Morphologie, bd. iv, p. 1, 1901.
There are, however, no special nerve endings (Krause corpuscles), as was formerly supposed. The nerve endings in the genital region are the same as elsewhere. The difference lies in the abundance of superposed arboreal ramifications. See, e.g., Ed. Retterer, Art. "Ejaculation," Richet's Dictionnaire de Physiologie, vol. v.
Hyrtl, Op. cit., vol. ii, p. 39.
Sensations of pleasure without those of touch appear to be normal at the tip of the penis, as pointed out by Scripture, quoted in Alienist and Neurologist, January, 1898.
See the previous volume of these Studies, "Sexual Selection in Man," p. 161.
See, e.g., Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i, beginning of chapter VI.
Hyrtl states that the name labia was first used by Haller in the middle of the eighteenth century in his Elements of Physiology, being adopted by him from the Greek poet Erotion, who gave these structures the very obvious name χειλεα, lips. But this seems to be a mistake, for the seventeenth century anatomists certainly used the name "labia" for these parts.
Bergh tentatively suggests, as regards the pubic hair, that its appearance may be due to the upright walk in man and the human position during coitus, the hair preventing irritation of the genitals from the sweat pouring down from the body and protecting the skin from direct friction in coitus. (In both these suggestions he was, however, long previously anticipated by Fabricius ab Aquapendente.) The fanciful suggestion of Louis Robinson that the pubic hair has developed in order to enable the human infant to cling securely to his mother is very poorly supported by facts, and has not met with acceptance. It may be mentioned that (as stated by Ploss and Bartels) the women of the Bismarck Archipelago, whose pubic hair is very abundant, use it as a kind of handkerchief on which to clean their hands.
Routh and Heywood Smith have noted that the pubic hair tends to lose its curliness and become straight in women who masturbate. (British Gynæcological Journal, February, 1887, p. 505.)
Schurig, Muliebria, p. 75. Plazzon in 1621 said that in Italian it had a popular name, il besneegio.
Schurig brought together in his Gynæcologia (pp. 2-4) various early opinions concerning the clitoris as the seat of voluptuous feeling.
Hyrtl, Op. cit., vol. ii, p. 193.
Adler, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, 1904, pp. 117-119.
The voluptuous sensations caused by sexual contacts producing movements of the womb are probably normal and usual. They may even occur under circumstances unconnected with sexual emotion, and Mundé (International Journal of Surgery, March, 1893) mentions incidentally that in one case while titillating the cervix with a sound the woman very plainly showed voluptuous manifestations.
Henle stated that fine hairs are frequently visible on the nymphæ; Stieda (Zeitschrift für Morphologie, 1902, p. 458) remarks that he has never been able to see them with the naked eye.
R. L. Dickinson, "Hypertrophies of the Labia Minora and Their Significance," American Gynæcologist, September, 1902. It is perhaps noteworthy that Bergh found that in 302 cases in which the nymphæ were of unequal length, in all but 24 the left was longer.
It may be remarked that Bergh believes that the nymphæ, and indeed the external genitals generally, are congenitally more strongly developed in libidinous persons, and at the same time in brunettes, while in public prostitutes this is not usually the case, which confirms the belief that exalted sexual sensibility does not usually lead to prostitution. He adds that prostitution, unless carried on for many years, has little effect on the shape of the external genitals.
Schurig (Muliebria, 1729, Section II, cap. II) gives numerous quotations on this point; thus De Graaf wrote in his book on the sexual organs of women: "Tales protuberantiæ nymphæ appellantur ea propter quod aquis e vesica prosilientibus proxime adstare reperiantur, quandoquidem inter illas, tanquam duos parietes, urina magno impetu cum sibilo sæpe et absque labiorum irrigatione erumpit, vel quod sint castitatis præsides, aut sponsam primo intromittant."
Havelock Ellis, "The Bladder as a Dynamometer," American Journal of Dermatology, May, 1902. If a woman who has never been pregnant, standing in the erect position before commencing the act of urination presses apart the labia minora with index and middle fingers the stream will be projected forward so as to fall usually at a considerable distance in front of a vertical line from the meatus; if when the act is half completed the fingers are removed, the labia close together and the stream, though maintained at a constant pressure, at once changes its character and direction.
In poetry this term was employed by Plautus, Pseudolus, Act IV, Sc. 7. The Greek αιδοιον sometimes meant vagina and sometimes the external sexual parts; κολπος was used for the vagina alone.
It is curious, however, that the European physicians of the seventeenth and even eighteenth centuries were doubtful of its value as a sign of virginity and considered it often absent.
For a summary of the beliefs and practices of various peoples with regard to the hymen and virginity see Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter XVI.
II
The Object of Detumescence—Erogenous Zones—The Lips—The Vascular Characters of Detumescence—Erectile Tissue—Erection in Woman—Mucous Emission in Women—Sexual Connection—The Human Mode of Intercourse—Normal Variations—The Motor Characters of Detumescence—Ejaculation—The Virile Reflex—The General Phenomena of Detumescence—The Circulatory and Respiratory Phenomena—Blood Pressure—Cardiac Disturbance—Glandular Activity—Distillatio—The Essentially Motor Character of Detumescence—Involuntary Muscular Irradiation to Bladder, etc.—Erotic Intoxication—Analogy of Sexual Detumescence and Vesical Tension—The Specifically Sexual Movements of Detumescence in Man—In Woman—The Spontaneous Movements of the Genital Canal in Woman—Their Function in Conception—Part Played by Active Movement of the Spermatozoa—The Artificial Injection of Semen—The Facial Expression During Detumescence—The Expression of Joy—The Occasional Serious Effects of Coitus.
We have seen what the object of detumescence is, and we have briefly considered the organs and structures which are chiefly concerned in the process. We have now to inquire what are the actual phenomena which take place during the act of detumescence.
Detumescence is normally linked closely to tumescence. Tumescence is the piling on of the fuel; detumescence is the leaping out of the devouring flame whence is lighted the torch of life to be handed on from generation to generation. The whole process is double and yet single; it is exactly analogous to that by which a pile is driven into the earth by the raising and then the letting go of a heavy weight which falls on to the head of the pile. In tumescence the organism is slowly wound up and force accumulated; in the act of detumescence the accumulated force is let go and by its liberation the sperm-bearing instrument is driven home. Courtship, as we commonly term the process of tumescence which takes place when a woman is first sexually approached by a man, is usually a highly prolonged process. But it is always necessary to remember that every repetition of the act of coitus, to be normally and effectively carried out on both sides, demands a similar double process; detumescence must be preceded by an abbreviated courtship.
This abbreviated courtship by which tumescence is secured or heightened in the repetition of acts of coitus which have become familiar, is mainly tactile.[[98]] Since the part of the man in coitus is more active and that of the woman more passive, the sexual sensitivity of the skin seems to be more pronounced in women. There are, moreover, regions of the surface of a woman's body where contact, when sympathetic, seems specially liable to arouse erotic excitement. Such erogenous zones are often specially marked in the breasts, occasionally in the palm of the hand, the nape of the neck, the lobule of the ear, the little finger; there is, indeed, perhaps no part of the surface of the body which may not, in some individuals at some time, become normally an erogenous zone. In hysteria the erotic excitability of these zones is sometimes very intense. The lips are, however, without doubt, the most persistently and poignantly sensitive region of the whole body outside the sphere of the sexual organs themselves. Hence the significance of the kiss as a preliminary of detumescence.[[99]]
The importance of the lips as a normal erogenous zone is shown by the experiments of Gualino. He applied a thread, folded on itself several times, to the lips, thus stimulating them in a simple mechanical manner. Of 20 women, between the ages of 18 and 35, only 8 felt this as a merely mechanical operation, 4 felt a vaguely erotic element in the proceeding, 3 experienced a desire for coitus and in 5 there was actual sexual excitement with emission of mucus. Of 25 men, between the ages of 20 and 30, in 15 all sexual feeling was absent, in 7 erotic ideas were suggested with congestion of the sexual organs without erection, and in 3 there was the beginning of erection. It should be added that both the women and the men in whom this sexual reflex was more especially marked were of somewhat nervous temperament; in such persons erotic reactions of all kinds generally occur most easily. (Gualino, "Il Rifflesso Sessuale nell' eccitamento alle labbre," Archivio di Psichiatria, 1904, p. 341.)
As tumescence, under the influence of sensory stimulation, proceeds toward the climax when it gives place to detumescence, the physical phenomena become more and more acutely localized in the sexual organs. The process which was at first predominantly nervous and psychic now becomes more prominently vascular. The ancient sexual relationship of the skin asserts itself; there is marked surface congestion showing itself in various ways. The face tends to become red, and exactly the same phenomenon is taking place in the genital organs; "an erection," it has been said, "is a blushing of the penis." The difference is that in the genital organs this heightened vascularity has a definite and specific function to accomplish—the erection of the male organ which fits it to enter the female parts—and that consequently there has been developed in the penis that special kind of vascular mechanism, consisting of veins in connective tissue with unstriped muscular fibers, termed erectile tissue.[[100]]
It is not only the man who is supplied with erectile tissue which in the process of tumescence becomes congested and swollen. The woman also, in the corresponding external genital region, is likewise supplied with erectile tissue now also charged with blood, and exhibits the same changes as have taken place in her partner, though less conspicuously visible. In the anthropoid apes, as the gorilla, the large clitoris and the nymphæ become prominent in sexual excitement, but the less development of the clitoris in women, together with the specifically human evolution of the mons veneris and larger lips, renders this sexual turgescence practically invisible, though it is perceptible to touch in an increased degree of spongy and elastic tension. The whole feminine genital canal, including the uterus, indeed, is richly supplied with blood-vessels, and is capable during sexual excitement of a very high degree of turgescence, a kind of erection.
The process of erection in woman is accompanied by the pouring out of fluid which copiously bathes all parts of the vulva around the entrance to the vagina. This is a bland, more or less odorless mucus which, under ordinary circumstances, slowly and imperceptibly suffuses the parts. When, however, the entrance to the vagina is exposed and extended, as during a gynæcological examination which occasionally produces sexual excitement, there may be seen a real ejaculation of the fluid which, as usually described, comes largely from the glands of Bartholin, situated at the mouth of the vagina. Under these circumstances it is sometimes described as being emitted in a jet which is thrown to a distance.[[101]] This mucous ejaculation was in former days regarded as analogous to the seminal ejaculation in man, and hence essential to conception. Although this belief was erroneous the fluid poured out in this manner whenever a high degree of tumescence is attained, and before the onset of detumescence, certainly performs an important function in lubricating the entrance to the genital canal and so facilitating the intromission of the male organ.[[102]] Menstruation has a similar influence in facilitating coitus, as Schurig long since pointed out.[[103]] A like process takes place during parturition when the same parts are being lubricated and stretched in preparation for the protrusion of the fœtal head. The occurrence of the mucous flow in tumescence always indicates that that process is actively affecting the central sexual organs, and that voluptuous emotions are present.[[104]]
The secretions of the genital canal and outlet in women are somewhat numerous. We have the odoriferous glands of sebaceous origin, and with them the prepuce of the clitoris which has been described as a kind of gigantic sebaceous follicle with the clitoris occupying its interior. (Hyrtl.) There is the secretion from the glands of Bartholin. There is again the vaginal secretion, opaque and albuminous, which appears to be alkaline when secreted, but becomes acid under the decomposing influence of bacteria, which are, however, harmless and not pathogenic. (Gow, Obstetrical Society of London, January 3, 1894.) There is, finally, the mucous uterine secretion, which is alkaline, and, being poured out during orgasm, is believed to protect the spermatozoa from destruction by the acid vaginal secretion.
The belief that the mucus poured out in women during sexual excitement is feminine semen and therefore essential to conception had many remarkable consequences and was widespread until the seventeenth century. Thus, in the chapter "De Modo coeundi et de regimine eorum qui coeunt" of De Secretis Mulierum, there is insistence on the importance of the proper mixture of the male semen with the female semen and of arranging that it shall not escape from the vagina. The woman must lie quiet for several hours at least, not rising even to urinate, and when she gets up, be very temperate in eating and drinking, and not run or jump, pretending that she has a headache. It was the belief in feminine semen which led some theologians to lay down that a woman might masturbate if she had not experienced orgasm in coitus. Schurig in his Muliebria (1729, pp. 159, et seq.) discusses the opinions of old authors regarding the nature, source, and uses of the female genital secretions, and quotes authorities against the old view that it was female semen. In a subsequent work (Syllepsilogia, 1731, pp. 3, et seq.) he returns to the same question, quotes authors who accept a feminine semen, shows that Harvey denied it any significance, and himself decides against it. It has not seriously been brought forward since.
When erection is completed in both the man and the woman the conditions necessary for conjugation have at last been fulfilled. In all animals, even those most nearly allied to man, coitus is effected by the male approaching the female posteriorly. In man the normal method of male approach is anteriorly, face to face. Leonardo da Vinci, in a well-known drawing representing a sagittal section of a man and a woman connected in this position of so-called Venus obversa; has shown how well adapted the position is to the normal position of the organs in the human species.[[105]]
Among monkeys, it is stated, congress is sometimes performed when the female is on all fours; at other times the male brings the female between his thighs when he is sitting, holding her with his forepaws. Froriep informed Lawrence that the male sometimes supported his feet on the female's calves. (Sir W. Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology, 1823, p. 186.) A summary of the methods of congress practiced by the various animals below mammals will be found in the article "Copulation" by H. de Varigny in Richet's Dictionnaire de Physiologie, vol. iv.
The anterior position in coitus, with the female partner lying supine, is so widespread throughout the world that it may fairly be termed the most typically human attitude in sexual congress. It is found represented in Egyptian graves at Benihassan, belonging to the Twelfth Dynasty; it is regarded by Mohammedans as the normal position, although other positions are permitted by the Prophet: "Your wives are your tillage: go in unto your tillage in what manner soever you will;" it is that adopted in Malacca; it appears, from Peruvian antiquities, to have been the position generally, though not exclusively, adopted in ancient Peru; it is found in many parts of Africa, and seems also to have been the most usual position among the American aborigines.
Various modifications of this position are, however, found. Thus, in some parts of the world, as among the Suahelis in Zanzibar, the male partner adopts the supine position. In Loango, according to Pechuel-Loesche, coitus is performed lying on the side. Sometimes, as on the west coast of Africa, the woman is supine and the man more or less erect; or, as among the Queenslanders (as described by Roth) the woman is supine and the man squats on his heels with her thighs clasping his flanks, while he raises her buttocks with his hands.
The position of coitus in which the man is supine is without doubt a natural and frequent variation of the specifically human obverse method of coitus. It was evidently familiar to the Romans. Ovid mentions it (Ars Amatoria, III, 777-8), recommending it to little women, and saying that Andromache was too tall to practice it with Hector. Aristophanes refers to it, and there are Greek epigrams in which women boast of their skill in riding their lovers. It has sometimes been viewed with a certain disfavor because it seems to confer a superiority on the woman. "Cursed be he," according to a Mohammedan saying, "who maketh woman heaven and man earth."
Of special interest is the wide prevalence of an attitude in coitus recalling that which prevails among quadrupeds. The frequency with which on the walls of Pompeii coitus is represented with the woman bending forward and her partner approaching her posteriorly has led to the belief that this attitude was formerly very common in Southern Italy. However that may be, it is certainly normal at the present day among various more or less primitive peoples in whom the vulva is often placed somewhat posteriorly. It is thus among the Soudanese, as also, in an altogether different part of the world, among the Eskimo Innuit and Koniags. The New Caledonians, according to Foley, cohabit in the quadrupedal manner, and so also the Papuans of New Guinea (Bongu), according to Vahness. The same custom is also found in Australia, where, however other postures are also adopted. In Europe the quadrupedal posture would seem to prevail among some of the South Slavs, notably the Dalmatians. (The different methods of coitus practiced by the South Slavs are described in Κρυπτάδια vol. vi, pp. 220, et seq.)
This method of coitus was recommended by Lucretius (lib. iv) and also advised by Paulus Æginetus as favorable to conception. (The opinions of various early physicians are quoted by Schurig, Spermatologia, 1720, pp. 232, et seq.). It seems to be a position that is not infrequently agreeable to women, a fact which may be brought into connection with the remarks of Adler already quoted (p. 131) concerning the comparative lack of adjustment of the feminine organs to the obverse position. It is noteworthy that in the days of witchcraft hysterical women constantly believed that they had had intercourse with the Devil in this manner. This circumstance, indeed, probably aided in the very marked disfavor in which coitus a posteriori fell after the decay of classic influences. The mediæval physicians described it as mos diabolicus and mistakenly supposed that it produced abortion (Hyrtl, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 87). The theologians, needless to say, were opposed to the mos diabolicus, and already in the Anglo-Saxon Penitential of Theodore, at the end of the seventh century, 40 days' penance is prescribed for this method of coitus.
From the frequency with which they have been adopted by various peoples as national customs, most of the postures in coitus here referred to must be said to come within the normal range of variation. It is a mistake to regard them as vicious perversions.
Up to the point to which we have so far considered it, the process of detumescence has been mainly nervous and vascular in character; it has, in fact, been but the more acute stage of a process which has been going on throughout tumescence. But now we reach the point at which a new element comes in: muscular action. With the onset of muscular action, which is mainly involuntary, even when it affects the voluntary muscles, detumescence proper begins to take place. Henceforward purposeful psychic action, except by an effort, is virtually abolished. The individual, as a separate person, tends to disappear. He has become one with another person, as nearly one as the conditions of existence ever permit; he and she are now merely an instrument in the hands of a higher power—by whatever name we may choose to call that Power—which is using them for an end not themselves.
The decisive moment in the production of the instinctive and involuntary orgasm occurs when, under the influence of the stimulus applied to the penis by friction with the vagina, the tension of the seminal fluid poured into the urethra arouses the ejaculatory center in the spinal cord and the bulbo-cavernosus muscle surrounding the urethra responsively contracts in rhythmic spasms. Then it is that ejaculation occurs.[[106]]
"The circulation quickens, the arteries beat strongly," wrote Roubaud in a description of the physical state during coitus which may almost be termed classic; "the venous blood, arrested by muscular contraction, increases the general heat, and this stagnation, more pronounced in the brain by the contraction of the muscles of the neck and the throwing of the head backward, causes a momentary cerebral congestion, during which intelligence is lost and the faculties abolished. The eyes, violently injected, become haggard, and the look uncertain, or, in the majority of cases, the eyes are closed spasmodically to avoid the contact of the light. The respiration is hurried, sometimes interrupted, and may be suspended by the spasmodic contraction of the larynx, and the air, for a time compressed, is at last emitted in broken and meaningless words. The congested nervous centers only communicate confused sensations and volitions; mobility and sensation show extreme disorder; the limbs are seized by convulsions and sometimes by cramps, or are thrown wildly about or become stiff like iron bars. The jaws, tightly pressed, grind the teeth, and in some persons the delirium is carried so far that they bite to bleeding the shoulders their companions have imprudently abandoned to them. This frantic state of epilepsy lasts but a short time, but it suffices to exhaust the forces of the organism, especially in man. It is, I believe, Galen, who said: 'Omne animal post coitum triste præter mulierem gallumque.'"[[107]] Most of the elements that make up this typical picture of the state of coitus are not absolutely essential to that state, but they all come within the normal range of variation. There can be no doubt that this range is considerable. There would appear to be not only individual, but also racial, differences; there is a remarkable passage in Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra describing the varying behavior of the women of different races in India under the stress of sexual excitement—Dravidian women with difficulty attaining erethism, women of the Punjaub fond of being caressed with the tongue, women of Oude with impetuous desire and profuse flow of mucus, etc.—and it is highly probable, Ploss and Bartels remark, that these characterizations are founded on exact observations.[[108]]
The various phenomena included in Roubaud's description of the condition during coitus may all be directly or indirectly reduced to two groups: the first circulatory and respiratory, the second motor. It is necessary to consider both these aspects of the process of detumescence in somewhat greater detail, although while it is most convenient to discuss them separately, it must be borne in mind that they are not really separable; the circulatory phenomena are in large measure a by-product of the involuntary motor process.
With the approach of detumescence the respiration becomes shallow, rapid, and to some extent arrested. This characteristic of the breathing during sexual excitement is well recognized; so that in, for instance, the Arabian Nights, it is commonly noted of women when gazing at beautiful youths whose love they desired, that they ceased breathing.[[109]] It may be added that exactly the same tendency to superficial and arrested respiration takes place whenever there is any intense mental concentration, as in severe intellectual work.[[110]]
The arrest of respiration tends to render the blood venous, and thus aids in stimulating the vasomotor centers, raising the blood-pressure in the body generally, and especially in the erectile tissues. High blood-pressure is one of the most marked features of the state of detumescence. The heart beats are stronger and quicker, the surface arteries are more visible, the conjunctivæ become red. The precise degree of blood-pressure attained during coitus has been most accurately ascertained in the dog. In Bechterew's laboratory in St. Petersburg a manometer was introduced into the central end of the carotid artery of a bitch; a male dog was then introduced, and during coitus observations were made on the blood-pressure at the peripheral and central ends of the artery. It was found that there was a great general elevation of blood-pressure, intense hyperæmia of the brain, rapid alternations, during the act, of vasoconstriction and vasodilatation of the brain, with increase and diminution of the general arterial tension in relation with the various phases of the act, the greatest cerebral vasodilatation and hyperæmia coinciding with the moment following the intromission of the penis; the end of the act is followed by a considerable fall in the blood-pressure.[[111]] I am not acquainted with any precise observations on the blood-pressure in human subjects during detumescence, and there are obvious difficulties in the way of such observations. It is probable, however, that the conditions found would be substantially the same. This is indicated, so far as the very marked increase of blood-pressure is concerned, by some observations made by Vaschide and Vurpas with the sphygmanometer on a lady under the influence of sexual excitement. In this case there was a relationship of sympathy and friendly tenderness between the experimenter and the subject, Madame X, aged 25. Experimenter and subject talked sympathetically, and finally, we are told, while the latter still had her hands in the sphygmanometer, the former almost made a declaration of love. Madame X was greatly impressed, and afterward admitted that her emotions had been genuine and strong. The blood-pressure, which was in this subject habitually 65 millimeters, rose to 150 and even 160, indicating a very high pressure, which rarely occurs; at the same time Madame X looked very emotional and troubled.[[112]]
Some authorities are of opinion that irregularities in the accomplishment of the sexual act are specially liable to cause disturbances in the circulation. Thus Kisch, of Prague, refers to the case of a couple practising coitus interruptus—the husband withdrawing before ejaculation—in which the wife, a vigorous woman, became liable after some years to attacks termed by Kisch neurasthenia cordis vasomotoria, in which there was at daily or longer intervals palpitation, with feelings of anxiety, headache, dizziness, muscular weakness and tendency to faint. He regards coitus as a cause of various heart troubles in women: (1) Attacks of tachycardia in very excitable and sexually inclined women; (2) attacks of tachycardia with dyspnœa in young women, with vaginismus; (3) cardiac symptoms with lowered vascular tone in women who for a long time have practised coitus interruptus without complete sexual gratification (Kisch, "Herzbeschwerden der Frauen verursacht durch den Cohabitationsact," Münchener Medizinisches Wochenschrift, 1897, p. 617). In this connection, also, reference may probably be made to those attacks of anxiety which Freud associates with psychic sexual lesions of an emotional character.
Associated with this vascular activity in detumescence we find a general tendency to glandular activity. Various secretions are formed abundantly. Perspiration is copious, and the ancient relationship between the cutaneous and sexual systems seems to evoke a general activity of the skin and its odoriferous secretions. Salivation, which also occurs, is very conspicuous in many lower animals, as for instance in the donkey, notably the female, who just before coitus stands with mouth open, jaws moving, and saliva dribbling. In men, corresponding to the more copious secretion in women, there is, during the latter stages of tumescence, a slight secretion of mucus—Fürbringer's urethrorrhœa ex libidine—which appears in drops at the urethral orifice. It comes from the small glands of Littré and Cowper which open into the urethra. This phenomenon was well known to the old theologians, who called it distillatio, and realized its significance as at once distinct from semen and an indication that the mind was dwelling on voluptuous images; it was also known in classic times[[113]]; more recently it has often been confused with semen and has thus sometimes caused needless anxiety to nervous persons. There is also an increased secretion of urine, and it is probable that if the viscera were more accessible to observation we might be able to demonstrate that the glands throughout the body share in this increased activity.
The phenomena of detumescence culminate, however, and have their most obvious manifestation in motor activity. The genital act, as Vaschide and Vurpas remark, consists essentially in "a more and more marked tension of the motor state which, reaching its maximum, presents a short tonic phase, followed by a clonic phase, and terminates in a period of adynamia and repose." This motor activity is of the essence of the impulse of detumescence, because without it the sperm cells could not be brought into the neighborhood of the germ cell and be propelled into the organic nest which is assigned for their conjunction and incubation.
The motor activity is general as well as specifically sexual. There is a general tendency to more or less involuntary movement, without any increase of voluntary muscular power, which is, indeed, decreased, and Vaschide and Vurpas state that dynamometric results are somewhat lower than normal during sexual excitement, and the variations greater.[[114]] The tendency to diffused activity of involuntary muscle is well illustrated by the contraction of the bladder associated with detumescence. While this occurs in both sexes, in men erection produces a mechanical impediment to any evacuation of the bladder. In women there is not only a desire to urinate but, occasionally, actual urination. Many quite healthy and normal women have, as a rare accident supervening on the coincidence of an unusually full bladder with an unusual degree of sexual excitement, experienced a powerful and quite involuntary evacuation of the bladder at the moment of orgasm. In women with less normal nervous systems this has, more rarely, been almost habitual. Brantôme has perhaps recorded the earliest case of this kind in referring to a lady he knew who "quand on lui faisait cela elle se compissait à bon escient."[[115]] The tendency to trembling, constriction of throat, sneezing, emission of internal gas, and the other similar phenomena occasionally associated with detumescence, are likewise due to diffusion of the motor disturbance. Even in infancy the motor signs of sexual excitement are the most obvious indications of orgasm; thus West, describing masturbation in a child of six or nine months who practiced thigh-rubbing, states that when sitting in her high chair she would grasp the handles, stiffen herself, and stare, rubbing her thighs quickly together several times, and then come to herself with a sigh, tired, relaxed, and sweating, these seizures, which lasted one or two minutes, being mistaken by the relations for epileptic fits.[[116]]
The essentially motor character of detumescence is well shown by the extreme forms of erotic intoxication which sometimes appear as the result of sexual excitement. Féré, who has especially called attention to the various manifestations of this condition, presents an instructive case of a man of neurotic heredity and antecedents, in whom it occasionally happened that sexual excitement, instead of culminating in the normal orgasm, attained its climax in a fit of uncontrollable muscular excitement. He would then sing, dance, gesticulate, roughly treat his partner, break the objects around him, and finally sink down exhausted and stupefied. (Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, Chapter X.) In such a case a diffused and general detumescence has taken the place of the normal detumescence which has its main focus in the sexual sphere.
The same relationship is shown in a case of impotence accompanied by cramps in the calves and elsewhere, which has been recorded by Brügelmann ("Zur Lehre vom Perversen Sexualismus," Zeitschrift für Hypnotismus, 1900, Heft I). These muscular conditions ceased for several days whenever coitus was effected.
An instructive analogy to the motor irradiations preceding the moment of sexual detumescence may be found in the somewhat similar motor irradiations which follow the delayed expulsion of a highly distended bladder. These sometimes become very marked in a child or young woman unable to control the motor system absolutely. The legs are crossed, the foot swung, the thighs tightly pressed together, the toes curled. The fingers are flexed in rhythmic succession. The whole body slowly twists as though the seat had become uncomfortable. It is difficult to concentrate the mind; the same remark may be automatically repeated; the eyes search restlessly, and there is a tendency to count surrounding objects or patterns. When the extreme degree of tension is reached it is only by executing a kind of dance that the explosive contraction of the bladder is restrained.
The picture of muscular irradiation presented under these circumstances differs but slightly from that of the onset of detumescence. In one case the explosion is sought, in the other case it is dreaded; but in both cases there is a retarded muscular tension,—in the one case involuntary, in the other case voluntary—maintained at a point of acute intensity, and in both cases the muscular irradiations of this tension spread over the whole body.
The increased motor irritability of the state of detumescence somewhat resembles the conditions produced by a weak anæsthetic and there is some interest in noting the sexual excitement liable to occur in anæsthesia. I am indebted to Dr. J. F. W. Silk for some remarks on this point:—
"I. Sexual emotions may apparently be aroused during the stage of excitement preceding or following the administration of any anæsthetic; these emotions may take the form of mere delirious utterances, or may be associated with what is apparently a sexual orgasm. Or reflex phenomena connected with the sexual organs may occasionally be observed under special circumstances; or, to put it in another way, such reflex possibilities are not always abolished by the condition of narcosis or anæsthesia.
"II. Of the particular anæsthetics employed I am inclined to think that the possibility of such conditions arising is inversely proportionate to their strength, e.g., they are more frequently observed with a weak anæsthetic like nitrous oxide than with chloroform.
"III. Sexual emotions I believe to be rarely observable in men, and this is remarkable, or, I should say, particularly noticeable, for the presence of nurses, female students, etc., might almost have led one to expect that the contrary would have been the case. On the other hand, it is among men that I have frequently observed a reflex phenomenon which has usually taken the shape of an erection of the penis when the structures in the neighborhood of the spermatic cord have been handled.
"IV. Among females the emotional sexual phenomena most frequently obtrude themselves, and I believe that if it were possible to induce people to relate their dreams they would very often be found to be of a sexual character."
Much more important than the general motor phenomena, more purposive though involuntary, are the specifically sexual muscular movements. From the very beginning of detumescence, indeed, muscular activity makes itself felt, and the peripheral muscles of sex act, according to Kobelt's expression, as a peripheral sexual heart. In the male these movements are fairly obvious and fairly simple. It is required that the semen should be expressed from the vesiculæ seminales, propelled along the urethra, in combination with the prostatic fluid which is equally essential, and finally ejected with a certain amount of force from the urethral orifice. Under the influence of the stimulation furnished by the contact and friction of the vagina, this process is effectively carried out, mainly by the rhythmic contractions of the bulbo-cavernosus muscle, and the semen is emitted in a jet which may be ejaculated to a distance varying from a few centimeters to a meter or more.
With regard to the details of the psychic sides of this process a correspondent, a psychologist, writes as follows:—
"I have never noticed in my reading any attempt to analyze the sensations which accompany the orgasm, and, as I have made a good many attempts to make such an analysis myself, I will append the results on the chance that they may be of some value. I have checked my results so far as possible by comparing them with the experience of such of my friends as had coitus frequently and were willing to tell me as much as they could of the psychology of the process.
"The first fact that I hit upon was the importance of pressure. As one of my informants picturesquely phrases it—'the tighter the fit the greater the pleasure.' This agrees, too, with their unanimous testimony that the pleasurable sensations were much greater when the orgasm occurred simultaneously in the man and woman. Their analysis seldom went further than this, but a few remarked that the distinctive sensations accompanying the orgasm seem to begin near the root of the penis or in the testes, and that they are qualitatively different from the tickling sensations which precede them.
"These tickling sensations are caused, I think, by the friction of the glands against the vaginal walls, and are supplemented by other sensations from the urethra, whose nerves are stimulated by pressure of the vaginal walls and sphincter. The specific sensation of the orgasm begins, I believe, with a strong contraction of the muscles of the urethral walls along the entire length of the canal, and is felt as a peculiar ache starting from the base of the penis and quickly becoming diffused through the whole organ. This sensation reaches its climax with the expulsion of the semen into the urethra and the consequent feeling of distention, which is instantly followed by the rhythmic peristaltic contractions of the urethral muscles which mark the climax of the orgasm.
"The most careful introspection possible under the circumstances seems to show that these sensations arise almost wholly from the urethra and in a far less degree from the corona. During periods of great sexual excitement the nerves of the urethra and corona seem to possess a peculiar sensitivity and are powerfully stimulated by the violent peristaltic contractions of the muscles in the urethral walls during ejaculation. It seems possible that the intensity and volume of sensation felt at the glans may be due in part to the greater area of sensitive surface presented in the fossa as well as to the sensitivity of the corona, and in part to the fact that during the orgasm the glans is more highly congested than at any other time, and the nerve endings thus subjected to additional pressure.
"If the foregoing statements are true, it is easy to see why the pleasure of the man is much increased when the orgasm occurs at the same time in his partner and himself, for the contractions of the vagina upon the penis would increase the stimulation of all the nerve endings in that organ for which a mechanical stimulus is adequate, and the prominence of the corpus spongiosum and corona would ensure them the greatest stimulation. It seems not improbable that the specific sensation of orgasm rises from the stimulation of the peculiar form of nerve end-bulbs which Krause found in the corpus spongiosum and in the glans.
"The characteristic massiveness of the experience is probably due largely to the great number of sensations of strain and pressure caused by the powerful reflex contraction of so many of the voluntary muscles.
"Of course, the foregoing analysis is purely tentative, and I offer it only on the chance that it may suggest some line of inquiry which may lead to results of value to the student of sexual psychology."
In man the whole process of detumescence, when it has once really begun, only occupies a few moments. It is so likewise in many animals; in the genera Bos, Ovis, etc., it is very short, almost instantaneous, and rather short also in the Equidæ (in a vigorous stallion, according to Colin, ten to twelve seconds). As Disselhorst has pointed out, this is dependent on the fact that these animals, like man, possess a vas deferens which broadens into an ampulla serving as a receptacle which holds the semen ready for instant emission when required. On the other hand, in the dog, cat, boar, and the Canidæ, Felidæ, and Suidæ generally, there is no receptacle of this kind, and coitus is slow, since a longer time is required for the peristaltic action of the vas to bring the semen to the urogenital sinus. (R. Disselhorst, Die Accessorischen Geschlechtsdrusen der Wirbelthiere, 1897, p. 212.)
In man there can be little doubt that detumescence is more rapidly accomplished in the European than in the East, in India, among the yellow races, or in Polynesia. This is probably in part due to a deliberate attempt to prolong the act in the East, and in part to a greater nervous erethism among Westerns.
In the woman the specifically sexual muscular process is less visible, more obscure, more complex, and uncertain. Before detumescence actually begins there are at intervals involuntary rhythmic contractions of the walls of the vagina, seeming to have the object of at once stimulating and harmonizing with those that are about to begin in the male organ. It would appear that these rhythmic contractions are the exaggeration of a phenomenon which is normal, just as slight contraction is normal and constant in the bladder. Jastreboff has shown, in the rabbit, that the vagina is in constant spontaneous rhythmic contraction from above downward, not peristaltic, but in segments, the intensity of the contractions increasing with age and especially with sexual development. This vaginal contraction which in women only becomes well marked just before detumescence, and is due mainly to the action of the sphincter cunni (analogous to the bulbo-cavernosus in the male), is only a part of the localized muscular process. At first there would appear to be a reflex peristaltic movement of the Fallopian tubes and uterus. Dembo observed that in animals stimulation of the upper anterior wall of the vagina caused gradual contraction of the uterus, which is erected by powerful contraction of its muscular fiber and round ligaments while at the same time it descends toward the vagina, its cavity becoming more and more diminished and mucus being forced out. In relaxing, Aristotle long ago remarked, it aspirates the seminal fluid.
Although the active participation of the sexual organs in woman, to the end of directing the semen into the womb at the moment of detumescence, is thus a very ancient belief, and harmonizes with the Greek view of the womb as an animal in the body endowed with a considerable amount of activity,[[117]] precise observation in modern times has offered but little confirmation of the reality of this participation. Such observations as have been made have usually been the accidental result of sexual excitement and orgasm occurring during a gynæcological examination. As, however, such a result is liable to occur in erotic subjects, a certain number of precise observations have accumulated during the past century. So far as the evidence goes, it would seem that in women, as in mares, bitches, and other animals, the uterus becomes shorter, broader, and softer during the orgasm, at the same time descending lower into the pelvis, with its mouth open intermittently, so that, as one writer remarks, spontaneously recurring to the simile which commended itself to the Greeks, "the uterus might be likened to an animal gasping for breath."[[118]] This sensitive, responsive mobility of the uterus is, indeed, not confined to the moment of detumescence, but may occur at other times under the influence of sexual emotion.
It would seem probable that in this erection, contraction, and descent of the uterus, and its simultaneous expulsion of mucus, we have the decisive moment in the completion of detumescence in woman, and it is probable that the thick mucus, unlike the earlier more limpid secretion, which women are sometimes aware of after orgasm, is emitted from the womb at this time. This is, however, not absolutely certain. Some authorities regard detumescence in women as accomplished in the pouring out of secretions, others in the rhythmic genital contractions; the sexual parts may, however, be copiously bathed in mucus for an indefinitely long period before the final stage of detumescence is achieved, and the rhythmic contractions are also taking place at a somewhat early period; in neither respect is there any obvious increase at the final moment of orgasm. In women this would seem to be more conspicuously a nervous manifestation than in men. On the subjective side it is very pronounced, with its feeling of relieved tension and agreeable repose—a moment when, as one woman expresses it, together with intense pleasure, there is, as it were, a floating up into a higher sphere, like the beginning of chloroform narcosis—but on the objective side this culminating moment is less easy to define.
Various observations and remarks made during the past two or three centuries by Bond, Valisneri, Dionis, Haller, Günther, and Bischoff, tending to show a sucking action of the uterus in both women and other female animals, have been brought together by Litzmann in R. Wagner's Handwörterbuch der Physiologie (1846, vol. iii, p. 53). Litzmann added an experience of his own: "I had an opportunity lately, while examining a young and very erethic woman, to observe how suddenly the uterus assumed a more erect position, and descended deeper in the pelvis; the lips of the womb became equal in length, the cervix rounded, softer, and more easily reached by the finger, and at the same time a high state of sexual excitement was revealed by the respiration and voice."
The general belief still remained, however, that the woman's part in conjugation is passive, and that it is entirely by the energy of the male organ and of the male sexual elements, the spermatozoa, that conjunction with the germ cell is attained. According to this theory, it was believed that the spermatozoa were, as Wilkinson expresses it, in a history of opinion on this question, "endowed with some sort of intuition or instinct; that they would turn in the direction of the os uteri, wading through the acid mucus of the vagina; travel patiently upward and around the vaginal portion of the uterus; enter the uterus and proceed onward in search of the waiting ovum." (A. D. Wilkinson, "Sterility in the Female," Transactions of the Lincoln Medical Society, Nebraska, 1896.)
About the year 1859 Fichstedt seems to have done something to overthrow this theory by declaring his belief that the uterus was not, as commonly supposed, a passive organ in coitus, but was capable of sucking in the semen during the brief period of detumescence. Various authorities then began to bring forward arguments and observations in the same sense. Wernich, especially, directed attention to this point in 1872 in a paper on the erectile properties of the lower segment of the uterus ("Die Erectionsfahigkeit des untern Uterus-Abschnitts," Beiträge zur Geburtshülfe und Gynäkologie, vol. i, p. 296). He made precise observations and came to the conclusion that owing to erectile properties in the neck of the uterus, this part of the womb elongates during congress and reaches down into the pelvis with an aspiratory movement, as if to meet the glans of the male. A little later, in a case of partial prolapse, Beck, in ignorance of Wernich's theory, was enabled to make a very precise observation of the action of the uterus during excitement. In this case the woman was sexually very excitable even under ordinary examination, and Beck carefully noted the phenomena that took place during the orgasm. "The os and cervix uteri," he states, "had been about as firm as usual, moderately hard and, generally speaking, in a natural and normal condition, with the external os closed to such an extent as to admit of the uterine probe with difficulty; but the instant that the height of excitement was at hand, the os opened itself to the extent of fully an inch, as nearly as my eye can judge, made five or six successive gasps as if it were drawing the external os into the cervix, each time powerfully, and, it seemed to me, with a regular rhythmical action, at the same time losing its former density and hardness and becoming quite soft to the touch. Upon the cessation of the action, as related, the os suddenly closed, the cervix again hardened itself, and the intense congestion was dissipated." (J. R. Beck, "How do the Spermatozoa Enter the Uterus?" American Journal of Obstetrics, 1874.) It would appear that in the early part of this final process of detumescence the action of the uterus is mainly one of contraction and ejaculation of any mucus that may be contained; Dr. Paul Mundé has described "the gushing, almost in jets," of this mucus which he has observed in an erotic woman under a rather long digital and specular examination. (American Journal of Obstetrics, 1893.) It is during the latter part of detumescence, it would seem, and perhaps for a short time after the orgasm is over, that the action of the uterus is mainly aspiratory.
While the active part played by the womb in detumescence can no longer be questioned, it need not too hastily be assumed that the belief in the active movements of the spermatozoa must therefore be denied. The vigorous motility of the tadpole-like organisms is obvious to anyone who has ever seen fresh semen under the microscope; and if it is correct, as Clifton Edgar states, that the spermatozoa may retain their full activity in the female organs for at least seventeen days, they have ample time to exert their energies. The fact that impregnation sometimes occurs without rupture of the hymen is not decisive evidence that there has been no penetration, as the hymen may dilate without rupturing; but there seems no reason to doubt that conception has sometimes taken place when ejaculation has occurred without penetration; this is indicated in a fairly objective manner when, as has been occasionally observed, conception has occurred in women whose vaginas were so narrow as scarcely to admit the entrance of a goose-quill; such was the condition in the case of a pregnant woman brought forward by Roubaud. The stories, repeated in various books, of women who have conceived after homosexual relations with partners who had just left their husbands' beds are not therefore inherently impossible.[[119]] Janke quotes numerous cases in which there has been impregnation in virgins who have merely allowed the penis to be placed in contact with the vulva, the hymen remaining unruptured until delivery.[[120]]
It must be added, however, that even if the semen is effused merely at the mouth of the vagina, without actual penetration, the spermatozoa are still not entirely without any resource save their own motility in the task of reaching the ovum. As we have seen, it is not only the uterus which takes an active part in detumescence; the vagina also is in active movement, and it seems highly probable that, at all events in some women and under some circumstances, such movement favoring aspiration toward the womb may be communicated to the external mouth of the vagina.
Riolan (Anthropographia, 1626, p. 294) referred to the constriction and dilation of the vulva under the influence of sexual excitement. It is said that in Abyssinia women can, when adopting the straddling posture of coitus, by the movements of their own vaginal muscles alone, grasp the male organ and cause ejaculation, although the man remains passive. According to Lorion the Annamites, adopting the normal posture of coitus, introduce the penis when flaccid or only half erect, the contraction of the vaginal walls completing the process; the penis is very small in this people. It is recognized by gynæcologists that the condition of vaginismus, in which there is spasmodic contraction of the vagina, making intercourse painful or impossible, is but a morbid exaggeration of the normal contraction which occurs in sexual excitement. Even in the absence of sexual excitement there is a vague affection, occurring in both married and unmarried women, and not, it would seem, necessarily hysterical, characterized by quivering or twitching of the vulva; I am told that this is popularly termed "flackering of the shape" in Yorkshire and "taittering of the lips" in Ireland. It may be added that quivering of the gluteal muscles also takes place during detumescence, and that in Indian medicine this is likewise regarded as a sign of sexual desire in women, apart from coitus.
A non-medical correspondent in Australia, W. J. Chidley, from whom I have received many communications on this subject, is strongly of opinion from his own observations that not only does the uterus take an active part in coitus, but that under natural conditions the vagina also plays an active part in the process. He was led to suspect such an action many years ago, as well by an experience of his own, as also by hearing from a young woman who met her lover after a long absence that by the excitement thus aroused a tape attached to the underclothes had been drawn into the vagina. Since then the confidences of various friends, together with observations of animals, have confirmed him in the view that the general belief that coitus must be effected by forcible entry of the male organ into a passive vagina is incorrect. He considers that under normal circumstances coitus should take place but rarely, and then only under the most favorable circumstances, perhaps exclusively in spring, and, most especially, only when the woman is ready for it. Then, when in the arms of the man she loves, the vagina, in sympathy with the active movements of the womb, becomes distended at the touch of the turgescent, but not fully erect, penis, "flashes open and draws in the male organ." "All animals," he adds, "have sexual intercourse by the male organ being drawn, not forced, into the female. I have been borne out in this by friends who have seen horses, camels, mules and other large animals in the coupling season. What is more absurd, for instance, than to say that an entire penetrates the mare? His penis is a sensitive, beautiful piece of mechanism, which brings its light head here and there till it touches the right spot, when the mare, if ready, takes it in. An entire's penis could not penetrate anything; it is a curve, a beautiful curve which would easily bend. A bull's, again, is turned down at the end and, more palpably still, would fold on itself if pressed with force. The womb and vagina of a beautiful and healthy woman constitute a living, vital, moving organ, sensitive to a look, a word, a thought, a hand on the waist."
A well-known American author thus writes in confirmation of the foregoing view: "In nature the woman wooes. When impassioned her vagina becomes erect and dilated, and so lubricated with abundant mucus to the lips that entrance is easy. This dilatation and erectile expansion of vagina withdraws the hymen so close to the walls that penetration need not tear it or cause pain. The more muscular, primitive and healthy the woman the tougher and less sensitive the hymen, and the less likely to break or bleed. I think one great function of the foreskin also is to moisten the glans, so that it can be lubricated for entrance, and then to retract, moist side out, to make entrance still easier. I think that in nature the glans penetrates within the labia, is withstood a moment, vibrating, and then all resistance is withdrawn by a sudden 'flashing open' of the gates, permitting easy entrance, and that the sudden giving up of resistance, and substitution of welcome, with its instantaneous deep entrance, causes an almost immediate male orgasm (the thrill being irresistibly exciting). Certainly this is the process as observed in horses, cattle, goats, etc., and it seems likely something analogous is natural in man."
While it is easily possible to carry to excess a view which would make the woman rather than the man the active agent in coitus (and it may be recalled that in the Cebidæ the penis, as also the clitoris, is furnished with a bone), there is probably an element of truth in the belief that the vagina shares in the active part which, there can now be little doubt, is played by the uterus in detumescence. Such a view certainly enables us to understand how it is that semen effused on the exterior sexual organs can be conveyed to the uterus.
It was indeed the failure to understand the vital activity of the semen and the feminine genital canal, co-operating together towards the junction of sperm cell and germ cell, which for so long stood in the way of the proper understanding of conception. Even the genius of Harvey, which had grappled successfully with the problem of the circulation, failed in the attempt to comprehend the problem of generation. Mainly on account of this difficulty, he was unable to see how the male element could possibly enter the uterus, although he devoted much observation and study to the question. Writing of the uterus of the doe after copulation, he says: "I began to doubt, to ask myself whether the semen of the male could by any possibility make its way by attraction or injection to the seat of conception, and repeated examination led me to the conclusion that none of the semen reached this seat." (De-Generatione Animalium, Exercise lxvii.) "The woman," he finally concluded, "after contact with the spermatic fluid in coitu, seems to receive an influence and become fecundated without the co-operation of any sensible corporeal agent, in the same way as iron touched by the magnet is endowed with its powers."
Although the specifically sexual muscular process of detumescence in women—as distinguished from the general muscular phenomena of sexual excitement which may be fairly obvious—is thus seen to be somewhat complex and obscure, in women as well as in men detumescence is a convulsion which discharges a slowly accumulated store of nervous force. In women also, as in men, the motor discharge is directed to a specific end—the intromission of the semen in the one sex, its reception in the other. In both sexes the sexual orgasm and the pleasure and satisfaction associated with it, involve, as their most essential element, the motor activity of the sexual sphere.[[121]]
The active co-operation of the female organs in detumescence is probably indicated by the difficulty which is experienced in achieving conception by the artificial injection of semen. Marion Sims stated in 1866, in Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery, that in 55 injections in six women he had only once been successful; he believed that that was the only case at that time on record. Jacobi had, however, practiced artificial fecundation in animals (in 1700) and John Hunter in man. See Gould and Pyle, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, p. 43; also Janke (Die Willkürliche Hervorbringen des Geschlechts, pp. 230 et seq.) who discusses the question of artificial fecundation and brings together a mass of data.
The facial expression when tumescence is completed is marked by a high degree of energy in men and of loveliness in women. At this moment, when the culminating act of life is about to be accomplished, the individual thus reaches his supreme state of radiant beauty. The color is heightened, the eyes are larger and brighter, the facial muscles are more tense, so that in mature individuals any wrinkles disappear and youthfulness returns.
At the beginning of detumescence the features are frequently more discomposed. There is a general expression of eager receptivity to sensory impressions. The dilatation of the pupils, the expansion of the nostrils, the tendency to salivation and to movements of the tongue, all go to make up a picture which indicates an approaching gratification of sensory desires; it is significant that in some animals there is at this moment erection of the ears.[[122]] There is sometimes a tendency to utter broken and meaningless words, and it is noted that sometimes women have called out on their mothers.[[123]] The dilatation of the pupils produces photophobia, and in the course of detumescence the eyes are frequently closed from this cause. At the beginning of sexual excitement, Vaschide and Vurpas have observed, tonicity of the eye-muscles seems to increase; the elevators of the upper lids contract, so that the eyes look larger and their mobility and brightness are heightened; with the increase of muscular tonicity strabismus occurs, owing to the greater strength of the muscles that carry the eyes inward.[[124]]
The facial expression which marks the culmination of tumescence, and the approach of detumescence is that which is generally expressive of joy. In an interesting psycho-physical study of the emotion of joy, Dearborn thus summarizes its characteristics: "The eyes are brighter and the upper eyelid elevated, as also are the brows, the skin over the glabella, the upper lip and the corners of the mouth, while the skin at the outer canthi of the eye is puckered. The nostrils are moderately dilated, the tongue slightly extended and the cheeks somewhat expanded, while in persons with largely developed pinnal muscles the ears tend somewhat to incline forwards. The whole arterial system is dilated, with consequent blushing from this effect on the dermal capillaries of the face, neck, scalp and hands, and sometimes more extensively even; from the same cause the eyes slightly bulge. The whole glandular system likewise is stimulated, causing the secretions,—gastric, salivary, lachrymal, sudoral, mammary, genital, etc.—to be increased, with the resulting rise of temperature and increase in the katobolism generally. Volubility is almost regularly increased, and is, indeed, one of the most sensitive and constant of the correlations in emotional delight.... Pleasantness is correlated in living organisms by vascular, muscular and glandular extension or expansion, both literal and figurative." (G. Dearborn, "The Emotion of Joy," Psychological Review Monograph Supplements, vol. ii, No. 5, p. 62.) All these signs of joy appear to occur at some stage of the process of sexual excitement.
In some monkeys it would seem that the muscular movement which in man has become the smile is the characteristic facial expression of sexual tumescence or courtship. Discussing the facial expression of pleasure in children, S. S. Buckman has the following remarks: "There is one point in such expression which has not received due consideration, namely, the raising of lumps of flesh each side of the nose as an indication of pleasure. Accompanying this may be seen small furrows, both in children and adults, running from the eyes somewhat obliquely towards the nose. What these characters indicate may be learned from the male mandril, whose face, particularly in the breeding season, shows colored fleshy prominences each side of the nose, with conspicuous furrows and ridges. In the male mandril these characters have been developed because, being an unmistakable sign of sexual ardor, they gave the female particular evidence of sexual feelings. Thus such characters would come to be recognized as habitually symptomatic of pleasurable feelings. Finding similar features in human beings, and particularly in children, though not developed in the same degree, we may assume that in our monkey-like ancestors facial characters similar to those of the mandril were developed, though to a less extent, and that they were symptomatic of pleasure, because connected with the period of courtship. Then they became conventionalized as pleasurable symptoms." (S. S. Buckmann, "Human Babies: What They Teach," Nature, July 5, 1900.) If this view is accepted, it may be said that the smile, having in man become a generalized sign of amiability, has no longer any special sexual significance. It is true that a faint and involuntary smile is often associated with the later stages of tumescence, but this is usually lost during detumescence, and may even give place to an expression of ferocity.
When we have realized how profound is the organic convulsion involved by the process of detumescence, and how great the general motor excitement involved, we can understand how it is that very serious effects may follow coitus. Even in animals this is sometimes the case. Young bulls and stallions have fallen in a faint after the first congress; boars may be seriously affected in a similar way; mares have been known even to fall dead.[[125]] In the human species, and especially in men—probably, as Bryan Robinson remarks, because women are protected by the greater slowness with which detumescence occurs in them—not only death itself, but innumerable disorders and accidents have been known to follow immediately after coitus, these results being mainly due to the vascular and muscular excitement involved by the processes of detumescence. Fainting, vomiting, urination, defæcation have been noted as occurring in young men after a first coitus. Epilepsy has been not infrequently recorded. Lesions of various organs, even rupture of the spleen, have sometimes taken place. In men of mature age the arteries have at times been unable to resist the high blood-pressure, and cerebral hæmorrhage with paralysis has occurred. In elderly men the excitement of intercourse with strange women has sometimes caused death, and various cases are known of eminent persons who have thus died in the arms of young wives or of prostitutes.[[126]]
These morbid results, are, however, very exceptional. They usually occur in persons who are abnormally sensitive, or who have imprudently transgressed the obvious rules of sexual hygiene. Detumescence is so profoundly natural a process; it is so deeply and intimately a function of the organism, that it is frequently harmless even when the bodily condition is far from absolutely sound. Its usual results, under favorable circumstances, are entirely beneficial. In men there normally supervenes, together with the relief from the prolonged tension of tumescence, with the muscular repose and falling blood-pressure,[[127]] a sense of profound satisfaction, a glow of diffused well-being,[[128]] perhaps an agreeable lassitude, occasionally also a sense of mental liberation from an overmastering obsession. Under reasonably happy circumstances there is no pain, or exhaustion, or sadness, or emotional revulsion. The happy lover's attitude toward his partner is not expressed by the well-known Sonnet (CXXIX) of Shakespeare:—
"Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated."
He feels rather with Boccaccio that the kissed mouth loses not its charm,
"Bocca baciata non perde ventura."
In women the results of detumescence are the same, except that the tendency to lassitude is not marked unless the act has been several times repeated; there is a sensation of repose and self-assurance, and often an accession of free and joyous energy. After completely satisfactory detumescence she may experience a feeling as of intoxication, lasting for several hours, an intoxication that is followed by no evil reaction.
Such, so far as our present vague and imperfect knowledge extends, are the main features in the process of detumescence. In the future, without doubt, we shall learn to know more precisely a process which has been so supremely important in the life of man and of his ancestors.
The elements furnished by the sense of touch in sexual selection have been discussed in the first section of the previous volume of these Studies.
See Appendix A. "The Origins of the Kiss," in the previous volume.
See, e.g., Art. "Erection," by Retterer, in Richet's Dictionnaire de Physiologie, vol. v.
Guibaut, Traité Clinique des Maladies des Femmes, p. 242. Adler discusses the sexual secretions in women and their significance, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, pp. 19-26.
In some parts of the world this is further aided by artificial means. Thus it is stated by Riedel (as quoted by Ploss and Bartels) that in the Gorong Archipelago the bridegroom, before the first coitus, anoints the bride's pudenda with an ointment containing opium, musk, etc. I have been told of an English bride who was instructed by her mother to use a candle for the same purpose.
Parthenologia, pp. 302, et seq.
The connection of this mucous flow with sexual emotion was discussed early in the eighteenth century by Schurig in his Gynæcologia, pp. 8-11; it is frequently passed over by more modern writers.
The drawing is reproduced by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter XVII; many facts bearing on the ethnography of coitus are brought together in this chapter.
Onanoff (Paris Société de Biologie, May 3, 1890) proposed the name of bulbo-cavernous reflex for the smart contraction of the ischio-and bulbo-cavernosus muscles (erector penis and accelerator urinæ) produced by mechanical excitation of the glans. This reflex is clinically elicited by placing the index-finger of the left hand on the region of the bulb while the right hand rapidly rubs the dorsal surface of the glands with the edge of a piece of paper or lightly pinches the mucous membrane; a twitching of the region of the bulb is then perceived. This reflex is always present in healthy adult subjects and indicates the integrity of the physical mechanism of detumescence. It has been described by Hughes. (C. H. Hughes, "The Virile or Bulbo-cavernous Reflex," Alienist and Neurologist, January, 1898.)
Roubaud, Traité de l'Impuissance, 1855, p. 39.
Das Weib, seventh edition, vol. i, p. 510.
The influence of impeded respiration in exciting more or less perverted forms of sexual gratification has been discussed in a section of "Love and Pain" in the third volume of these Studies.
See, e.g., the experiments of Obici on this point, Revista Sperimentale di Freniatria, 1903, pp. 689, et seq.
Summarized in Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, March, 1903, p. 188. The tendency to closure of the eyes noted by Roubaud, to avoid contact of the light, indicates dilatation of the pupils, for which we need not seek other explanation than the general tendency of all peripheral stimulation, according to Schiff's law, to produce such dilatation.
Vaschide and Vurpas, "Du Coefficient Sexuel de l'Impulsion Musicale," Archives de Neurologie, May, 1904.
In the Priapeia is an inscription which has thus been translated:—
"You see this organ, after which I'm called
And which is my certificate, is humid;
This moisture is not dew nor drops of rain,
It is the outcome of sweet memory,
Recalling thoughts of a complacent maid."
The translator supposes that semen is referred to, but without doubt the allusion is to the theologians' distillatio.
A woman of 30, normal and intelligent, after conversing on love and passion, and then listening to the music of Grieg and Schumann, felt real and strong sexual excitement, increased by memories recalled by the presence of a sympathetic person. When then tested by the dynamometer the average of ten efforts with the right hand was found to be 28.2 (her normal average being 31.1) and with the left hand 28.0 (the normal being 30.0). There was, however, great variability in the individual pressures which sometimes equaled and even exceeded the subject's normal efforts. The voluntary muscles are thus in harmony with the approaching general sexual avalanche. (Vaschide and Vurpas, "Quelques Données Expérimentales sur l'Influence de l'Excitation Sexuelle," Archivio di Psichiatria, 1903, fasc. v-vi.)
Cf. MacGillicuddy, Functional Disorders of the Nervous System in Women, p. 110; Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, second edition, p. 238; id., "Note sur une Anomalie de l'instinct Sexuel," Belgique Médicale, 1905; also "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse," in an earlier volume of these Studies.
J. P. West, "Masturbation in Early Childhood," Medical Standard, November, 1895.
Cf. the discussion of hysteria in "Auto-Erotism," vol. i of these Studies.
Hirst, Text-Book of Obstetrics, 1899, p. 67.
The earliest story of the kind with which I am acquainted, that of a widow who was thus impregnated by a married friend, is quoted in Schurig's Spermatologia (p. 224) from Amatus Lusitanus, Curationum Centuriæ Septum, 1629.
Janke, Die Willkürliche Hervorbringen des Geschlechts, p. 238.
Cf. Adler, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, pp. 29-38.
Féré, Pathologie des Emotions, p. 51.
This is an instinctive impulse under all strong emotion in primitive persons. "The Australian Dieri," says A. W. Howitt (Journal Anthropological Institute, August, 1890), "when in pain or grief cry out for their father or mother."
Vaschide and Vurpas, Archives de Neurologie, May, 1904.
F. B. Robinson, New York Medical Journal, March 11, 1893.
Féré deals fully with the various morbid results which may follow coitus, L' Instinct Sexuel, Chapter X; id., Pathologie des Emotions, p. 99.
With regard to the relationship of detumescence to the blood-pressure Haig remarks: "I think that as the sexual act produces low and falling blood-pressure, it will of necessity relieve conditions which are due to high and rising blood-pressure, such, for instance, as mental depression and bad temper; and, unless my observation deceives me, we have here a connection between conditions of high blood-pressure, with mental and bodily depression, and the act of masturbation, for this act will relieve those conditions, and will tend to be practiced for this purpose." (A. Haig, Uric Acid, sixth edition, p. 154.)
A medical correspondent speaks of subjective feelings of temperature coming over the body from 20 to 24 hours after congress, and marked by sensations of cooling of body and glow of cheeks. In another case, though lassitude appears on the second day after congress, the first day after is marked by a notable increase in mental and physical activity.
III.
The Constituents of Semen—Function of the Prostate—The Properties of Semen—Aphrodisiacs—Alcohol, Opium, etc.—Anaphrodisiacs—The Stimulant Influence of Semen in Coitus—The Internal Effects of Testicular Secretions—The Influence of Ovarian Secretion.
The germ cell never comes into the sphere of consciousness and cannot therefore concern us in the psychological study of the phenomena of the sexual instinct. But it is otherwise with the sperm cell, and the seminal fluid has a relationship, both direct and indirect, to psychic phenomena which it is now necessary to discuss.
While the spermatozoa are formed in the glandular tissue of the testes, the seminal fluid as finally emitted in detumescence is not a purely testicular product, but is formed by mixture with the fluids poured out at or before detumescence by various glands which open into the urethra, and notably the prostate.[[129]] This is a purely sexual gland, which in animals only becomes large and active during the breeding season, and may even be hardly distinguishable at other times; moreover, if the testes are removed in infancy, the prostate remains rudimentary, so that during recent years removal of the testes has been widely advocated and practiced for that hypertrophy of the prostate which is sometimes a distressing ailment of old age. It is the prostatic fluid, according to Fürbringer, which imparts its characteristic odor to semen. It appears, however, to be the main function of the prostatic fluid to arouse and maintain the motility of the spermatozoa; before meeting the prostatic fluid the spermatozoa are motionless; that fluid seems to furnish a thinner medium in which they for the first time gain their full vitality.[[130]]
When at length the semen is ejaculated, it contains various substances which may be separated from it,[[131]] and possesses various qualities, some of which have only lately been investigated, while others have evidently been known to mankind from a very early period. "When held for some time in the mouth," remarked John Hunter, "it produces a warmth similar to spices, which lasts some time."[[132]] Possibly this fact first suggested that semen might, when ingested, possess valuable stimulant qualities, a discovery which has been made by various savages, notably by the Australian aborigines, who, in many parts of Australia, administer a potion of semen to dying or feeble members of the tribe.[[133]] It is perhaps noteworthy that in Central Africa the testes of the goat are consumed as an aphrodisiac.[[134]] In eighteenth century Europe, Schurig, in his Spermatologia, still found it necessary to discuss at considerable length the possible medical properties of human semen, giving many prescriptions which contained it.[[135]] The stimulation produced by the ingestion of semen would appear to form in some cases a part of the attraction exerted by fellatio; De Sade emphasized this point; and in a case recorded by Howard semen appears to have acted as a stimulant for which the craving was as irresistible as is that for alcohol in dipsomania.[[136]]
It must be remembered that the early history of this subject is more or less inextricably commingled with folk-lore practices of magical origin, not necessarily founded on actual observation of the physiological effects of consuming the semen or testes. Thus, according to W. H. Pearse (Scalpel, December, 1897), it is the custom in Cornwall for country maids to eat the testicles of the young male lambs when they are castrated in the spring, the survival, probably, of a very ancient religious cult. (I have not myself been able to hear of this custom in Cornwall.) In Burchard's Penitential (Cap. CLIV, Wasserschleben, op. cit., p. 660) seven years' penance is assigned to the woman who swallows her husband's semen to make him love her more. In the seventeenth century (as shown in William Salmon's London Dispensatory, 1678) semen was still considered to be good against witchcraft and also valuable as a love-philter, in which latter capacity its use still survives. (Bourke, Scatalogic Rites, pp. 343, 355.) In an earlier age (Picart, quoted by Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 109) the Manichæans, it is said, sprinkled their eucharistic bread with human semen, a custom followed by the Albigenses.
The belief, perhaps founded in experience, that semen possesses medical and stimulant virtues was doubtless fortified by the ancient opinion that the spinal cord is the source of this fluid. This was not only held by the highest medical authorities in Greece, but also in India and Persia.
The semen is thus a natural stimulant, a physiological aphrodisiac, the type of a class of drugs which have been known and cultivated in all parts of the world from time immemorial. (Dufour has discussed the aphrodisiacs used in ancient Rome, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. II, ch. 21.) It would be vain to attempt to enumerate all the foods and medicaments to which has been ascribed an influence in heightening the sexual impulse. (Thus, in the sixteenth century, aphrodisiacal virtues were attributed to an immense variety of foods by Liébault in his Thresor des Remèdes Secrets pour les Maladies des Femmes, 1585, pp. 104, et seq.) A large number of them certainly have no such effect at all, but have obtained this credit either on some magical ground or from a mistaken association. Thus the potato, when first introduced from America, had the reputation of being a powerful aphrodisiac, and the Elizabethan dramatists contain many references to this supposed virtue. As we know, potatoes, even when taken in the largest doses, have not the slightest aphrodisiac effect, and the Irish peasantry, whose diet consists very largely of potatoes, are even regarded as possessing an unusually small measure of sexual feeling. It is probable that the mistake arose from the fact that potatoes were originally a luxury, and luxuries frequently tend to be regarded as aphrodisiacs, since they are consumed under circumstances which tend to arouse the sexual desires. It is possible also that, as has been plausibly suggested, the misunderstanding may have been due to sailors—the first to be familiar with the potato—who attributed to this particular element of their diet ashore the generally stimulating qualities of their life in port. The eryngo (Eryngium maritimum), or sea holly, which also had an erotic reputation in Elizabethan times, may well have acquired it in the same way. Many other vegetables have a similar reputation, which they still retain. Thus onions are regarded as aphrodisiacal, and were so regarded by the Greeks, as we learn from Aristophanes. It is noteworthy that Marro, a reliable observer, has found that in Italy, both in prisons and asylums, lascivious people are fond of onions (La Pubertà, p. 297), and it may perhaps be worth while to recall the observation of Sérieux that in a woman in whom the sexual instinct only awoke in middle age there was a horror of leeks. In some countries, and especially in Belgium, celery is popularly looked upon as a sexual stimulant. Various condiments, again, have the same reputation, perhaps because they are hot and because sexual desire is regarded, rightly enough, as a kind of heat. Fish—skate, for instance, and notably oysters and other shellfish—are very widely regarded as aphrodisiacs, and Kisch attributes this property to caviar. It is probable that all these and other foods which have obtained this reputation, in so far as they have any action whatever on the sexual appetite, only possess it by virtue of their generally nutritious and stimulating qualities, and not by the presence of any special principle having a selective action on the sexual sphere. A beefsteak is probably as powerful a sexual stimulant as any food; a nutritious food, however, which is at the same time easily digestible, and thus requiring less expenditure of energy for its absorption, may well exert a specially rapid and conspicuous stimulant effect. But it is not possible to draw a line, and, as Aquinas long since said, if we wish to maintain ourselves in a state of purity we shall fear even an immoderate use of bread and water.
More definitely aphrodisiacal effects are produced by drugs, and especially by drugs which in large doses are poisons. The aphrodisiac with the widest popular reputation is cantharides, but its sexually exciting effects are merely an accidental result of its action in causing inflammation of the genito-urinary passage, and it is both an uncertain and a dangerous result, except in skillful hands and when administered in small doses. Nux vomica (with its alkaloid strychnia), by virtue of its special action on the spinal cord, has a notably pronounced effect in heightening the irritability of the spinal ejaculatory center, though it by no means necessarily exerts any strengthening influence. Alcohol exerts a sexually exciting effect, but in a different manner; it produces little stimulation of the cord and, indeed, even paralyzes the lumbar sexual center in large doses, but it has an influence on the peripheral nerve-endings and on the skin, and also on the cerebral centers, tending to arouse desire and to diminish inhibition. In this latter way, as Adler remarks, it may, in small doses, under some circumstances, be beneficial in men with an excessive nervousness or dread of coitus, and women, in whom orgasm has been difficult to reach, have frequently found this facilitated by some previous indulgence in alcohol. The aphrodisiac effect of alcohol seems specially marked on women. But against the use of alcohol as an aphrodisiac it must be remembered that it is far from being a tonic to detumescence, at all events in men, and that there is much evidence tending to show that not only chronic alcoholism, but even procreation during intoxication is perilous to the offspring (see, e.g., Andriezen, Journal of Mental Science, January, 1905, and cf. W. C. Sullivan, "Alcoholism and Suicidal Impulses," ib., April, 1898, p. 268); it may be added that Bunge has found a very high proportion of cases of immoderate use of alcohol in the fathers of women unable to suckle their infants (G. von Bunge, Die Zunehmende Unfähigkeit der Frauen ihre Kinder zu Stillen, 1903) while even an approximation to the drunken state is far from being a desirable prelude to the creation of a new human being. It is obvious that those who wish, for any reason, to cultivate a strict chastity of thought and feeling would do well to avoid alcohol altogether, or only in its lightest forms and in moderation. The aphrodisiacal effects of wine have long been known; Ovid refers to them (e.g., Ars Am., Bk. III, 765). Clement of Alexandria, who was something of a man of science as well as a Christian moralist, points out the influence of wine in producing lasciviousness and sexual precocity. (Pædagogus, Bk. II, Chapter II). Chaucer makes the Wife of Bath say in the Wife of Bath's Prologue:—
"And, after wyn, on Venus moste [needs] I thinke:
For al so siken as cold engendreth hayl,
A likerous mouth moste have a likerous tayl,
In womman vinolent is no defense,
This knowen lechours by experience."
Alcohol, as Chaucer pointed out, comes to the aid of the man, who is unscrupulous in his efforts to overcome a woman, and this not merely by virtue of its aphrodisiacal effects, and the apparently special influence which it seems to exert on women, but also because it lulls the mental and emotional characteristics which are the guardians of personality. A correspondent who has questioned on this point a number of prostitutes he has known, writes: "Their accounts of the first fall were nearly always the same. They got to know a 'gentleman,' and on one occasion they drank too much; before they quite realized what was happening they were no longer virgins." "In the mental areas, under the influence of alcohol," Schmiedeberg remarks (in his Elements of Pharmacology), "the finer degrees of observation, judgment, and reflection are the first to disappear, while the remaining mental functions remain in a normal condition. The soldier acts more boldly because he notices dangers less and reflects over them less; the orator does not allow himself to be influenced by any disturbing side-considerations as to his audience, hence he speaks more freely and spiritedly; self-consciousness is lost to a very great extent, and many are astounded at the ease with which they can express their thoughts, and at the acuteness of their judgment in matters which, when they are perfectly sober, with difficulty reach their minds; and then afterwards they are ashamed at their mistakes."
The action of opium in small doses is also to some extent aphrodisiacal; it slightly stimulates both the brain and the spinal cord, and has sensory effects on the skin like alcohol; these effects are favored by the state of agreeable dreaminess it produces. In the seventeenth century Venette (La Génération de l'Homme, Part II, Chapter V) strongly recommended small doses of opium, then little known, for this purpose; he had himself, he says, in illness experienced its joys, "a shadow of those of heaven." In India opium (as well as cannabis indica) has long been a not uncommon aphrodisiac; it is specially used to diminish local sensibility, delaying the orgasm and thus prolonging the sexual act. (W. D. Sutherland, "De Impotentia," Indian Medical Gazette, January, 1900). Its more direct and stimulating influence on the sexual emotions seems indicated by the statement that prostitutes are found standing outside the opium-smoking dens of Bombay, but not outside the neighboring liquor shops. (G. C. Lucas, Lancet, February 2, 1884.) Like alcohol, opium seems to have a marked aphrodisiacal effect on women. The case is recorded of a mentally deranged girl, with no nymphomania though she masturbated, who on taking small doses of opium at once showed signs of nymphomania, following men about, etc. (American Journal Obstetrics, May, 1901, p. 74.) It may well be believed that opium acts beneficially in men when the ejaculatory centers are weak but irritable; but its actions are too widespread over the organism to make it in any degree a valuable aphrodisiac. Various other drugs have more or less reputation as aphrodisiacs; thus bromide of gold, a nervous and glandular stimulant, is said to have as one of its effects a heightening of sexual feeling. Yohimbin, an alkaloid derived from the West African Yohimbehe tree, has obtained considerable repute during recent years in the treatment of impotence; in some cases (see, e.g., Toff's results, summarized in British Medical Journal, February 18, 1905) it has produced good results, apparently by increasing the blood supply to the sexual organs, but has not been successful in all cases or in all hands. It must always be remembered that in cases of psychical impotence suggestion necessarily exerts a beneficial influence, and this may work through any drug or merely with the aid of bread pills. All exercise, often even walking, may be a sexual stimulant, and it is scarcely necessary to add that powerful stimulation of the skin in the sexual sphere, and more especially of the nates, is often a more effective aphrodisiac than any drug, whether the irritation is purely mechanical, as by flogging, or mechanico-chemical, as by urtication or the application of nettles. Among the Malays (with whom both men and women often use a variety of plants as aphrodisiacs, according to Vaughan Stevens) Breitenstein states (21 Jahre in India, Theil I, p. 228) that both massage and gymnastics are used to increase sexual powers. The local application of electricity is one of the most powerful of aphrodisiacs, and McMordie found on applying one pole to a uterine sound in the uterus and the other to the abdominal wall that in the majority of healthy women the orgasm occurred.
Among anaphrodisiacs, or sexual sedatives, bromide of potassium, by virtue of its antidotal relationship to strychnia, is one of the drugs whose action is most definite, though, while it dulls sexual desire, it also dulls all the nervous and cerebral activities. Camphor has an ancient reputation as an anaphrodisiac, and its use in this respect was known to the Arabs (as may be seen by a reference to it in the Perfumed Garden), while, as Hyrtl mentions (loc. cit. ii, p. 94), rue (Ruta graveolens) was considered a sexual sedative by the monks of old, who on this account assiduously cultivated it in their cloister gardens to make vinum rutæ. Recently heroin in large doses (see, e.g., Becker, Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift, November 23, 1903) has been found to have a useful effect in this direction. It may be doubted, however, whether there is any satisfactory and reliable anaphrodisiac. Charcot, indeed, it is said, used to declare that the only anaphrodisiac in which he had any confidence was that used by the uncle of Heloïse in the case of Abelard. "Cela (he would add with a grim smile) tranche la difficulte."
If semen is a stimulant when ingested, it is easy to suppose that it may exert a similar action on the woman who receives it into the vagina in normal sexual congress. It is by no means improbable that, as Mattei argued in 1878, this is actually the case. It is known that the vagina possesses considerable absorptive power. Thus Coen and Levi, among others, have shown that if a tampon soaked in a solution of iodine is introduced into the vagina, iodine will be found in the urine within an hour. And the same is true of various other substances.[[137]] If the vagina absorbs drugs it probably absorbs semen. Toff, of Braila (Roumania), who attaches much importance to such absorption, considers that it must be analogous to the ingestion of organic extractives. It is due to this influence, he believes, that weak and anæmic girls so often become full-blooded and robust after marriage, and lose their nervous tendencies and shyness.[[138]]
It is, however, most certainly a mistake to suppose that the beneficial influence of coitus on women is exclusively, or even mainly, dependent upon the absorption of semen. This is conclusively demonstrated by the fact that such beneficial influence is exerted, and in full measure, even when all precautions have been taken to avoid any contact with the semen. In so far as coitus reservatus or interruptus may lead to haste or discomfort which prevents satisfactory orgasm on the part of the woman, it is without doubt a cause of defective detumescence and incomplete satisfaction. But if orgasm is complete the beneficial effects of coitus follow even if there has been no possibility of the absorption of semen. Even after coitus interruptus, if it can be prolonged for a period long enough for the woman to attain full and complete satisfaction, she is enabled to experience what she may describe as a feeling of intoxication, lasting for several hours. It is in the action of the orgasm itself, and the vascular, secretory, and metabolic activities set up by the psychic and nervous influence of coitus with a beloved person, that we must seek the chief key to the effects produced by coitus on women, however these effects may possibly be still further heightened by the actual absorption of semen.[[139]]
The positive action of semen, or rather of the testicular products, has been much investigated during recent years, and appears on the whole to be demonstrated. The notable discovery by Brown-Séquard, a quarter of a century ago, that the ingestion of the testicular juices in states of debility and senility acted as a beneficial stimulant and tonic, opened the way to a new field of therapeutics. Many investigators in various countries have found that testicular extracts, and more especially the spermin as studied by Poehl,[[140]] and by him regarded as a positive katalysator or accelerator of metabolic processes, exert a real influence in giving tone to the heart and other muscles, and in improving the metabolism of the tissues even when all influences of mental suggestion have been excluded.[[141]]
As the ovaries are strictly analogous to the testes, it was surmised that ovarian extract might prove a drug equally valuable with testicular products. As a matter of fact, ovarian extract, in the form of ovarin, etc., would seem to have proved beneficial in various disorders, more especially in anæmia and in troubles due to the artificial menopause. In most conditions, however, in which it has been employed the results are doubtful or uncertain, and some authorities believe that the influence of suggestion plays a considerable part here.
There is, however, another use which is subserved by the testicular products, a use which may indeed be said to be implied in those uses to which reference has already been made, but is yet historically the latest to be realized and studied. It was not until 1869 that Brown-Séquard first suggested that an important secretion was elaborated by the ductless glands and received into the circulation, but that suggestion proved to be epoch-making. If these glandular secretions are so valuable when administered as drugs to other persons, must they not be of far greater value when naturally secreted and poured out into the circulation in the living body? It is now generally believed, on the basis of a large and various body of evidence, that this is undoubtedly so. In a very crude form, indeed, this belief is by no means modern. In opposition to the old writers who were inclined to regard the semen as an excretion which it was beneficial to expel, there were other ancient authorities who argued that it was beneficial to retain it as being a vital fluid which, if reabsorbed, served to invigorate the body. The great physiologist, Haller, in the middle of the eighteenth century, came very near to the modern doctrine when he stated in his Elements of Physiology that the sperm accumulated in the seminical vesicles is pumped back into the blood, and thus produces the beard and the hair together with the other surprising changes of puberty which are absent in the eunuch. The reabsorption of semen can scarcely be said to be a part of the modern physiological doctrine, but it is at least now generally held that the testes secrete substances which pass into the circulation and are of immense importance in the development of the organism.
The experiments of Shattock and Seligmann indicate that the semen and its reabsorption in the seminal vesicles, or the nervous reactions produced by its presence, can have no part in the formation of secondary sexual characters. These investigators occluded the vas deferens in sheep by ligature, at an early age, rendering them later sterile though not impotent. The secondary sexual characters appeared as in ordinary sheep. Spermatogenesis, these inquirers conclude, may be the initial factor, but the results must be attributed to the elaboration by the testicles of an internal secretion and its absorption into the general circulation.[[142]]
When animals are castrated there is enlargement of the ductless glands in the body, notably the thyroid and the suprarenal capsules.[[143]] It is evident, therefore, that the secretions of these ductless glands are in some degree compensatory to those of the testes. But this compensatory action is inadequate to produce any sexual development in the absence of the testes.
We see, therefore, how extremely important is the function of the testis. Its significance is not alone for the race, it is not simply concerned with the formation of the spermatozoa which share equally with the ova the honor of making the mankind of the future. It also has a separate and distinct function which has reference to the individual. It elaborates those internal secretions which stimulate and maintain the physical and mental characters, constituting all that is most masculine in the male animal, all that makes the man in distinction from the eunuch. Among various primitive peoples, including those of the European race whence we ourselves spring, the most solemn form of oath was sworn by placing the hand on the testes, dimly recognized as the most sacred part of the body. A crude and passing phase of civilization has ignorantly cast ignominy upon the sexual organs; the more primitive belief is now justified by our advancing knowledge.
In these as in other respects the ovaries are precisely analogous to the testes. They not only form the ova, but they elaborate for internal use a secretion which develops and maintains the special physical and mental qualities of womanhood, as the testicular secretion those of manhood. Moreover, as Cecca and Zappi found, removal of the ovaries has exactly the same effect on the abnormal development of the other ductless glands as has removal of the testes. It is of interest to point out that the internal secretion of the ovaries and its important functions seem to have been suggested before any other secretion than the sperm was attributed to the testes. Early in the nineteenth century Cabanis argued ("De l'Influence des Sexes sur le Caractère des Idées et des Affections Morales," Rapport du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme, 1824, vol. ii, p. 18) that the ovaries are secreting glands, forming a "particular humor" which is reabsorbed into the blood and imparts excitations which are felt by the whole system and all its organs.
The composite character of the semen was recognized by various old authors, some of whom said, (e.g., Wharton) that it had three constituents, which they usually considered to be: (1) The noblest and most essential part, from the testicles; (2) a watery element from the vesiculæ; (3) an oily element from the prostate. Schurig, Spermatologia, 1720, p. 17.
See, e.g., C. Mansell Moulin, "A Contribution to the Morphology of the Prostate," Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, January, 1895; G. Walker, "A Contribution to the Anatomy and Physiology of the Prostate Gland, and a Few Observations on Ejaculation," Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, October, 1900.
For a study of the semen and its constituents, see Florence, "Du Sperme," Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, 1895.
J. Hunter, Essays and Observations, vol. i, p. 189.
As regards one part of Australia, Walter Roth, Ethnological Studies Among the Queensland Aborigines, p. 174.
Sir H. H. Johnston, British Central Africa, p. 438.
Cap. VII, pp. 327-357, "De Spermaticis virilis usu Medico,"
W. L. Howard, "Sexual Perversion," Alienist and Neurologist, January, 1896.
Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie, 1894, No. 49.
E. Toff, "Uber Imprägnierung," Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie, April, 1903. In a similar but somewhat more precise manner Dufougère has argued ("La Chlorose, ses rapports avec le marriage, son traitement par le liquide orchitique," Thèse de Bordeaux, 1902) that semen when absorbed by the vagina stimulates the secretion of the ovaries and thus exerts an influence over the blood in anæmia; in this way he seeks to explain why it is that coitus is the best treatment for chlorosis.
In this connection I may refer to an interesting and suggestive paper by Harry Campbell on "The Craving for Stimulants" (Lancet, October 21, 1899). No reference is made to coitus, but the author discusses stimulants as normal and beneficial products of the organism, and deals with the nature of the "physiological intoxication" they produce.
Spermin was first discovered in the sperm by Schreiner in 1878; it has also been found in the thyroid, ovaries and various other glands. "The spermin secreting and elaborating organs," Howard Kelly remarks (British Medical Journal, January 29, 1898), "may be called the apothecaries' of the body, secreting many important medicaments, much more active and more accurately representing its true wants than artificially administered drugs."
See, e.g., a summary of Buschan's comprehensive discussion of the subject of organotherapy (Eulenburg's Real-Encyclopædie der Gesammten Heilkunde) in Journal of Mental Science, April, 1899, p. 355.
"Observations Upon the Acquirement of Secondary Sexual Characters, Indicating the Formation of an Internal Secretion by the Testicles," Proceedings Royal Society, vol. lxxiii, p. 49.
See, e.g., the experiments of Cecca and Zappi, summarized in British Medical Journal, July 2, 1904.
IV.
The Aptitude for Detumescence—Is There an Erotic Temperament?—The Available Standards of Comparison—Characteristics of the Castrated—Characteristics of Puberty—Characteristics of the State of Detumescence—Shortness of Stature—Development of the Secondary Sexual Characters—Deep Voice—Bright Eyes—Glandular Activity—Everted Lips—Pigmentation—Profuse Hair—Dubious Significance of Many of These Characters.
What, if any, are the indications which the body generally may furnish as to the individual's aptitude and vigor for the orgasm of detumescence? Is there an erotic temperament outwardly and visibly displayed? That is a question which has often occupied those who have sought to penetrate the more intimate mysteries of human nature, and since we are here concerned with human beings in their relationship to the process of detumescence, we cannot altogether pass over this question, difficult as it is to discuss it with precision.
The old physiognomists showed much confidence in dealing with the matter. Possibly they had more opportunities for observation than we have, since they often wrote in days when life was lived more nakedly than among ourselves, but their descriptions, while sometimes showing much insight, are inextricably mixed up with false science and superstition.
In the De Secretis Mulierum, wrongly attributed to Albertus Magnus, we find a chapter entitled "Signa mulieris calidæ naturæ et quæ coit libenter," which may be summarized here. "The signs," we are told, "of a woman of warm temperament, and one who willingly cohabits are these: youth, an age of over 12, or younger, if she has been seduced, small, high breasts, full and hard, hair in the usual positions; she is bold of speech, with a delicate and high voice, haughty and even cruel of disposition, of good complexion, lean rather than stout, inclined to like drinking. Such a woman always desires coitus, and receives satisfaction in the act. The menstrual flow is not abundant nor always regular. If she becomes pregnant the milk is not abundant. Her perspiration is less odorous than that of the woman of opposite temperament; she is fond of singing, and of moving about, and delights in adornments if she has any."
Polemon, in his Sulla Physionomia, has given among the signs of libidinous impulse: knees turned inwards, abundance of hairs on the legs, squint, bright eyes, a high and strident voice, and in women length of leg below the knee. Aristotle had mentioned among the signs of wantonness: paleness, abundance of hair on the body, thick and black hair, hairs covering the temples, and thick eyelids.
In the seventeenth century Bouchet, in his Serées (Troisième Serée), gave as the signs of virility which indicated that a man could have children: a great voice, a thick rough black beard, a large thick nose.
G. Tourdes (Art. "Aphrodisie," Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales) thus summarized the ancient beliefs on this subject: "The erotic temperament has been described as marked by a lean figure, white and well-ranged teeth, a developed hairy system, a characteristic voice, air, and expression, and even a special odor."
In approaching the question of the general physical indications of a special aptitude to the manifestation of vigorous detumescence, the most obvious preliminary would seem to be a study of the castrated. If we know the special peculiarities of those who by removal of the sexual glands at a very early age have been deprived of all ability to present the manifestations of detumescence, we shall probably be in possession of a type which is the reverse of that which we may expect in persons of a vigorously erotic temperament.
The most general characteristics of eunuchs would appear to be an unusual tendency to put on fat, a notably greater length of the legs, absence of hair in the sexual and secondary sexual regions, a less degree of pigmentation, as noted both in the castrated negro and the white man, a puerile larynx and puerile voice. In character they are usually described as gentle, conciliatory, and charitable.
There can be little doubt that castration in man tends to lead to lengthening of the legs (tibia and fibula) at puberty, from delayed ossification of the epiphyses. The hands and feet are also frequently longer and sometimes the forearms. At the same time the bones are more slender. The pelvis also is narrower. The eunuchs of Cairo are said to be easily seen in a crowd from their tall stature. (Collineau, quoting Lortet, Revue Mensuelle de l'Ecole d'Anthropologie, May, 1896.) The castrated Skoptzy show increased stature, and, it seems, large ears, with decreased chest and head (L. Pittard, Revue Scientifique, June 20, 1903.) Féré shows that in most of these respects the eunuch resembles beardless and infantile subjects. ("Les Proportions des Membres et les Caractères Sexuels," Journal de l'Anatomie et de la Physiologie, November-December, 1897.) Similar phenomena are found in animals generally. Sellheim, carefully investigating castrated horses, swine, oxen and fowls, found retardation of ossification, long and slender extremities, long, broad, but low skull, relatively smaller pelvis and small thorax. ("Zur Lehre von den Sekundären Geschlechtscharakteren," Beiträge zur Geburtshülfe und Gynäkologie, 1898, summarized in Centralblatt für Anthropologie, 1900, Heft IV.)
As regards the mental qualities and moral character of the castrated, Griffiths considers that there is an undue prejudice against eunuchs, and refers to Narses, who was not only one of the first generals of the Roman Empire, but a man of highly estimable character. (Lancet, March 30, 1895.) Matignon, who has carefully studied Chinese eunuchs, points out that they occupy positions of much responsibility, and, though regarded in many respects as social outcasts, possess very excellent and amiable moral qualities (Archives Cliniques de Bordeaux, May, 1896.) In America Everett Flood finds that epileptics and feeble-minded boys are mentally and morally benefited by castration. ("Notes on the Castration of Idiot Children," American Journal of Psychology, January, 1899.) It is often forgotten that the physical and psychic qualities associated with and largely dependent on the ability to experience the impulse of detumescence, while essential to the perfect man, involve many egoistic, aggressive and acquisitive characteristics which are of little intellectual value, and at the same time inimical to many moral virtues.
We have a further standard—positive this time rather than negative—to aid us in determining the erotic temperament: the phenomena of puberty. The efflorescence of puberty is essentially the manifestation of the ability to experience detumescence. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the individuals in whom the special phenomena of puberty develop most markedly are those in whom detumescence is likely to be most vigorous. If such is the case we should expect to find the erotic temperament marked by developed larynx and deep voice, a considerable degree of pigmentary development in hair and skin, and a marked tendency to hairiness; while in women there should be a pronounced growth of the breasts and pelvis.[[144]]
There is yet another standard by which we may measure the individual's aptitude for detumescence: the presence of those activities which are most prominently brought into play during the process of detumescence. The individual, that is to say, who is organically most apt to manifest the physiological activities which mainly make up the process of detumescence, is most likely to be of pronounced erotic temperament.
"Erotic persons are of motor type," remark Vaschide and Vurpas, "and we may say generally that nearly all persons of motor type are erotic." The state of detumescence is one of motor and muscular energy and of great vascular activity, so that habitual energy of motor response and an active circulation may reasonably be taken to indicate an aptitude for the manifestation of detumescence.
These three types may be said, therefore, to furnish us valuable though somewhat general indications. The individual who is farthest removed from the castrated type, who presents in fullest degree the characters which begin to emerge at the period of puberty, and who reveals a physiological aptitude for the vigorous manifestation of those activities which are called into action during detumescence, is most likely to be of erotic temperament. The most cautious description of the characteristics of this temperament given by modern scientific writers, unlike the more detailed and hazardous descriptions of the early physiognomists, will be found to be fairly true to the standards thus presented to us.
The man of sexual type, according to Biérent (La Puberté, p. 148), is hairy, dark and deep-voiced.
"The men most liable to satyriasis," Bouchereau states (art. "Satyriasis," Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales), "are those with vigorous nervous system, developed muscles, abundant hair on body, dark complexion, and white teeth."
Mantegazza, in his Fisiologia del Piacere, thus describes the sexual temperament: "Individuals of nervous temperament, those with fine and brown skins, rounded forms, large lips and very prominent larynx enjoy in general much more than those with opposite characteristics. A universal tradition," he adds, "describes as lascivious humpbacks, dwarfs, and in general persons of short stature and with long noses."
In a case of nymphomania in a young woman, described by Alibert (and quoted by Laycock, Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 28) the hips, thighs and legs were remarkably plump, while the chest and arms were completely emaciated. In a somewhat similar case described by Marc in his De la Folie a peasant woman, who from an early age had experienced sexual hyperæsthesia, so that she felt spasmodic voluptuous feelings at the sight of a man, and was thus the victim of solitary excesses and of spasmodic movements which she could not repress, the upper part of the body was very thin, the hips, legs and thighs highly developed.
In his work on Uterine and Ovarian Inflammation (1862, p. 37) Tilt observes: "The restless, bashful eye, and changing complexion, in presence of a person of the opposite sex, and a nervous restlessness of body, ever on the move, turning and twisting on sofa or chair, are the best indications of sexual temperament."
An extremely sensual little girl of 8, who was constantly masturbating when not watched, although brought up by nuns, was described by Busdraghi (Archivio di Psichiatria, fas. i, 1888, p. 53) as having chestnut hair, bright black eyes, an elevated nose, small mouth, pleasant round face, full colored cheeks, and plump and healthy aspect.
A highly intelligent young Italian woman with strong and somewhat perverted sexual impulses is described as of attractive appearance, with olive complexion, small black almond-shaped eyes, dilated pupils, oblique thin eyebrows, very thick black hair, rather prominent cheek-bones, largely developed jaw, and with abundant down on lower part of cheeks and on upper lip. (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1899, fasc. v-vi.)
As the type of the sensual woman in word and act, led by her passions to commit various sexual offenses, Ottolenghi describes (Archivio di Psichiatria, vol. xii, fasc. v-vi, p. 496) a woman of 32 who attempted to kill her lover. The daughter of parents who were neurotic and themselves very erotic, she was a highly intelligent and vivacious woman, with a pleasing and open face, very thick dark chestnut hair, large cheek-bones, adipose buttocks almost resembling those of a Hottentot, and very thick pubic hair. She was very fond of salt things. Sexual inclination began at the age of 7.
Adler and Moll remark, very truly, that, so far at least as women are concerned, sexual anæsthesia or sexual proclivity cannot be unfailingly read on the features. Every woman desires to please, and coquetry is the sign of a cold, rather than of an erotic temperament.[[145]] It may be added that a considerable degree of congenital sexual anæsthesia by no means prevents a woman from being beautiful and attractive, though it must probably still always be said that, as Roubaud points out,[[146]] the woman of cold and intellectual temperament, the "femme de tête," however beautiful and skillful she may be, cannot compete in the struggle for love with the woman whose qualities are of the heart and of the emotions. But it seems sufficiently clear that the practical observations of skilled and experienced observers agree in attributing to persons of erotic type certain general characteristics which accord with those negative and positive standards we may frame on the basis of castration, of puberty, and of detumescence. It may be worth while to note a few of these characteristics briefly.
The abnormal lengthening of the long bones at the age of puberty in the castrated is, as we have seen, very pronounced. There is little tendency to associate length of limb with an erotic temperament, and a certain amount of data as well as of more vague opinion points in the opposite direction. The Arabs would appear to believe that it is short rather than tall people in whom the sexual instinct is strongly developed, and we read in the Perfumed Garden: "Under all circumstances little women love coitus more and evince a stronger affection for the virile member than women of a large size." In his elaborate investigation of criminals Marro found that prostitutes and women guilty of sexual offenses, as also male sexual offenders, tend to be short and thick set.[[147]] In European folk-lore the thick, bull neck is regarded as a sign of strong sexuality.[[148]] Mantegazza refers to a strong sexual temperament as being associated with arrest or disorder of bony development, and Marro suggests that the proverbial salacity of rachitic individuals may be due to an increased activity of the sexual organs.[[149]] It may be added that acromegaly, with its excessive bony growths, tends to be associated with premature sexual involution.
A further point which is frequently mentioned in the case of women is the development of the chief secondary sexual regions: the pelvis and the breasts. It is, indeed, almost inevitable that there should be some degree of correlation between the aptitude for bearing children and the aptitude for experiencing detumescence. The reality of such a connection is not only evidenced by medical observations, but receives further testimony in popular beliefs. In Italy women with large buttocks are considered wanton, and among the South Slavs they are regarded as especially fruitful.[[150]] Blumenbach asserted that precocious venery will enlarge the breasts, and believed that he had found evidence of this among young London prostitutes.[[151]]
The association of the aptitude for detumescence with a tendency to a deep rather than to a high voice, both in men and women, has frequently been noted and has seldom been denied. The onset of puberty always affects the voice; in general, Biérent states, the more bass the voice is the more marked is the development of the sexual apparatus; "a very robust man, with very developed sexual organs, and very dark and abundant hairy system, a man of strong puberty in a word, is nearly always a bass."[[152]] The influence of sexual excitement in deepening the voice is shown by the rules of sexual hygiene prescribed to tenors, while a bass has less need to observe similar precautions. In women every phase of sexual life—puberty, menstruation, coitus, pregnancy—tends to affect the voice and always by giving it a deeper character. The deepening of the voice by sexual intercourse was an ancient Greek observation, and Martial refers to a woman's good or bad singing as an index to her recent sexual habits. Prostitutes tend to have a deep voice. Venturi points out that married women preserve a fresh voice to a more advanced age than spinsters, this being due to the precocious senility in the latter of an unused function. Such a phenomenon indicates that the relationship of detumescence to the deepening of the voice is not quite simple. This is further indicated by the fact that in robust men abstinence still further deepens the voice (the monk of melodrama always has a bass voice), while excessive or precocious sexual indulgence tends to be associated with the same kind of puerile voice as is found in those persons in whom pubertal development has not been carried very far, or who are of what Griffiths terms eunuchoid type. Idiot boys, who are often sexually undeveloped, tend to have a high voice, while idiot girls (who often manifest marked sexual proclivities) not infrequently have a deep voice.[[153]]
Bright dilated eyes are among the phenomena of detumescence, and are very frequently noted in persons of a pronounced erotic temperament. This is, indeed, an ancient observation, and Burton says of people with a black, lively, and sparkling eye, "without question they are most amorous," drawing his illustrations mostly from classic literature.[[154]] Tardieu described the erotic woman as having bright eyes, and Heywood Smith states that the eyes of lascivious women resemble, though in a less degree, those of the insane.[[155]] Sexual excitement is one among many causes—intellectual excitement, pain, a loud noise, even any sensory irritation—which produce dilatation of the pupils and enlargement of the palpebral fissure, with some protrusion of the eyeball. The influence of the sexual system upon the eye appears to be far less potent in men than in women.[[156]] Sexual desire is, however, by no means the only irritant within the sexual sphere which may thus influence the eye; morbid irritations may produce the same effect. Milner Fothergill, in his book on Indigestion, vividly describes the appearance of the eyes sometimes seen in ovarian disorder: "The glittering flash which glances out from some female irides is the external indication of ovarian irritation, and 'the ovarian gleam' has features quite its own. The most marked instance which ever came under my notice was due to irritation in the ovaries, which had been forced down in front of the uterus and been fixed there by adhesions. Here there was little sexual proclivity, but the eyes were very remarkable. They flashed and glittered unceasingly, and at times perfect lightning bolts shot from them. Usually there is a bright glittering sheen in them which contrasts with the dead look in the irides of sexual excess or profuse uterine discharges."
The activity of the glandular secretions, and especially those of the skin, during detumescence, would lead us to expect that such secretory activity is an index to an aptitude for detumescence. As a matter of fact it is occasionally, though not frequently, noted by medical observers. It is stated that the erotic temperament is characterized by a special odor.[[157]] The activity of the sweat-glands is seldom referred to by medical observers in describing persons of erotic temperament, although the descriptions of novelists not infrequently contain allusions to this point, and the literature of an earlier age shows that the tendency to perspiration, especially the moist hand, was regarded as a sure sign of a sensual temperament. "The moist-handed Madonna Imperia, a most rare and divine creature," remarks Lazarillo in Middleton's comedy Blurt, Master-Constable, to quote one of many allusions to this point in the Elizabethan drama.
The lips are sometimes noted as red and everted, perhaps thick[[158]]; Tardieu remarked that the typically erotic woman has thick red lips. This corresponds with the characteristic type of the satyr in classic statues as in later paintings; his lips are always thick and everted. Fullness, redness, and eversion of the lips are correlated with good breathing, the absence of anæmia, laughter, a well-fleshed face.
This kind of mouth indicates, perhaps, not so much a congenitally erotic temperament, as an abandonment to impulse. The opposite type of mouth—with inverted, thin, and retracted lips—would appear to be found with especial frequency in persons who habitually repress their impulses on moral grounds. Any kind of effort to restrain involuntary muscular action may lead to retraction of the lips: the effort to overcome anger or fear, or even the resistance to a strong desire to urinate or defecate. In religious young men, however, it becomes habitual and fixed. I recall a small band of medical students, gathered together from a large medical school, who were accustomed to meet together for prayer and Bible-reading; the majority showed this type of mouth to a very marked degree: pale faces, with drawn, retracted lips. It may be termed the Christian or pious facies. It is much less frequently seen in religious women (unless of masculine type), doubtless because religion for women is in a much less degree than for men a moral discipline.
It may be added that an interesting form of this contraction of the lips, and one that is not purely repressive, is that which indicates the state of muscular tension associated with the impulse to guard and protect. In this form the contracted mouth is the index of tenderness, and is characteristic of the mother who is watching over the infant she is suckling at her breast. I have observed precisely the same expression in the face of a boy of 14 with a large congenital scrotal hernia; when the tumor was being examined his lower lip became retracted, well marked lines appearing from the angles downwards, though the upper lip retained its normal expression It was precisely the tender look we may see in the faces of mothers who are watching anxiously over their offspring, and the emotion is evidently the same in both cases: solicitude for a sensitive and tenderly guarded object.
The degree of pigmentation is clearly correlated with sexual vigor. "In general," Heusinger laid down, in 1823, "the quantity of pigment is proportional to the functional effectiveness of the genital organs." This connection is so profound that it may be traced very widely throughout the organic world.
The connection between pigmentation and sexual activity is very ancient. Even leaving out of account the wedding apparel of animals, nearly always gorgeous in scales and plumage and hair, the sexual orifice shows a more or less marked tendency to pigmentation during the breeding season from fishes upward, while in mammals the darker pigmentation of this region is a constant phenomenon in sexually mature individuals.[[159]]
In the human species both the negative standard of castration and the positive standard of puberty alike indicate a correlation of this kind. Those individuals in whom puberty never fully develops and who are consequently said to be affected by infantilism, reveal a relative absence of pigment in the sexual centers which are normally pigmented to a high degree.[[160]] Among those Asiatic races who extirpate the ovaries in young girls the skin remains white in the perineum, round the anus, and in the armpits.[[161]] Even in mature women who undergo ovariotomy, as Kepler found, the pigmentation of the nipples and areola disappears, as well as of the perineum and anus, the skin taking on a remarkable whiteness.
Normally the sexual centers, and in a high degree the genital orifice, represent the maximum of pigmentation, and under some circumstances this is clearly visible even in infancy. Thus babies of mixed black and white blood may show no traces of negro ancestry at birth, but there will always be increased pigmentation about the external genitalia.[[162]] The linea fusca, which reaches from the pubes to the navel and occasionally to the ensiform cartilage, is a line of sexual pigmentation sometimes regarded as characteristic of pregnancy, but as Andersen, of Copenhagen, has found by the examination of several hundred children of both sexes, it exists in a slight form in about 75 per cent. of young girls, and in almost as large a proportion of boys. But there is no doubt that it tends to increase with age as well as to become marked at pregnancy. At puberty there is a general tendency to changes in pigmentation; thus Godin found that in 28 per cent, adolescent changes occurred in the eyes and hair at this period, the hair becoming darker, though the eyes sometimes become lighter. Ammon, in his investigation of conscripts at the age of 20 (post, p. 196), discovered the significant fact that the eyes and hair darken pari passu with sexual development. In women, during menstruation, there is a general tendency to pigmentation; this is especially obvious around the eyes, and in some cases black rings of true pigment form in this position. Even the skin of the negro women of Loango sometimes becomes a few shades darker during menstruation.[[163]] During pregnancy this tendency to pigmentation reaches its climax. Pregnancy constantly gives rise to pigmentation of the face, the neck, the nipples, the abdomen, and this is especially marked in brunettes.
This association of pigmentation and sexual aptitudes has been recognized in the popular lore of some peoples. Thus the Sicilians, who admire brown skin and have no liking either for a fair skin or light hair, believe that a white woman is incapable of responding to love. It is the brown woman who feels love; as it is said in Sicilian dialect: "Fimmina scura, fimmina amurusa."[[164]]
The dependence of pigmentation upon the sexual system is shown by the fact that irritation of the genital organs by disease will frequently suffice to produce a high degree of pigmentation. This may the neck, the trunk, the hands. Simpson long since noted that uterine irritation apart from pregnancy may produce pigmentation of the areolæ of the nipples (Obstetric Works, vol. i, p. 345). Engelmann discussed the subject and gave cases, "The Hystero-Neuroses," pp. 124-139, in Gynæcological Transactions, vol. xii, 1887; and a summary of a memoir by Fouquet on this subject in La Gynécologie, February, 1903, will be found in British Medical Journal, March 28, 1903,
Of all physical traits vigor of the hairy system has most frequently perhaps been regarded as the index of vigorous sexuality. In this matter modern medical observations are at one with popular belief and ancient physiognomical assertions.[[165]] The negative test of castration and the positive test of puberty point in the same direction.
It is at puberty that all the hair on the body, except that on the head, begins to develop; indeed, the very word "puberty" has reference to this growth as the most obvious sign of the whole process. When castration takes place at an early age all this development of pubescent hair is arrested. When the primary sexual organs are undeveloped the sexual hair is also undeveloped, as in a case, recorded by Plant,[[166]] of a girl with rudimentary uterus and ovaries who had little or no axillary and pubic hair, although the hair of the head was long and strong.[[167]]
The pseudo-Michael Scot among the Signa mulieris calidæ naturæ et quæ coit libenter stated that her hair, both on the head and body, is thick and coarse and crisp, and Della Porta, the greatest of the physiognomists, said that thickness of hair in women meant wantonness. Venette, in his Generation de l'Homme, remarked that men who have much hair on the body are most amorous. At a more recent period Roubaud has said that pubic hair in its quantity, color and curliness is an index of genital energy. A poor pilous system, on the other hand, Roubaud regarded as a probable though not an irrefragable proof of sexual frigidity in women. "In the cold woman the pilous system is remarkable for the languor of its vitality; the hairs are fair, delicate, scarce and smooth, while in ardent natures there are little curly tufts about the temples." (Traité de l'Impuissance, pp. 124, 523.) Martineau declared (Leçons sur les Déformations Vulvaires, p. 40) that "the more developed the genital organs the more abundant the hair covering them; abundance of hair appears to be in relation to the perfect development of the organs." Tardieu described the typically erotic woman as very hairy.
Bergh found that among 2200 young Danish prostitutes those who showed an unusual extension and amount of pubic hair included several women who were believed to be libidinous in a very high degree. (Bergh, "Symbolæ," etc., Hospitalstidende, August, 1894.) Moraglia, again, in Italy, in describing various women, mostly prostitutes, of unusually strong sexual proclivities, repeatedly notes very thick hair, with down on the face. (Archivio di Psichiatria, vol. xvi, fasc. iv-v.)
Marro, also, in Italy found that abundance of hair and down is especially marked in women who are guilty of infanticide (as also Pasini has found), though criminal women generally, in his experience, tend to have abnormally abundant hair. (Caratteri del Delinquenti, cap. XXII.) Lombroso finds that prostitutes generally tend to be hairy (Donna Delinquente, p. 320.)
A lad of 14, guilty of numerous crimes of violence having a sexual source, is described by Arthur Macdonald in America as having hair on the chest as well as all over the pubes. (A. Macdonald, Archives de L'Anthropologie Criminelle, January, 1893, p. 55.) The association of hairiness with abnormal sexuality in the weak-minded has been noted at Bicêtre (Recherches Cliniques sur l'Epilepsie, vol. xix, pp. 69, 77.)
Hypertrichosis universalis, a general hairiness of body, has been described by Cascella in a woman with very strong sexual desires, who eventually became insane. (Revista Mensile di Psichiatria, 1903, p. 408.) Bucknill and Tuke give the case of a religiously minded girl, with very strong and repressed sexual desires, who became insane; the only abnormal feature in her physical development was the marked growth of hair over the body.
Brantôme refers to a great lady known to him whose body was very hairy, and quotes a saying to the effect that hairy people are either rich or wanton; the lady in question, he adds, was both. (Brantôme, Vie des Dames Galantes, Discours II.)
De Sade, whose writings are now regarded as a treasure house of true observations in the domain of sexual psychology, makes the Rodin of Justine dark, with much hair and thick eyebrows, while his very sexual sister is described as dark, thin and very hairy. (Dühren, Der Marquis de Sade, third edition, p. 440.)
A correspondent who has always taken a special interest in the condition as regards hairiness of the women to whom he has been attracted, has sent me notes concerning a series of 12 women. It may be gathered from these notes that 5 women were neither markedly sexual nor markedly hairy (either as regards head or pubes), 6 cases both hairy and sexual, 1 was sexual and not hairy, none were hairy and not sexual. My correspondent remarks: "There may be women with scanty pubic hair possessing very strong sexual emotions. My own experience is quite the opposite." He has also independently reached the conclusion, arrived at by many medical observers and clearly suggested by some of the facts here brought together, that profuse hair frequently denotes a neurotic temperament.
It may be added that Mirabeau, as we learn from an anecdote told by an eyewitness and recorded by Legouvé, had a very hairy chest, while the same is recorded of Restif de la Bretonne.
It is a very ancient and popular belief that if a hairy man is not sensual he is strong: vir pilosus aut libidinosus aut fortis. The Greeks insisted on the hairy nates of Hercules, and Ninon de l'Enclos, when the great Condé shared her bed without touching her, remarked, on seeing his hairy body: "Ah, Monseigneur, que vous devez être fort!" It may be doubted whether there is any exact parallelism between muscular strength and hairiness, for strength is largely a matter of training, but there can be no doubt that hairiness really tends to be associated with a generally vigorous development of the body.
Although the observations concerning hairiness of body as an index of vigor, whether sexual or only generally physical, are so ancient, until recent years no attempts have been made to demonstrate on a large scale whether there is actually a correlation between hairiness and sexual or general development of the body. Some importance, therefore, attaches to Ammon's careful observations of many thousand conscripts in Baden. These observations fully justify this ancient belief, since they show that on the one hand the size of the testicles, and on the other hand girth of chest and stature, are correlated with hairiness of body.
Ammon's observations were made on nearly 4000 conscripts of the age of 20. From the point of view of the hairy system he divided them, into four classes:—
- I. To which 6.1 per cent, of the men belonged, with smooth bodies.
- II. Including 25.3 per cent., only slight hairiness.
- III. 53.8 per cent., more developed hairy system, but belly, breast and back smooth.
- IV. 14.7 per cent., hair all over body.
- V. 0.1 per cent., extreme cases of hairiness.
The beardless were 12.1 per cent., those with no axillary hair 9 per cent., those with no hair on pubis 0.4 per cent. This corresponds with the fact that hair appears first on the pubis and last on the chin.
In the first class 69 per cent, were beardless, 54 per cent, without any axillary hair and 6 per cent, without pubic hair. In the second class 24 per cent, were beardless, 17 per cent, without axillary hair. In the third class 3 per cent, were beardless and 3 per cent without axillary hair.
Below puberty the diameter of testicles is below 14 millimeters. There were 13 conscripts having a testicular diameter of less than 14 millimeters. These infantile individuals all belonged to the first three classes and mostly to the first. The average testicular diameter in the first class was nearly 24 millimeters, and progressively rose in the succeeding classes to over 26 millimeters in the fourth.
While there was not much difference in height, the first class was the shortest, the fourth the tallest. The fourth class also showed the greatest chest perimeter. The cephalic index of all classes was 84. (O. Ammon, "L'Infantilisme et le Feminisme au Conseil de Révision," L'Anthropologie, May-June, 1896.)
We thus see that it is quite justifiable to admit a type of person who possesses a more than average aptitude for detumescence. Such persons are more likely to be short than tall; they will show a full development of the secondary sexual characters; the voice will tend to be deep and the eyes bright; the glandular activity of the skin will probably be marked, the lips everted; there is a tendency to a more than average degree of pigmentation, and there is frequently an abnormal prevalence of hair on some parts of the body. While none of these signs, taken separately, can be said to have any necessary connection with the sexual impulse, taken altogether they indicate an organism that responds to the instinct of detumescence with special aptitude or with marked energy. In these respects observation, both scientific and popular, concords with the probabilities suggested by the three standards in this matter which have already been set forth.
No generalization, however, can here be set down in an absolute and unqualified manner. There are definite reasons why this should be so. There is, for instance, the highly important consideration that the sexual impulse of the individual may be conspicuous in two quite distinct ways. It may assume prominence because the individual possesses a highly vigorous and well-nourished organism, or its prominence may be due to mental irritation in a very morbid individual. In the latter case—although occasionally the two sets of conditions are combined—most of the signs we might expect in the former case may be absent. Indeed, the sexual impulses which proceed from a morbid psychic irritability do not in most cases indicate any special aptitude for detumescence at all; in that largely lies their morbid character.
Again, just in the same way that the exaggerated impulse itself may either be healthy or morbid, so the various characters which we have found to possess some value as signs of the impulse may themselves either be healthy or morbid. This is notably the case as regards an abnormal growth of hair on the body, more especially when it appears on regions where normally there is little or no hair. Such hypertrichosis is frequently degenerative in character, though still often associated with the sexual system. When, however, it is thus a degenerative character of sexual nature, having its origin in some abnormal fœtal condition or later atrophy of the ovaries, it is no necessary indication of any aptitude for detumescence.
Idiots, more especially it would seem idiot girls, tend to show a highly developed hairy system. Thus Voisin, when investigating 150 idiot and imbecile girls, found the hair long and thick and tending to occupy a large surface; one girl had hair on the areolæ of the mamma. (J. Voisin, "Conformation des organes génitaux chez les Idiots," Annales d'Hygiène Publique, June, 1894.) It should be said that in idiot boys puberty is late, and the sexual organs as well as the sexual instinct frequently undeveloped, while in idiot girls there is no delay in puberty, and the sexual organs and instinct are frequently fully and even abnormally developed.
Hegar has described an interesting case showing an association, of fœtal origin, between sexual anomaly and abnormal hairness. In this case a girl of 16 had a uterus duplex, an infantile pelvis, very slight menstruation and undeveloped breasts. She was very hairy on the face, the anterior aspects of the chest and abdomen, the sexual regions, and the thighs, but not specially so on the rest of the body. The hairs were of lanugo-like character, but dark in color. (A. Hegar, Beiträge zur Geburtshülfe und Gynäkologie, vol. i, p. III, 1898.) Sometimes hiruties of the face and abdomen begin to appear during pregnancy, apparently from disease or degeneration of the ovaries. (A case is noted in British Medical Journal, August 2 and 16, pp. 375 and 436, 1902.) Laycock many years ago referred to the popular belief that women who have hair on the upper lip seldom bear children, and regarded this opinion as "questionless founded on fact." (Laycock, Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 22.) When this is so, we may suppose that the abnormal hairy growth is associated with degeneration of the ovaries.
There is another factor which enters into this question and renders the definition of a physical sexual type less precise than it would otherwise be. The sexual instinct is common to all persons, and while it seems probable that there is a type of person in whom sexual energies are predominant, it would also appear that the people who otherwise show a very high level of energy in life usually exhibit a more than average degree of energy in matters of love. The predominantly sexual type, as we have seen, tends to be associated with a high degree of pigmentation; the person specially apt for detumescence inclines to belong to the dark rather than to the purely fair group of the population. On the other hand, the active, energetic, practical man, the man who is most apt for the achievement of success in life, tends to belong to the fair rather than to the dark type.[[168]] Thus we have a certain conflict of tendencies, and it becomes possible to assert that while persons with pronounced aptitude for sexual detumescence tend to be dark, persons whose pronounced energy in sexual matters tends to ensure success are most likely to be fair.
The tendency of the fair energetic type, the type of the northern European man, to sexuality may be connected with the fact that the violent and criminal man who commits sexual crimes tends to be fair even amid a dark population. Criminals on the whole would appear to tend to be dark rather than fair; but Marro found in Italy that the group of sexual offenders differed from all other groups of criminals in that their hair was predominantly fair. (Caratteri del Delinquenti, p. 374.) Ottolenghi, in the same way, in examining 100 sexual offenders, found that they showed 17 per cent., of fair hair, though criminals generally (on a basis of nearly 2000) showed only 6 per cent., and normal persons (nearly 1000) 9 per cent. Similarly while the normal persons showed only 20 per cent. of blue eyes and criminals generally 36 per cent., the sexual offenders showed 50 per cent. of blue eyes. (Ottolenghi, Archivio di Psichiatria, fasc. vi, 1888, p. 573.) Burton remarked (Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Section II, Mem. II, Subs. II) that in all ages most amorous young men have been yellow-haired, adding, "Synesius holds every effeminate fellow or adulterer is fair-haired." In folk-lore, it has been noted (Κρυπτάδια, vol. ii, p. 258), red or yellow hair is sometimes regarded as a mark of sexuality.
In harmony with this fairness, sexual offenders would appear to be more dolichocephalic than other criminals. In Italy Marro found the foreheads of sexual offenders to be narrow, and in California Drähms found that while murderers had an average cephalic index of 83.5, and thieves of 80.5, that of sexual offenders was 79.
On the other hand, high cheek-bones and broad faces—a condition most usually found associated with brachycephaly—have sometimes been noted as associated with undue or violent sexuality. Marro noted the excess of prominent cheek-bones in sexual offenders, and in America it has been found that unchaste girls tend to have broad faces. (Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1896, pp. 231, 235.)
It will be seen that, when we take a comprehensive view of the facts and considerations involved, it is possible to obtain a more definite and coherent picture of the physical signs of a marked aptitude for detumescence than has hitherto been usually supposed possible. But we also see that while the ensemble of these signs is probably fairly reliable as an index of marked sexuality, the separate signs have no such definite significance, and under some circumstances their significance may even be reversed.
See Biérent, La Puberté; Marro, La Pubertà (and enlarged French translation, La Puberté), and portions of G. S. Hall's Adolescence; also Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman (fourth edition, revised and enlarged).
Adler, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, p. 174; Moll, "Perverse Sexualempfindung, Psychische Impotenz und Ehe" (Section II), in Senator and Kaminer, Krankheiten und Ehe.
Roubaud, Traité de l'Impuissance, p. 524.
Marro, Caratteri del Delinquenti, p. 374.
Κρυπτάδια, vol. ii, p. 258.
Marro, La Pubertà, p. 196. In Italy, the sensuality of the lame is the subject of proverbs.
Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, p. 515; Κρυπτάδια, vol. vi, p. 212.
Blumenbach, Anthropological Treatises, p. 248.
Biérent, La Puberté, p. 148.
Venturi, Degenerazioni Psico-sessuali, pp. 408-410.
Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Section II, Mem. II, Sub. II.
British Gynæcological Journal, February, 1887, p. 505.
Power, Lancet, November 26, 1887.
With regard to the sexual relationships of personal odor, see the previous volume of these Studies, "Sexual Selection in Man," section on Smell.
In European folk-lore thick lips in a woman are sometimes regarded as a sign of sensuality, Κρυπτάδια, vol. ii, p, 258.
The direct dependence of sexual pigmentation on the primary sexual glands is well illustrated by a true hermaphroditic adult finch exhibited at the Academy of Sciences of Amsterdam (May 31, 1890); this bird had a testis on the right side and an ovary on the left, and on the right side its plumage was of the male's colors, on the left of the female's color.
See. e.g., Papillault, Bulletin Société d'Anthropologie, 1899, p. 446.
Guinard, Art. "Castration," Richet's Dictionnaire de Physiologie.
J. Whitridge Williams, Obstetrics, 1903, p. 132.
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1878, p. 19.
C. Pitre, Medicina Populare Siciliana, p. 47. In England, from notes sent to me by one correspondent, it would appear that the proportion of dark and sexually apt women to fair and sexually apt women is as 3 to 1. The experience of others would doubtless give varying results, and in any case the fallacies are numerous. See, in the previous volume of these Studies, "Sexual Selection in Man," Section IV.
In Japan the same belief would appear to be held. In a nude figure representing the typical voluptuous woman by the Japanese painter Marugama Okio (reproduced in Ploss's Das Weib) the pubic and axillary hair is profuse, though usually sparse in Japan.
Centralblatt für Gynäkologie, No. 9, 1896.
It is important to remember that there is little correlation in this matter between the hair of the head and the sexual hair, if not a certain opposition. (See ante, p. 127.) According to one of the aphorisms of Hippocrates, repeated by Buffon, eunuchs do not become bald, and Aristotle seems to have believed that sexual intercourse is a cause of baldness in men. (Laycock, Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 23.)
For some of the evidence on this point, see Havelock Ellis, "The Comparative Abilities of the Fair and the Dark," Monthly Review, August, 1901; cf. id., A Study of British Genius, Chapter X.
THE PSYCHIC STATE IN PREGNANCY.
The Relationship of Maternal and Sexual Emotion—Conception and Loss of Virginity—The Anciently Accepted Signs of This Condition—The Pervading Effects of Pregnancy on the Organism—Pigmentation—The Blood and Circulation—The Thyroid—Changes in the Nervous System—The Vomiting of Pregnancy—The Longings of Pregnant Women—Maternal Impressions—Evidence for and Against Their Validity—The Question Still Open—Imperfection of Our Knowledge—The Significance of Pregnancy.
In analyzing the sexual impulse I have so far deliberately kept out of view the maternal instinct. This is necessary, for the maternal instinct is specific and distinct; it is directed to an aim which, however intimately associated it may be with that of the sexual impulse proper, can by no means be confounded with it. Yet the emotion of love, as it has finally developed in the world, is not purely of sexual origin; it is partly sexual, but it is also partly parental.[[169]]
In so far as it is parental it is certainly mainly maternal. There is a drawing by Bronzino in the Louvre of a woman's head gazing tenderly down at some invisible object; is it her child or her lover? Doubtless her child, yet the expression is equally adequate to the emotion evoked by a lover. If we were here specifically dealing with the emotion of love as a complex whole, and not with the psychology of the sexual impulse, it would certainly be necessary to discuss the maternal instinct and its associated emotions. In any case it seems desirable to touch on the psychic state of pregnancy, for we are here concerned not only with emotions very closely connected with the sexual emotions in the narrower sense, but we here at last approach that state which it is the object of the whole sexual process to achieve.
In civilized life a period of weeks, months, even years, may elapse between the establishment of sexual relations and the occurrence of conception. Under primitive conditions the loss of the virginal condition practically involves the pregnant condition, so that under primitive conditions very little allowance is made for the state, so common among civilized peoples, of the woman who is no longer a virgin, yet not about to become a mother.
There is some interest in noting the signs of loss of virginity chiefly relied upon by ancient authors. In doing this it is convenient to follow mainly the full summary of authorities given by Schurig in his Barthenologia early in the eighteenth century. The ancient custom, known in classic times, of measuring the neck the day after marriage was frequently practiced to ascertain if a girl was or was not a virgin. There were various ways of doing this. One was to measure with a thread the circumference of the bride's neck before she went to bed on the bridal night. If in the morning the same thread would not go around her neck it was a sure sign that she had lost her virginity during the night; if not, she was still a virgin or had been deflowered at an earlier period. Catullus alluded to this custom, which still exists, or existed until lately, in the south of France. It is perfectly sound, for it rests on the intimate response by congestion of the thyroid gland to sexual excitement. (Parthenologia, p. 283; Biérent, La Puberté, p. 150; Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, p. 267.)
Some say, Schurig tells us, that the voice, which in the virgin is shrill, becomes rougher and deeper after the first coitus. He quotes Riolan's statement that it is certain that the voice of those who indulge in venery is changed. On that account the ancients bound down the penis of their singers, and Martial said that those who wish to preserve their voices should avoid coitus. Democritus who one day had greeted a girl as "maiden" on the following day addressed her as "woman," while in the same way it is said that Albertus Magnus, observing from his study a girl going for wine for her master, knew that she had had sexual intercourse by the way because on her return her voice had become deeper. Here, again, the ancient belief has a solid basis, for the voice and the larynx are really affected by sexual conditions. (Parthenologia, p. 286; Marro, La Puberté, p. 303; Havelock Ellis, op. cit., pp. 271, 289.)
Others, again, Schurig proceeds, have judged that the goaty smell given out in the armpits during the venereal act is also no uncertain sign of defloration, such odor being perceptible in those who use much venery, and not seldom in harlots and the newly married, while, as Hippocrates said, it is not perceived in boys and girls. (Parthenologia, p. 286; cf. the previous volume of these Studies, "Sexual Selection in Man," p. 64.)
In virgins, Schurig remarks, the pubic hair is said to be long and not twisted, while in women accustomed to coitus it is crisper. But it is only after long and repeated coitus, some authors add, that the pubic hairs become crisp. Some recent observers, it may be remarked, have noted a connection between sexual excitation and the condition of the pubic hair in women. (Cf. the present volume, ante p. 127.)
A sign to which the old authors often attached much importance was furnished by the urinary stream. In the De Secretis Mulierum, wrongly attributed to Albertus Magnus, it is laid down that "the virgin urinates higher than the woman." Riolan, in his Anthropographia, discussing the ability of virgins to ejaculate urine to a height, states that Scaliger had observed women who were virgins emit urine in a high jet against a wall, but that married women could seldom do this. Bouaciolus also stated that the urine of virgins is emitted in a small stream to a distance with an acute hissing sound. (Parthenologia, p. 281.) A folk-lore belief in the reality of this influence is evidenced by the Picardy conte referred to already (ante, p. 53), "La Princesse qui pisse au dessus les Meules." There is no doubt a tendency for the various stresses of sexual life to produce an influence in this direction, though they act far too slowly and uncertainly to be a reliable index to the presence or the absence of virginity.
Another common ancient test of virginity by urination rests on a psychic basis, and appears in a variety of forms which are really all reducible to the same principle. Thus we are told in De Secretis Mulierum that to ascertain if a girl is seduced she should be given to eat of powdered crocus flowers, and if she has been seduced she immediately urinates. We are here concerned with auto-suggestion, and it may well be believed that with nervous and credulous girls this test often revealed the truth.
A further test of virginity discussed by Schurig is the presence of modesty of countenance. If a woman blushes her virtue is safe. In this way girls who have themselves had experience of the marriage bed are said to detect the virgin. The virgin's eyes are cast down and almost motionless, while she who has known a man has eyes that are bright and quick. But this sign is equivocal, says Schurig, for girls are different, and can simulate the modesty they do not feel. Yet this indication also rests on a fundamentally sound psychological basis. (See "The Evolution of Modesty," in the first volume of these Studies.)
In his Syllepsilogia (Section V, cap. I-II), published in 1731, Schurig discusses further the anciently recognized signs of pregnancy. The real or imaginary signs of pregnancy sought by various primitive peoples of the past and present are brought together by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, bd. i, Chapter XXVII.
Both physically and psychically the occurrence of pregnancy is, however, a distinct event. It marks the beginning of a continuous physical process, which cannot fail to manifest psychic reactions. A great center of vital activity—practically a new center, for only the germinal form of it in menstruation had previously existed—has appeared and affects the whole organism. "From the moment that the embryo takes possession of the woman," Robert Barnes puts it, "every drop of blood, every fiber, every organ, is affected."[[170]]
A woman artist once observed to Dr. Stratz, that as the final aim of a woman is to become a mother and pregnancy is thus her blossoming time, a beautiful woman ought to be most beautiful when she is pregnant. That is so, Stratz replied, if her moment of greatest physical perfection corresponds with the early months of pregnancy, for with the beginning of pregnancy metabolism is increased, the color of the skin becomes more lively and delicate, the breasts firmer.[[171]] Pregnancy may, indeed, often become visible soon after conception by the brighter eye, the livelier glance, resulting from greater vascular activity, though later, with the increase of strain, the face may tend to become somewhat thin and distorted. The hair, Barnes states, assumes a new vigor, even though it may have been falling out before. The temperature rises; the weight increases, even apart from the growth of the fœtus. The efflorescence of pregnancy shows itself, as in the blossoming and fecundated flower, by increased pigmentation.[[172]] The nipples with their areolæ, and the mid-line of the belly, become darker; brown flecks (lentigo) tend to appear on the forehead, neck, arms, and body; while striæ—at first blue-red, then a brilliant white—appear on the belly and thighs, though these are scarcely normal, for they are not seen in women with very elastic skins and are rare among peasants and savages.[[173]] The whole carriage of the woman tends to become changed with the development of the mighty seed of man planted within her; it simulates the carriage of pride with the arched back and protruded abdomen.[[174]] The pregnant woman has been lifted above the level of ordinary humanity to become the casket of an inestimable jewel.
It is in the blood and the circulation that the earliest of the most prominent symptoms of pregnancy are to be found. The ever increasing development of this new focus of vascular activity involves an increased vascular activity in the whole organism. This activity is present almost from the first—a few days after the impregnation of the ovum—in the breasts, and quickly becomes obvious to inspection and palpation. Before a quite passive organ, the breast now rapidly increases in activity of circulation and in size, while certain characteristic changes begin to take place around the nipples.[[175]] As a result of the additional work imposed upon it the heart tends to become slightly hypertrophied in order to meet the additional strain; there may be some dilatation also.[[176]]
The recent investigations of Stengel and Stanton tend to show that the increase of the heart's work during pregnancy is less considerable than has generally been supposed, and that beyond some enlargement and dilatation of the right ventricle there is not usually any hypertrophy of the heart.
The total quantity of blood is raised. While increased in quantity, the blood appears on the whole to be somewhat depreciated in quality, though on this point there are considerable differences of opinion. Thus, as regards hæmoglobin, some investigators have found that the old idea as to the poverty of hæmoglobin in pregnancy is quite unfounded; a few have even found that the hæmoglobin is increased. Most authorities have found the red cells diminished, though some only slightly, while the white cells, and also the fibrin, are increased. But toward the end of pregnancy there is a tendency, perhaps due to the establishment of compensation, for the blood to revert to the normal condition.[[177]]
It would appear probable, however, that the vascular phenomena of pregnancy are not altogether so simple as the above statement would imply. The activity of various glands at this time—well illustrated by the marked salivation which sometimes occurs—indicates that other modifying forces are at work, and it has been suggested that the changes in the maternal circulation during pregnancy may best be explained by the theory that there are two opposing kinds of secretion poured into the blood in unusual degree during pregnancy: one contracting the vessels, the other dilating them, one or the other sometimes gaining the upper hand. Suprarenal extract, when administered, has a vaso-constricting influence, and thyroid extract a vasodilating influence; it may be surmised that within the body these glands perform similar functions.[[178]]
The important part played by the thyroid gland is indicated by its marked activity at the very beginning of pregnancy. We may probably associate the general tendency to vasodilatation during early pregnancy with the tendency to goitre; Freund found an increase of the thyroid in 45 per cent. of 50 cases. The thyroid belongs to the same class of ductless glands as the ovary, and, as Bland Sutton and others have insisted, the analogies between the thyroid and the ovary are very numerous and significant. It may be added that in recent years Armand Gautier has noted the importance of the thyroid in elaborating nucleo-proteids containing arsenic and iodine, which are poured into the circulation during menstruation and pregnancy. The whole metabolism of the body is indeed affected, and during the latter part of pregnancy study of the ingesta and egesta has shown that a storage of nitrogen and even of water is taking place.[[179]] The woman, as Pinard puts it, forms the child out of her own flesh, not merely out of her food; the individual is being sacrificed to the species.
The changes in the nervous system of the pregnant woman correspond to those in the vascular system. There is the same increase of activity, a heightening of tension. Bruno Wolff, from experiments on bitches, concluded that the central nervous system in women is probably more easily excited in the pregnant than in the non-pregnant state, though he was not prepared to call this cerebral excitability "specific."[[180]] Direct observations on pregnant women have shown, without doubt, a heightened nervous irritability. Reflex action generally is increased. Neumann investigated the knee-jerk in 500 women during pregnancy, labor, and the puerperium, and in a large number found that there was a progressive exaggeration with the advance of pregnancy, little or no change being observed in the early months; sometimes when no change was observed during pregnancy the knee-jerk still increased during labor, reaching its maximum at the moment of the expulsion of the fœtus; the return to the normal condition took place gradually during the puerperium. Tridandani found in pregnant women that though the superficial reflexes, with the exception of the abdominal, were diminished, the deep and tendon reflexes were markedly increased, especially that of the knee, these changes being more marked in primiparæ than in multiparæ, and more pronounced as pregnancy advanced, the normal condition returning with ten days after labor. Electrical excitability was sensibly diminished.[[181]]
One of the first signs of high nervous tension is vomiting. As is well known, this phenomenon commonly appears early in pregnancy, and it is by many considered entirely physiological. Barnes regards it as a kind of safety valve, a regulating function, letting off excessive tension and maintaining equilibrium.[[182]] Vomiting is, however, a convulsion, and is thus the simplest form of a kind of manifestation—to which the heightened nervous tension of pregnancy easily lends itself—that finds its extreme pathological form in eclampsia. In this connection it is of interest to point out that the pregnant woman here manifests in the highest degree a tendency which is marked in women generally, for the female sex, apart altogether from pregnancy, is specially liable to convulsive phenomena.[[183]]
There is some slight difference of opinion among authorities as to the precise nature and causation of the sickness of pregnancy. Barnes, Horrocks and others regard it as physiological; but many consider it pathological; this is, for instance, the opinion of Giles. Graily Hewitt attributed it to flexion of the gravid uterus, Kaltenbach to hysteria, and Zaborsky terms it a neurosis. Whitridge Williams considers that it may be (1) reflex, or (2) neurotic (when it is allied to hysteria and amenable to suggestion), or (3) toxæmic. It really appears to lie on the borderland between healthy and diseased manifestations. It is said to be unknown to farmers and veterinary surgeons. It appears to be little known among savages; it is comparatively infrequent among women of the lower social classes, and, as Giles has found, women who habitually menstruate in a painless and normal manner suffer comparatively little from the sickness of pregnancy.
We owe a valuable study of the sickness of pregnancy to Giles, who analyzed the records of 300 cases. He concluded that about one-third of the pregnant women were free from sickness throughout pregnancy, 45 per cent. were free during the first three months. When sickness occurred it began in 70 per cent. of cases in the first month, and was most frequent during the second month. The duration varied from a few days to all through. Between the ages of 20 and 25 sickness was least frequent, and there was less sickness in the third than in any other pregnancy. (This corresponds with the conclusion of Matthews Duncan that 25 is the most favorable age for pregnancy.) To some extent in agreement with Guéniot, Giles believes that the vomiting of pregnancy is "one form of manifestation of the high nervous irritability of pregnancy." This high nervous tension may overflow into other channels, into the vascular and excretory system, causing eclampsia; into the muscular system, causing chorea, or, expending itself in the brain, give rise to hysteria when mild or insanity when severe. But the vagi form a very ready channel for such overflow, and hence the frequency of sickness in pregnancy. There are thus three main factors in the causation of this phenomenon: (1) An increased nervous irritability; (2) a local source of irritation; (3) a ready efferent channel for nervous energy. (Arthur Giles, "Observations on the Etiology of the Sickness of Pregnancy," Transactions Obstetrical Society of London, vol. xxv, 1894.)
Martin, who regards the phenomenon as normal, points out that when nausea and vomiting are absent or suddenly cease there is often reason to suspect something wrong, especially the death of the embryo. He also remarks that women who suffer from large varicose veins are seldom troubled by the nausea of pregnancy. (J. M. H. Martin, "The Vomiting of Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, December 10, 1904.) These observations may be connected with those of Evans (American Gynæcological and Obstetrical Journal, January, 1900), who attributes primary importance to the undoubtedly active factor of the irritation set up by the uterus, more especially the rhythmic uterine contractions; stimulation of the breasts produces active uterine contractions, and Evans found that examination of the breasts sufficed to bring on a severe attack of vomiting, while on another occasion this was produced by a vaginal examination. Evans believes that the purpose of these contractions is to facilitate the circulation of the blood through the large venous sinuses, the surcharging of the relatively stagnant pools with effete blood producing the irritation which leads to rhythmic contractions.
It is on the basis of the increased vascular and glandular activity and the heightened nervous tension that the special psychic phenomena of pregnancy develop. The best known, and perhaps the most characteristic of these manifestations, is that known as "longings." By this term is meant more or less irresistible desires for some special food or drink, which may be digestible or indigestible, sometimes a substance which the woman ordinarily likes, such as fruit, and occasionally one which, under ordinary circumstances, she dislikes, as in one case known to me of a young country woman who, when bearing her child, was always longing for tobacco and never happy except when she could get a pipe to smoke, although under ordinary circumstances, like other young women of her class, she was without any desire to smoke. Occasionally the longings lead to actions which are more unscrupulous than is common in the case of the same person at other times; thus in one case known to me a young woman, pregnant with her first child, insisted to her sister's horror on entering a strawberry field and eating a quantity of fruit. These "longings" in their extreme form may properly be considered as neurasthenic obsessions, but in their simple and less pronounced forms they may well be normal and healthy.
The old medical authors abound in narratives describing the longings of pregnant women for natural and unnatural foods. This affection was commonly called pica, sometimes citra or malatia. Schurig, whose works are a comprehensive treasure house of ancient medical lore, devotes a long chapter (cap. II) of his Chylologia, published in 1725, to pica as manifested mainly, though not exclusively, in pregnant women. Some women, he tells us, have been compelled to eat all sorts of earthy substances, of which sand seems the most common, and one Italian woman when pregnant ate several pounds of sand with much satisfaction, following it up with a draught of her own urine. Lime, mud, chalk, charcoal, cinders, pitch are also the desired substances in other cases detailed. One pregnant woman must eat bread fresh from the oven in very large quantities, and a certain noble matron ate 140 sweet cakes in one day and night. Wheat and various kinds of corn as well as of vegetables were the foods desired by many longing women. One woman was responsible for 20 pounds of pepper, another ate ginger in large quantities, a third kept mace under her pillow; cinnamon, salt, emulsion of almonds, treacle, mushrooms were desired by others. Cherries were longed for by one, and another ate 30 or 40 lemons in one night. Various kinds of fish—mullet, oysters, crabs, live eels, etc.—are mentioned, while other women have found delectation in lizards, frogs, spiders and flies, even scorpions, lice and fleas. A pregnant woman, aged 33, of sanguine temperament, ate a live fowl completely with intense satisfaction. Skin, wool, cotton, thread, linen, blotting paper have been desired, as well as more repulsive substances, such as nasal mucus and feces (eaten with bread). Vinegar, ice, and snow occur in other cases. One woman stilled a desire for human flesh by biting the nates of children or the arms of men. Metals are also swallowed, such as iron, silver, etc. One pregnant woman wished to throw eggs in her husband's face, and another to have her husband throw eggs in her face.
In the next chapter of the same work Schurig describes cases of acute antipathy which may arise under the same circumstances (cap. III, "De Nausea seu Antipathia certorum ciborum"). The list includes bread, meat, fowls, fish, eels (a very common repulsion), crabs, milk, butter (very often), cheese (often), honey, sugar, salt, eggs, caviar, sulphur, apples (especially their odor), strawberries, mulberries, cinnamon, mace, capers, pepper, onions, mustard, beetroot, rice, mint, absinthe, roses (many pages are devoted to this antipathy), lilies, elder flowers, musk (which sometimes caused vomiting), amber, coffee, opiates, olive oil, vinegar, cats, frogs, spiders, wasps, swords.
More recently Gould and Pyle (Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, p. 80) have briefly summarized some of the ancient and modern records concerning the longings of pregnant women.
Various theories are put forward concerning the causation of the longings of pregnant women, but none of these seems to furnish by itself a complete and adequate explanation of all cases. Thus it is said that the craving is the expression of a natural instinct, the system of the pregnant woman really requiring the food she longs for. It is quite probable that this is so in many cases, but it is obviously not so in the majority of cases, even when we confine ourselves to the longings for fairly natural foods, while we know so little of the special needs of the organism during pregnancy that the theory in any case is insusceptible of clear demonstration.
Allied to this theory is the explanation that the longings are for things that counteract the tendency to nausea and sickness. Giles, however, in his valuable statistical study of the longings of a series of 300 pregnant women, has shown that the percentage of women with longings is exactly the same (33 per cent.) among women who had suffered at some time during pregnancy from sickness as among the women who had not so suffered. Moreover, Giles found that the period of sickness frequently bore no relation to the time when there were cravings, and the patient often had cravings after the sickness had ceased.
According to another theory these longings are mainly a matter of auto-suggestion. The pregnant woman has received the tradition of such longings, persuades herself that she has such a longing, and then becomes convinced that, according to a popular belief, it will be bad for the child if the longing is not gratified. Giles considers that this process of auto-suggestion takes place "in a certain number, perhaps even in the majority of cases."[[184]]
The Duchess d'Abrantès, the wife of Marshal Junot, in her Mémoires gives an amusing account of how in her first pregnancy a longing was apparently imposed upon her by the anxious solicitude of her own and her husband's relations. Though suffering from constant nausea and sickness, she had no longings. One day at dinner after the pregnancy had gone on for some months her mother suddenly put down her fork, exclaiming: "I have never asked you what longing you have!" She replied with truth that she had none, her days and her nights being occupied with suffering. "No envie!" said the mother, "such a thing was never heard of. I must speak to your mother-in-law." The two old ladies consulted anxiously and explained to the young mother how an unsatisfied longing might produce a monstrous child, and the husband also now began to ask her every day what she longed for. Her sister-in-law, moreover, brought her all sorts of stories of children born with appalling mother's marks due to this cause. She became frightened and began to wonder what she most wanted, but could think of nothing. At last, when eating a pastille flavored with pineapple, it occurred to her that pineapple is an excellent fruit, and one, moreover, which she had never seen, for at that time it was extremely rare. Thereupon she began to long for pineapple, and all the more when she was told that at that season they could not be obtained. She now began to feel that she must have pineapple or die, and her husband ran all over Paris, vainly offering twenty louis for a pineapple. At last he succeeded in obtaining one through the kindness of Mme. Bonaparte, and drove home furiously just as his wife, always talking of pineapples, had gone to bed. He entered the room with the pineapple, to the great satisfaction of the Duchess's mother. (In one of her own pregnancies, it appears, she longed in vain for cherries in January, and the child was born with a mark on her body resembling a cherry—in scientific terminology, a nævus.) The Duchess effusively thanked her husband and wished to eat of the fruit immediately, but her husband stopped her and said that Corvisart, the famous physician, had told him that she must on no account touch it at night, as it was extremely indigestible. She promised not to do so, and spent the night in caressing the pineapple. In the morning the husband came and cut up the fruit, presenting it to her in a porcelain bowl. Suddenly, however, there was a revulsion of feeling; she felt that she could not possibly eat pineapple; persuasion was useless; the fruit had to be taken away and the windows opened, for the very smell of it had become odious. The Duchess adds that henceforth, throughout her life, though still liking the flavor, she was only able to eat pineapple by doing a sort of violence to herself. (Mémories de la Duchesse d'Abrantès, vol. iii, Chapter VIII.) It should be added that, in old age, the Duchess d'Abrantès appears to have become insane.
The influence of suggestion must certainly be accepted as, at all events, increasing and emphasizing the tendency to longings. It can scarcely, however, be regarded as a radical and adequate explanation of the phenomenon generally. If it is a matter of auto-suggestion due to a tradition, then we should expect to find longings most frequent and most pronounced in multiparous women, who are best acquainted with the tradition and best able to experience all that is expected of a pregnant woman. But, as a matter of fact, the women who have borne most children are precisely those who are least likely to be affected by the longings which tradition demands they should manifest. Giles has shown that longings occur much more frequently in the first than in any subsequent pregnancy; there is a regular decrease with the increase in number of pregnancies until in women with ten or more children the longings scarcely occur at all.
We must probably regard longings as based on a physiological and psychic tendency which is of universal extension and almost or quite normal. They are known throughout Europe and were known to the medical writers of antiquity. Old Indian as well as old Jewish physicians recognized them. They have been noted among many savage races to-day: among the Indians of North and South America, among the peoples of the Nile and the Soudan, in the Malay archipelago.[[185]] In Europe they are most common among the women of the people, living simple and natural lives.[[186]]
The true normal relationship of the longings of pregnancy is with the impulsive and often irresistible longings for food delicacies which are apt to overcome children, and in girls often persist or revive through adolescence and even beyond. Such sudden fits of greediness belong to those kind of normal psychic manifestations which are on the verge of the abnormal into which they occasionally pass. They may occur, however, in healthy, well-bred, and well-behaved children who, under the stress of the sudden craving, will, without compunction and apparently without reflection, steal the food they long for or even steal from their parents the money to buy it. The food thus seized by a well-nigh irresistible craving is nearly always a fruit. Fruit is usually doled out to children in small quantities as a luxury, but we are descended from primitive human peoples and still more remote ape-like ancestors, by whom fruit was in its season eaten copiously, and it is not surprising that when that season comes round the child, more sensitive than the adult to primitive influences, should sometimes experience the impulse of its ancestors with overwhelming intensity, all the more so if, as is probable, the craving is to some extent the expression of a physiological need.
Sanford Bell, who has investigated the food impulses of children in America, finds that girls have a greater number of likes and dislikes in foods than boys of the same age, though at the same time they have less dislikes to some foods than boys. The proclivity for sweets and fruits shows itself as soon as a child begins to eat solids. The chief fruits liked are oranges, bananas, apples, peaches, and pears. This strong preference for fruits lasts till the age of 13 or 14, though relatively weaker from 10 to 13. In girls, however, Bell notes the significant fact from our present point of view that at mid-adolescence there is a revived taste for sweets and fruits. He believes that the growth of children in taste in foods recapitulates the experience of the race. (S. Bell, "An Introductory Study of the Psychology of Foods." Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1904.)
The heightened nervous impressionability of pregnancy would appear to arouse into activity those primitive impulses which are liable to occur in childhood and in the unmarried girl continue to the nubile age. It is a significant fact that the longings of pregnant women are mainly for fruit, and notably for so wholesome a fruit as the apple, which may very well have a beneficial effect on the system of the pregnant woman. Giles, in his tabulation of the foods longed for by 300 pregnant women, found that the fruit group was by far the largest, furnishing 79 cases; apples were far away at the head, occurring in 34 cases out of the 99 who had longings, while oranges followed at a distance (with 13 cases), and in the vegetable group tomatoes came first (with 6 cases). Several women declared "I could have lived on apples," "I was eating apples all day," "I used to sit up in bed eating apples."[[187]] Pregnant women appear seldom to long for the possession of objects outside the edible class, and it seems doubtful whether they have any special tendency to kleptomania. Pinard has pointed out that neither Lasègue nor Lunier, in their studies of kleptomania, have mentioned a single shop robbery committed by a pregnant woman.[[188]] Brouardel has indeed found such cases, but the object stolen was usually a food.
A further significant fact connecting the longings of pregnant women with the longings of children is to be found in the fact that they occur mainly in young women. We have, indeed, no tabulation of the ages of pregnant women who have manifested longings, but Giles has clearly shown that these chiefly occur in primiparæ, and steadily and rapidly decrease in each successive pregnancy. This fact, otherwise somewhat difficult of explanation, is natural if we look upon the longings of pregnancy as a revival of those of childhood. It certainly indicates also that we can by no means regard these longings as exclusively the expression of a physiological craving, for in that case they would be liable to occur in any pregnancy unless, indeed, it is argued that with each successive pregnancy the woman becomes less sensitive to her own physiological state.
There has been a frequent tendency, more especially among primitive peoples, to regard a pregnant woman's longings as something sacred and to be indulged, all the more, no doubt, as they are usually of a simple and harmless character. In the Black Forest, according to Ploss and Bartels, a pregnant woman may go freely into other people's gardens and take fruit, provided she eats it on the spot, and very similar privileges are accorded to her elsewhere. Old English opinion, as reflected, for instance, in Ben Jonson's plays (as Dr. Harriet C. B. Alexander has pointed out), regards the pregnant woman as not responsible for her longings, and Kiernan remarks ("Kleptomania and Collectivism," Alienist and Neurologist, November, 1902) that this is in "a most natural and just view." In France at the Revolution a law of the 28th Germinal, in the year III, to some extent admitted the irresponsibility of the pregnant woman generally,—following the classic precedent, by which a woman could not be brought before a court of justice so long as she was pregnant,—but the Napoleonic code, never tender to women, abrogated this. Pinard does not consider that the longings of pregnant women are irresistible, and, consequently, regards the pregnant woman as responsible. This is probably the view most widely held. In any case these longings seldom come up for medico-legal consideration.
The phenomena of the longings of pregnancy are linked to the much more obscure and dubious phenomena of the influence of maternal impressions on the child within the womb. It is true, indeed, that there is no real connection whatever between these two groups of manifestations, but they have been so widely and for so long closely associated in the popular mind that it is convenient to pass directly from one to the other. The same name is sometimes given to the two manifestations; thus in France a pregnant longing is an envie, while a mother's mark on the child is also called an envie, because it is supposed to be due to the mother's unsatisfied longing.
The conception of a "maternal impression" (the German Versehen) rests on the belief that a powerful mental influence working on the mother's mind may produce an impression, either general or definite, on the child she is carrying. It makes a great deal of difference whether the effect of the impression on the child is general, or definite and circumscribed. It is not difficult to believe that a general effect—even, as Sir Arthur Mitchell first gave good reason for believing, idiocy—may be produced on the child by strong and prolonged emotional influence working on the mother, because such general influence may be transmitted through a deteriorated blood-stream. But it is impossible at present to understand how a definite and limited influence working on the mother could produce a definite and limited effect on the child, for there are no channels of nervous communications for the passage of such influences. Our difficulty in conceiving of the process must, however, be put aside if the fact itself can be demonstrated by convincing evidence.
In order to illustrate the nature of maternal impressions, I will summarize a few cases which I have collected from the best medical periodical literature during the past fifteen years. I have exercised no selection and in no way guarantee the authenticity of the alleged facts or the alleged explanation. They are merely examples to illustrate a class of cases published from time to time by medical observers in medical journals of high repute.
Early in pregnancy a woman found her pet rabbit killed by a cat which had gnawed off the two forepaws, leaving ragged stumps; she was for a long time constantly thinking of this. Her child was born with deformed feet, one foot with only two toes, the other three, the os calcis in both feet being either absent or little developed. (G. B. Beale, Tottenham, Lancet, May 4, 1889).
Three months and a half before birth of the child the father, a glazier, fell through the roof of a hothouse, severely cutting his right arm, so that he was lying in the infirmary for a long time, and it was doubtful whether the hand could be saved. The child was healthy, but on the flexor surface of the radial side of the right forearm just above the wrist—the same spot as the father's injury—there was a nævus the size of a sixpence. (W. Russell, Paisley, Lancet, May 11, 1889.)
At the beginning of pregnancy a woman was greatly scared by being kicked over by a frightened cow she was milking; she hung on to the animal's teats, but thought she would be trampled to death, and was ill and nervous for weeks afterwards. The child was a monster, with a fleshy substance—seeming to be prolonged from the spinal cord and to represent the brain—projecting from the floor of the skull. Both doctor and nurse were struck by the resemblance to a cow's teats before they knew the woman's story, and this was told by the woman immediately after delivery and before she knew to what she had given birth. (A. Ross Paterson, Reversby, Lincolnshire, Lancet, September 29, 1889.)
During the second month of pregnancy the mother was terrified by a bullock as she was returning from market. The child reached full term and was a well-developed male, stillborn. Its head "exactly resembled a miniature cow's head;" the occipital bone was absent, the parietals only slightly developed, the eyes were placed at the top of the frontal bone, which was quite flat, with each of its superior angles twisted into a rudimentary horn. (J. T. Hislop, Tavistock, Devon, Lancet, November 1, 1890.)
When four months pregnant the mother, a multipara of 30, was startled by a black and white collie dog suddenly pushing against her and rushing out when she opened the door. This preyed on her mind, and she felt sure her child would be marked. The whole of the child's right thigh was encircled by a shining black mole, studded with white hairs; there was another mole on the spine of the left scapula. (C. F. Williamson, Horley, Surrey, Lancet, October 11, 1890.)
A lady in comfortable circumstances, aged 24, not markedly emotional, with one child, in all respects healthy, early in her pregnancy saw a man begging whose arms and legs were "all doubled up." This gave her a shock, but she hoped no ill effects would follow. The child was an encephalous monster, with the extremities rigidly flexed and the fingers clenched, the feet almost sole to sole. In the next pregnancy she frequently passed a man who was a partial cripple, but she was not unduly depressed; the child was a counterpart of the last, except that the head was normal. The next child was strong and well formed. (C. W. Chapman, London, Lancet, October 18, 1890.)
When the pregnant mother was working in a hayfield her husband threw at her a young hare he had found in the hay; it struck her on the cheek and neck. Her daughter has on the left cheek an oblong patch of soft dark hair, in color and character clearly resembling the fur of a very young hare. (A. Mackay, Port Appin, N. B., Lancet, December 19, 1891. The writer records also four other cases which have happened in his experience.)
When the mother was pregnant her husband had to attend to a sow who could not give birth to her pigs; he bled her freely, cutting a notch out of both ears. His wife insisted on seeing the sow. The helix of each ear of her child at birth was gone, for nearly or quite half an inch, as if cut purposely. (R. P. Roons, Medical World, 1894.)
A lady when pregnant was much interested in a story in which one of the characters had a supernumerary digit, and this often recurred to her mind. Her baby had a supernumerary digit on one hand. (J. Jenkyns, Aberdeen, British Medical Journal, March 2, 1895. The writer also records another case.)
When pregnant the mother saw in the forest a new-born fawn which was a double monstrosity. Her child was a similar double monstrosity (cephalothora copagus). (Hartmann, Münchener Medicinisches Wochenschrift, No. 9, 1895.)
A well developed woman of 30, who had ten children in twelve years, in the third month of her tenth pregnancy saw a child run over by a street car, which crushed the upper and back part of its head. Her own child was anencephalic and acranial, with entire absence of vault of skull. (F. A. Stahl, American Journal of Obstetrics, April, 1896.)
A healthy woman with no skin blemish had during her third pregnancy a violent appetite for sunfish. During or after the fourth month her husband, as a surprise, brought her some sunfish alive, placing them in a pail of water in the porch. She stumbled against the pail and the shock caused the fish to flap over the pail and come in violent contact with her leg. The cold wriggling fish produced a nervous shock, but she attached no importance to this. The child (a girl) had at birth a mark of bronze pigment resembling a fish with the head uppermost (photograph given) on the corresponding part of the same leg. Daughter's health good; throughout life she has had a strong craving for sunfish, which she has sometimes eaten till she has vomited from repletion. (C. F. Gardiner, Colorado Springs, American Journal Obstetrics, February, 1898.)
The next case occurred in a bitch. A thoroughbred fox terrier bitch strayed and was discovered a day or two later with her right foreleg broken. The limb was set under chloroform with the help of Röntgen rays, and the dog made a good recovery. Several weeks later she gave birth to a puppy with a right foreleg that was ill-developed and minus the paw. (J. Booth, Cork, British Medical Journal, September 16, 1899.)
Four months before the birth of her child a woman with four healthy children and no history of deformity in the family fell and cut her left wrist severely against a broken bowl; she had a great fright and shock. Her child, otherwise perfect, was born without left hand and wrist, the stump of arm terminating at lower end of radius and ulna. (G. Ainslie Johnston, Ambleside, British Medical Journal, April 18, 1903.)
The belief in the reality of the transference of strong mental or physical impressions on the mother into physical changes in the child she is bearing is very ancient and widespread. Most writers on the subject begin with the book of Genesis and the astute device of Jacob in influencing the color of his lambs by mental impressions on his ewes. But the belief exists among even more primitive people than the early Hebrews, and in all parts of the world.[[189]] Among the Greeks there is a trace of the belief in Hippocrates, the first of the world's great physicians, while Soranus, the most famous of ancient gynæcologists, states the matter in the most precise manner, with instances in proof. The belief continued to persist unquestioned throughout the Middle Ages. The first author who denied the influence of maternal impressions altogether appears to have been the famous anatomist, Realdus Columbus, who was a professor at Padua, Pisa, and Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the same century, however, another and not less famous Neapolitan, Della Porta, for the first time formulated a definite theory of maternal impressions. A little later, early in the seventeenth century, a philosophic physician at Padua, Fortunatus Licetus, took up an intermediate position which still finds, perhaps reasonably, a great many adherents. He recognized that a very frequent cause of malformation in the child is to be found in morbid antenatal conditions, but at the same time was not prepared to deny absolutely and in every case the influence of maternal impression on such conditions. Malebranche, the Platonic philosopher, allowed the greatest extension to the power of the maternal imagination. In the eighteenth century, however, the new spirit of free inquiry, of radical criticism, and unfettered logic, led to a sceptical attitude toward this ancient belief then flourishing vigorously.[[190]] In 1727, a few years after Malebranche's death, James Blondel, a physician of extreme acuteness, who had been born in Paris, was educated at Leyden, and practiced in London, published the first methodical and thorough attack on the doctrine of maternal impressions, The Strength of Imagination of Pregnant Women Examined, and exercised his great ability in ridiculing it. Haller, Roederer, and Sömmering followed in the steps of Blondel, and were either sceptical or hostile to the ancient belief. Blumenbach, however, admitted the influence of maternal impressions. Erasmus Darwin, as well as Goethe in his Wahlverwandtschaften, even accepted the influence of paternal impressions on the child. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the majority of physicians were inclined to relegate maternal impressions to the region of superstition. Yet the exceptions were of notable importance. Burdach, when all deductions were made, still found it necessary to retain the belief in maternal impressions, and Von Baer, the founder of embryology, also accepted it, supported by a case, occurring in his own sister, which he was able to investigate before the child's birth. L. W. T. Bischoff, also, while submitting the doctrine to acute criticism, found it impossible to reject maternal impressions absolutely, and he remarked that the number of adherents to the doctrine was showing a tendency to increase rather than diminish. Johannes Müller, the founder of modern physiology in Germany, declared himself against it, and his influence long prevailed; Valentin, Rudolf Wagner, and Emil du Bois-Reymond were on the same side. On the other hand various eminent gynæcologists—Litzmann, Roth, Hennig, etc.—have argued in favor of the reality of maternal impressions.[[191]]
The long conflict of opinion which has taken place over this opinion has still left the matter unsettled. The acutest critics of the ancient belief constantly conclude the discussion with an expression of doubt and uncertainty. Even if the majority of authorities are inclined to reject maternal impressions, the scientific eminence of those who accept them makes a decisive opinion difficult. The arguments against such influence are perfectly sound: (1) it is a primitive belief of unscientific origin; (2) it is impossible to conceive how such influence can operate since there is no nervous connection between mother and child; (3) comparatively few cases have been submitted to severe critical investigation; (4) it is absurd to ascribe developmental defects to influences which arise long after the fœtus had assumed its definite shape[[192]]; (5) in any case the phenomenon must be rare, for William Hunter could not find a coincidence between maternal impressions and fœtal marks through a period of several years, and Bischoff found no case in 11,000 deliveries. These statements embody the whole of the argument against maternal impressions, yet it is clear that they do not settle the matter. Edgar, in a manual of obstetrics which is widely regarded as a standard work, states that this is "yet a mooted question."[[193]] Ballantyne, again, in a discussion of this influence at the Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, summarizing the result of a year's inquiry, concluded that it is still "sub judice."[[194]] In a subsequent discussion of the question he has somewhat modified his opinion, and is inclined to deny that definite impressions on the pregnant woman's mind can cause similar defects in the fœtus; they are "accidental coincidences," but he adds that a few of the cases are difficult to explain away. At the same time he fully believes that prolonged and strongly marked mental states of the mother may affect the development of the fœtus in her uterus, causing vascular and nutritive disturbances, irregularities of development, and idiocy.[[195]]
Whether and in how far mental impressions on the mother can produce definite mental and emotional disposition in the child is a special aspect of the question to which scarcely any inquiry has been devoted. So distinguished a biologist as Mr. A. W. Wallace has, however, called attention to this point, bringing forward evidence on the question and emphasizing the need of further investigation. "Such transmission of mental influence," he remarks, "will hardly be held to be impossible or even very improbable," (A. W. Wallace, "Prenatal Influences on Character," Nature, August 24, 1893.)
It has already been pointed out that a large number of cases of fœtal deformities, supposed to be due to maternal impressions, cannot possibly be so caused because the impression took place at a period when the development of the fœtus must already have been decided. In this connection, however, it must be noted that Dabney has observed a relationship between the time of supposed mental impressions and the nature of the actual defect which is of considerable significance as an argument in favor of the influence of mental impressions. He tabulated 90 carefully reported cases from recent medical literature, and found that 21 of them were concerned with defects of structure of the lips and palate. In all but 2 of these 21 the defect was referred to an impression occurring within the first three months of pregnancy. This is an important point as showing that the assigned cause really falls within a period when a defect of development actually could produce the observed result, although the person reporting the cases was in many instances manifestly ignorant of the details of embryology and teratology. There was no such preponderance of early impressions among the defects of skin and hair which might well, so far as development is concerned, have been caused at a later period; here, in 7 out of 15 cases, it was distinctly stated that the impression was made later than the fourth month.[[196]]
It would seem, on the whole, that while the influence of maternal impressions in producing definite effects on the child within the womb has by no means been positively demonstrated, we are not entitled to reject it with any positive assurance. Even if we accept it, however, it must remain, for the present, an inexplicable fact; the modus operandi we can scarcely even guess at. General influences from the mother on the child we can easily conceive of as conveyed by the mother's blood; we can even suppose that the modified blood might act specifically on one particular kind of tissue. We can, again, as suggested by Féré, very well believe that the maternal emotions act upon the womb and produce various kinds and degrees of pressure on the child within, so that the apparently active movements of the fœtus may be really consecutive on unconscious maternal excitations.[[197]] We may also believe that, as suggested by John Thomson, there are slight incoördinations in utero, a kind of developmental neurosis, produced by some slight lack of harmony of whatever origin, and leading to the production of malformations.[[198]] We know, finally, that, as Féré and others have repeatedly demonstrated during recent years by experiments on chickens, etc., very subtle agents, even odors, may profoundly affect embryonic development and produce deformity. But how the mother's psychic disposition can, apart from heredity, affect specifically the physical conformation or even the psychic disposition of the child within her womb must remain for the present an insoluble mystery, even if we feel disposed to conclude that in some cases such action seems to be indicated.
In comprehending such a connection, however at present undemonstrated, it may well be borne in mind that the relationship of the mother to the child within her womb is of a uniquely intimate character. It is of interest in this connection to quote some remarks by an able psychologist, Dr. Henry Rutgers Marshall; the remarks are not less interesting for being brought forward without any connection with the question of maternal impressions: "It is true that, so far as we know, the nervous system of the embryo never has a direct connection with the nervous system of the mother: nevertheless, as there is a reciprocity of reaction between the physical body of the mother and its embryonic parasite, the relation of the embryonic nervous system to the nervous system of the mother is not very far removed from the relation of the pre-eminent part of the nervous system of a man to some minor nervous system within his body which is to a marked extent dissociated from the whole neural mass.
"Correspondingly, then, and within the consciousness of the mother, there develops a new little minor consciousness which, although but lightly integrated with the mass of her consciousness, nevertheless has its part in her consciousness taken as a whole, much as the psychic correspondents of the action of the nerve which govern the secretions of the glands of the body have their part in her consciousness taken as a whole.
"It is very much as if the optic ganglia developed fully in themselves, without any closer connection with the rest of the brain than existed at their first appearance. They would form a little complex nervous system almost but not quite apart from the brain system; and it would be difficult to deny them a consciousness of their own; which would indeed form part of the whole consciousness of the individual, but which would be in a manner self-dependent." It must, if this is so, be said that before birth, on the psychic side, the embryo's activities "form part of a complex consciousness which is that of the mother and embryo together." "Without subscribing to the strange stories of telepathy, of the solemn apparition of a person somewhere at the moment of his death a thousand miles away, of the unquiet ghost haunting the scenes of its bygone hopes and endeavors, one may ask" (with the author of the address in medicine at the Leicester gathering of the British Medical Association, British Medical Journal, July 29, 1905) "whether two brains cannot be so tuned in sympathy as to transmit and receive a subtile transfusion of mind without mediation of sense. Considering what is implied by the human brain with its countless millions of cells, its complexities of minute structure, its innumerable chemical compositions, and the condensed forces in its microscopic and ultramicroscopic elements—the whole a sort of microcosm of cosmic forces to which no conceivable compound of electric batteries is comparable; considering, again, that from an electric station waves of energy radiate through the viewless air to be caught up by a fit receiver a thousand miles distant, it is not inconceivable that the human brain may send off still more subtile waves to be accepted and interpreted by the fitly tuned receiving brain. Is it, after all, mere fancy that a mental atmosphere or effluence emanates from one person to affect another, either soothing sympathetically or irritating antipathically?" These remarks (like Dr. Marshall's) were made without reference to maternal impressions, but it may be pointed out that under no conceivable circumstance could we find a brain in so virginal and receptive a state as is the child's in the womb.
On the whole we see that pregnancy induces a psychic state which is at once, in healthy persons, one of full development and vigor, and at the same time one which, especially in individuals who are slightly abnormal, is apt to involve a state of strained or overstrained nervous tension and to evoke various manifestations which are in many respects still imperfectly understood. Even the specifically sexual emotions tend to be heightened, more especially during the earlier period of pregnancy. In 24 cases of pregnancy in which the point was investigated by Harry Campbell, sexual feeling was decidedly increased in 8, in one case (of a woman aged 31 who had had four children) being indeed only present during pregnancy, when it was considerable; in only 7 cases was there diminution or disappearance of sexual feeling.[[199]] Pregnancy may produce mental depression;[[200]] but on the other hand it frequently leads to a change of the most favorable character in the mental and general well-being. Some women indeed are only well during pregnancy. It is remarkable that some women who habitually suffer from various nervous troubles—neuralgias, gastralgia, headache, insomnia—are only free from them at this moment. This "paradox of gestation," as Vinay has termed it, is specially marked in the hysterical and those suffering from slight nervous disorders, but it is by no means universal, so that although it is possible, Vinay states, to confirm the opinion of the ancients as to the beneficial action of marriage on hysteria, that is only true of slight cases and scarcely enables us to counsel marriage in hysteria.[[201]] Even a woman's intelligence is sometimes heightened by pregnancy, and Tarnier, as quoted by Vinay, knew many women whose intelligence, habitually somewhat obtuse, has only risen to the normal level during pregnancy.[[202]] The pregnant woman has reached the climax of womanhood; she has attained to that state toward which the periodically recurring menstrual wave has been drifting her at regular intervals throughout her sexual life[[203]]; she has achieved that function for which her body has been constructed, and her mental and emotional disposition adapted, through countless ages.
And yet, as we have seen, our ignorance of the changes effected by the occurrence of this supremely important event—even on the physical side—still remains profound. Pregnancy, even for us, the critical and unprejudiced children of a civilized age, still remains, as for the children of more primitive ages, a mystery. Conception itself is a mystery for the primitive man, and may be produced by all sorts of subtle ways apart from sexual connection, even by smelling a flower.[[204]] The pregnant woman was surrounded by ceremonies, by reverence and fear, often shut up in a place apart.[[205]] Her presence, her exhalations, were of extreme potency; even in some parts of Europe to-day, as in the Walloon districts of Belgium, a pregnant woman must not kiss a child for her breath is dangerous, or urinate on plants for she will kill them.[[206]] The mystery has somewhat changed its form; it still remains. The future of the race is bound up with our efforts to fathom the mystery of pregnancy. "The early days of human life," it has been truly said, "are entirely one with the mother. On her manner of life—eating, drinking, sleeping, and thinking—what greatness may not hang?"[[207]] Schopenhauer observed, with misapplied horror, that there is nothing a woman is less modest about than the state of pregnancy, while Weininger exclaims: "Never yet has a pregnant woman given expression in any form—poem, memoirs, or gynæcological monograph—to her sensations or feelings."[[208]] Yet when we contemplate the mystery of pregnancy and all that it involves, how trivial all such considerations become! We are here lifted into a region where our highest intelligence can only lead us to adoration, for we are gazing at a process in which the operations of Nature become one with the divine task of Creation.
See, e.g., Groos, Æsthetische Genuss, p. 249. "We have to admit," Groos observes, "the entrance of another instinct, the impulse to tend and foster, so closely connected with the sexual life. It is seemingly due to the co-operation of this impulse that the little female bird during courtship is so often fed by the male like a young fledgling. In man 'love' from the biological standpoint is also an amalgamation of two needs; when the tender need to protect and foster and serve is lacking the emotion is not quite perfect. Heine's expression, 'With my mantle I protect you from the storm,' has always seemed to me very characteristic." Sometimes the sexual impulse may undergo a complete transformation in this direction. "I believe there is really a tendency in women," a lady writes in a letter, "to allow maternal feeling to take the place of sexual feeling. Very often a woman's feeling for her husband becomes this (though he may be twenty years older than herself); sometimes it does not, remaining purely sex feeling. Sometimes it is for some other man she has this curious self-obliterating maternal feeling. It is not necessarily connected with sex intercourse. A prostitute, who has relations with dozens of men, may have it for some feeble drunken fool, who perhaps goes after other women. I once saw the change from sex feeling to mother feeling, as I call it, come almost suddenly over a woman after she had lived about four years with a man who was unfaithful to her. Then, when all real sex feeling, the hatred of the woman he followed, the desire he should give her love and tenderness, had all gone, came the other feeling, and she said to me, 'You don't understand at all; he's only my little baby; nothing he does can make any difference to me now.' As I grow older and understand women's natures better, I can see almost at once which relation it is a woman has to her husband, or any given man. It is this feeling, and not sex passion, that keeps woman from being free." Not only is there a sexual association in the impulse to foster and protect, there would appear to be a similar element also in the response to that impulse. Freud has especially insisted on the partly sexual character of the child's feelings for those who care for it and tend it and satisfy its needs. It is begun in earliest infancy; "whoever has seen the sated infant sink back from the breast, to fall asleep with flushed cheeks and happy smile, must say that the picture is adequate to the expression of the sexual satisfaction of later life." The lips, moreover, are the earliest erogenous zone. "There will, perhaps, be some opposition," Freud remarks (Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, pp. 36, 64), "to the identification of the child's feelings of tenderness and appreciation for those who tend it with sexual love, but I believe that exact psychological analysis will place the identity beyond doubt. The relationship of the child with the person who tends it is for it a continual source of sexual excitement and satisfaction flowing from the erogenous zones, especially since the fostering person—as a rule the mother—regards the child with emotions which proceed from her sexual life; strokes it, kisses it, rocks it, and very plainly treats it as a compensation for a fully valid sexual object." Freud remarks that girls who retain the childish character of their love for their parents to adult age are apt to make cold wives and to be sexually anæsthetic.
Esbach (in his Thèse de Paris, published in 1876) showed that even the finger nails are affected in pregnancy and become measurably thinner.
C. H. Stratz, Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers, Chapter VI.
Iron appears to be liberated in the maternal organism during pregnancy, and Wychgel has shown (Zeitschrift für Geburtshülfe und Gynäkologie, bd. xlvii, Heft II) that the pigment of pregnant women contains iron, and that the amount of iron in the urine is increased.
Vinay, Maladies de la Grossesse, Chapter VIII; K. Hennig, "Exploratio Externa," Comptes-rendus du XIIe. Congrès International de Médècine, vol. vi, Section XIII, pp. 144-166. A bibliography of the literature concerning the physiology of pregnancy, extending to ten pages, is appended by Pinard to his article "Grossesse," Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales.
Stratz, op. cit., Chapter XII.
W. S. A. Griffith, "The Diagnosis of Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, April 11, 1903.
J. Mackenzie and H. O. Nicholson, "The Heart in Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, October 8, 1904; Stengel and Stanton, "The Condition of the Heart in Pregnancy," Medical Record, May 10, 1902 and University Pennsylvania Medical Bulletin, Sept., 1904 (summarized in British Medical Journal, August 16, 1902, and Sept. 23, 1905.)
J. Henderson, "Maternal Blood at Term," Journal of Obstetrics and Gynæcology, February, 1902; C. Douglas, "The Blood in Pregnant Women," British Medical Journal, March 26, 1904; W. L. Thompson, "The Blood in Pregnancy," Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, June, 1904.
H. O. Nicholson, "Some Remarks on the Maternal Circulation in Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, October 3, 1903.
J. Morris Slemans, "Metabolism During Pregnancy," Johns Hopkins Hospital Reports, vol. xii, 1904.
B. Wolff, Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie, 1904, No. 26.
Tridandani, Annali di Ostetrica, March, 1900.
R. Barnes, "The Induction of Labor," British Medical Journal, December 22, 1894.
See, e.g., Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, pp. 344, et seq.
Arthur Giles, "The Longings of Pregnant Women," Transactions Obstetrical Society of London, vol. xxxv, 1893.
Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Chapter XXX.
Thus, in Cornwall, "to be in the longing way" is a popular synonym for pregnancy.
The apple, wherever it is known, has nearly always been a sacred or magic fruit (as J. F. Campbell shows, Popular Tales of West Highlands, vol. I, p. lxxv. et seq.), and the fruit of the forbidden tree which tempted Eve is always popularly imagined to be an apple. One may perhaps refer in this connection to the fact that at Rome and elsewhere the testicles have been called apples. I may add that we find a curious proof of the recognition of the feminine love of apples in an old Portuguese ballad, "Donna Guimar," in which a damsel puts on armour and goes to the wars; her sex is suspected and as a test, she is taken into an orchard, but Donna Guimar is too wary to fall into the trap, and turning away from the apples plucks a citron.
A. Pinard, Art. "Grossesse," Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales, p. 138. On the subject of violent, criminal and abnormal impulses during pregnancy, see Cumston, "Pregnancy and Crime," American Journal Obstetrics, December, 1903.
See especially Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter XXXI. Ballantyne in his work on the pathology of the fœtus adds Loango negroes, the Eskimo and the ancient Japanese.
In 1731 Schurig, in his Syllepsilogia, devoted more than a hundred pages (cap. IX) to summarizing a vast number of curious cases of maternal impressions leading to birth-marks of all kinds.
J. W. Ballantyne has written an excellent history of the doctrine of maternal impressions, reprinted in his Manual of Antenatal Pathology: The Embryo, 1904, Chapter IX; he gives a bibliography of 381 items. In Germany the history of the question has been written by Dr. Iwan Bloch (under the pseudonym of Gerhard von Welsenburg), Das Versehen der Frauen, 1899. Cf., in French, G. Variot, "Origine des Préjugés Populaires sur les Envies," Bulletin Société d'Anthropologie, Paris, June 18, 1891. Variot rejects the doctrine absolutely, Bloch accepts it, Ballantyne speaks cautiously.
J. G. Kiernan has shown how many of the alleged cases are negatived by the failure to take this fact into consideration. (Journal of American Medical Association, December 9, 1899.)
J. Clifton Edgar, The Practice of Obstetrics, second edition, 1904, p. 296. In an important discussion of the question at the American Gynæcological Society in 1886, introduced by Fordyce Barker, various eminent gynæcologists declared in favor of the doctrine, more or less cautiously. (Transactions of the American Gynæcological Society, vol. xi, 1886, pp. 152-196.) Gould and Pyle, bringing forward some of the data on the question (Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, pp. 81, et seq.) state that the reality of the influence of maternal impressions seems fully established. On the other side, see G. W. Cook, American Journal of Obstetrics, September, 1889, and H. F. Lewis, ib., July, 1899.
Transactions Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, vol. xvii, 1892.
J. W. Ballantyne, Manual of Antenatal Pathology: The Embryo, p. 45.
W. C. Dabney, "Maternal Impressions," Keating's Cyclopædia of Diseases of Children, vol. i, 1889, pp. 191-216.
Féré, Sensation et Mouvement, Chapter XIV, "Sur la Psychologie du Fœtus."
J. Thomson, "Defective Co-ordination in Utero," British Medical Journal, September 6, 1902.
H. Campbell, Nervous Organization of Man and Woman, p. 206; cf. Moll, Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, bd. i, p. 264. Many authorities, from Soranus of Ephesus onward, consider, however, that sexual relations should cease during pregnancy, and certainly during the later months. Cf. Brénot, De l'influence de la copulation pendant la grosseisse, 1903.
Bianchi terms this fairly common condition the neurasthenia of pregnancy.
Vinay, Traité des Maladies de la Grossesse, 1894, pp. 51, 577; Mongeri, "Nervenkrankungen und Schwangerschaft." Allegemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, bd. LVIII, Heft 5. Haig remarks (Uric Acid, sixth edition, p. 151) that during normal pregnancy diseases with excess of uric acid in the blood (headaches, fits, mental depression, dyspepsia, asthma) are absent, and considers that the common idea that women do not easily take colds, fevers, etc., at this time is well founded.
Founding his remarks on certain anatomical changes and on a suggestion of Engel's, Donaldson observes: "It is impossible to escape the conclusion that in women natural education is complete only with maternity, which we know to effect some slight changes in the sympathetic system and possibly the spinal cord, and which may be fairly laid under suspicion of causing more structural modifications than are at present recognized." H. H. Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain, p. 352.
The state of menstruation is in many respects an approximation to that of pregnancy; see, e.g., Edgar's Practice of Obstetrics, plates 6 6 and 7, showing the resemblance of the menstrual changes in the breasts and the external sexual parts to the changes of pregnancy; cf. Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, Chapter XI, "The Functional Periodicity of Woman."
Thus the gypsies say of an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant, "She has smelt the moon-flower"—a flower believed to grow on the so-called moon-mountain and to possess the property of impregnating by its smell. Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, bd. I, Chapter XXVII.
This was a sound instinct, for it is now recognized as an extremely important part of puericulture that a woman should rest at all events during the latter part of pregnancy; see, e.g., Pinard, Gazette des Hôpitaux, November 28, 1895, and Annales de Gynécologie, August, 1898.
Ploss and Bartels, op. cit., Chapter XXIX; Κρυπτάδια, vol. viii, p. 143.
Griffith Wilkin, British Medical Journal, April 8, 1905.
Weininger, Geschlecht und Charakter, p. 107. I may remark that a recent book, Ellis Meredith's Heart of My Heart, is devoted to a seemingly autobiographical account of a pregnant woman's emotions and ideas. The relations of maternity to intellectual work have been carefully and impartially investigated by Adele Gerhard and Helena Simon, who seem to conclude that the conflict between the inevitable claims of maternity and the scarcely less inevitable claims of the intellectual life cannot be avoided.