FOOTNOTES:
[1] In this, and in most of the generalisations found in this book, I am speaking of things as they are in Great Britain. While, to a considerable extent, the same is true of America and the Scandinavian countries, it must be remembered all through that I am speaking of the British, and primarily of our educated classes.
[2] The italics are mine.—M. C. S.
This pronouncement of an exceptionally advanced and broadminded thinker serves to show how little attention has hitherto been paid to the woman's side of this question, or to ascertaining her natural requirements.
[3] "Conjugal Rights." Notes and Queries. May 16, 1891, p. 383. "S. writes from the Probate Registry, Somerset House: 'Previous to 1733 legal proceedings were recorded in Latin and the word then used where we now speak of rights was obsequies. For some time after the substitution of English for Latin the term rites was usually, if not invariably adopted; rights would appear to be a comparatively modern error.'"
"Mr. T. E. Paget writes ('Romeo and Juliet,' Act V., Scene III.):
"What cursed foot wanders this way to-night
To cross my obsequies, and true lovers rite?"
"Well may Lord Esher say he has never been able to make out what the phrase 'conjugal rights' means. The origin of the term is now clear, and a blunder, which was first made, perhaps, by a type-setter in the early part of the last century, and never exposed until now, has led to a vast amount of misapprehension. Here, too, is another proof that Shakespeare was exceedingly familiar with 'legal language.'"
[4] Note.—In Leviticus xv. it is the man who is directed to abstain from touching the woman at this period, and who is rendered unclean if he does.—M. C. S.
[5] See Pflügers Archiv., 1891.
[6] This book is now out of print, but can be seen at the British Museum.
[7] See Prof. Ernest H. Starling's Croonian Lecture to the Royal Society, 1905.
[8] H. Ellis. "Sex in Relation to Society," 1910, p. 551.
[9] See Porosz, British Medical Journal, April 1, 1911, p. 784.
[10] A quotation from Thomas (p. 112 of William Thomas' book "Sex and Society," 1907, Pp. 314) is here very apt, though he had been speaking not of man, but of the love play and coyness shown by female birds and animals.
"We must also recognise the fact that reproductive life must be connected with violent stimulation, or it would be neglected and the species would become extinct; and on the other hand, if the conquest of the female were too easy, sexual life would be in danger of becoming a play interest and a dissipation, destructive of energy and fatal to the species. Working, we may assume, by a process of selection and survival, nature has both secured and safeguarded reproduction. The female will not submit to seizure except in a high state of nervous excitation (as is seen especially well in the wooing of birds), while the male must conduct himself in such a way as to manipulate the female; and, as the more active agent, he develops a marvellous display of technique for this purpose. This is offset by the coyness and coquetry of the female, by which she equally attracts and fascinates the male, and practises upon him to induce a corresponding state of nervous excitation."
[11] See p. 566 of the text-book on "The Physiology of Reproduction," Pp. xvii., 706, 1910.
[12] See his letter to the scientific journal "Nature" in the year 1893, August 24, pp. 389 and 390.
[13] See Dr. Raymond Crawfurd's mistaken statement that "the identity of œstrus, or 'heat' in the lower animals and of menstruation in the human female, admits of no doubt." P. 62 Proc. Roy. Soc. Medicine, vol. 9., 1916.
[14] The best modern account of these complex subjects will be found in the advanced text-book, "The Physiology of Reproduction," pp. xvii., 706, by F. H. A. Marshall. Reference may be made to original papers by J. Beard in the Anat. Anzeiger for 1897; and by Heape in the Philosophical Trans. Royal Society, 1894, 97.