In Troggler’s case the woman had practised autoeroticism excessively from her thirteenth year and found satisfaction fricando et trahendo clitoridem. When she began to have normal concarnatio at the age of eighteen, she found that she could not obtain satisfaction for her excessively increased voluptuous desire except manuali fricando clitoridis inter coitum.
In Laker’s case of a married woman, twenty-four years of age, the patient never experienced the least satisfaction in concarnatione with her husband, while she found the desired effect in autoeroticism, especially in mutuo stupro manu.
In another of the same author’s cases a woman of thirty-four years of age practised stuprum manu mutuum and found great satisfaction in this activity. At the age of nineteen she was married and in spite of mutual affection she could not experience any libido. This fact did not prevent her from giving birth to two healthy children.
In another of Troggler’s cases, the woman, twenty-five years of age, was induced to practise autoeroticism when eleven years of age. On account of her increased sexual desires she began to have complexus venereus when fifteen years old. But she could not find the least satisfaction in congressu, although she practised it with a number of different men. Only stuprum manu offered her the desired libido.
In Loiman’s case the patient was induced by her friends in the convent to practise autoeroticism. When fourteen years of age she began to indulge in stupro manibus mutuo cum pueris of her own age. She married when nineteen years old and gave birth to her first child a year later. But she never found gratification in the conjugal embrace. The second case of Loiman was a widow of thirty-eight who had always been normal in her sexual functions and gave birth to a child at the age of twenty-seven. Two years later she lost her husband by death, and from that time she began “faute de mieux” to stuprare manu. Her voluptas increased to the point of becoming insatiable. When she has now normal congressus cum multis amatis she cannot find the desired gratification unless masturbatur in congressione.
This last case shows that Freud’s explanation of frigidity of intercourse by the refusal of the clitoris to transfer its sexuality at the time of puberty does not always hold good. This woman passed through her normal puberty. The cause of the impotence of libido inter coitum in these masturbators is rather the increase of the excitability of the clitoris at the expense of the vaginal mucous membrane and of the cervix uteri, through the long-continued manual irritation of this organ. The stimulation from these sources to induce libido is thus decreased, and the excitation of the glans of the clitoris by the penis alone during coition is insufficient to induce orgasm.
The immediate causes of the masturbatic practices are generally bad examples. The practice is first learned from friends in boarding schools, convents, factories or prisons. Sometimes it is also prurient curiosity which prudish educators and parents neglect to satisfy which leads young girls to self-abuse. In congenital hyperaesthesia the pleasurable titillation may accidentally be induced in complete ignorance of sexual relations. The following case is quite instructive in this respect.
A young lady, twenty-four years of age, consulted the author on account of her extremely enlarged breasts. She stated that eight years ago she discovered that by a certain manipulation muliebrium she was able to experience the highest degree of pleasure. For the last eight years until very recently she continued to enjoy the fruits of her discovery. She often wished to tell her physician about her wonderful discovery for the benefit of other young women. One day the author’s book, “Woman,” fell into her hands, and she learned for the first time to her great amazement and chagrin that what she was doing was nothing else but autoeroticism.
This simple story shows that ignorance is not always innocence, as some misled parents seem to think. Sometimes ignorance is just the cause of the early practice of sex activity.
Incest.—Another anomaly which must be attributed to hyperaesthesia sexualis is incest. Incest, as such, has nothing pathological in its essence. In the early history of human marriage incest was the rule. It was practised even in historic times. Abraham was married to his sister, according to the Bible. Cimon of Athens was also married to his sister. In the royal house of the Ptolomei it was common for brothers to marry their sisters to avoid a division of the empire. Cleopatra, the evil star of Marc Anthony, was married to her brother. But these few examples were the exceptions, generally, for the last three thousand years incest has been considered an abomination in the eyes of God and men. Its practice was constantly inveighed against by Church and State. It has, therefore, because of these constant suggestions, become the second nature of man to abhor such practices. Only an exaggerated sexual desire, coupled with the absence of understanding for laws and morals, could nowadays lead to incest in any civilized country. Even in the crowded tenements where all members of the family of both sexes live and sleep in one room, incest is still a great rarity, and when such a case happens, it deeply wounds the feelings of the entire community. Such incestuous immoral attacks are, as a rule, made by low, brutal men in a state of intoxication or by those who suffer from weak-mindedness, by epileptics and by paranoiacs. Hence in every case of incest, we are justified in assuming that the seducer is suffering from sexual hyperaesthesia. An asylum and castration may be a more appropriate treatment for such a patient than the treatment in prison.
The following case came under the author’s observation while he was house-physician in the Woman’s Hospital of a well-known European university:
A mother brought her twelve-year-old girl to the skin department of the general hospital to be treated for a certain rash the child was suffering from, for some time. The rash was diagnosed there as pityriasis versicolor, and the child was recommended to go to the Woman’s Hospital for treatment. At the examination here it was found that the twelve-year-old child was six months pregnant. Being too small and delicate, even for her age, to give birth to a full-term child, it was decided to induce premature labor. Before the operation, the child was asked for the name of the man who was responsible for her predicament, and the following was her version of the accident:
One day, while returning from school, she was addressed, on the street, by a man whom she had never seen before and who asked her whether she did not know him, her cousin from X. He said that he was just going to see her parents, his uncle and aunt. On the way he took her to a candy-store and bought her candy. When leaving the store he told her that he had forgotten to take along a present for her parents which he left in his room, and they both went to fetch it. Upon entering his room, he locked the door and abused her.
Upon hearing the story the indignation of the medical authorities of the hospital was beyond all description. The police was immediately notified to hunt for the criminal. A representative from the district attorney’s office (Untersuchungsrichter) and a detective soon appeared at the hospital to get more particulars from the child. The officers of the court seemed to have a much better experience in the examination of such cases than the doctors, for when they left the child’s room her story read quite differently.
The girl’s father had a workshop in the business section of the city, while the family lived in another part. When leaving school in the afternoon the child used often to visit the father’s shop and take home the dishes he took along in the morning. One day, while in the shop with her father, he took her in the back room of the shop and abused her. Under threat of death these immoral attacks were often repeated for months afterwards, until one day the unnatural father noticed that his child conceptavit ab eo. He then made up the story with the cousin which the child first told the hospital authorities.
The father was arrested, tried, and sentenced to ten years’ hard labor.
This case shows how low the sufferers of hyperaesthesia may fall. The man was not drunk when he made the repeated attacks upon his child. The excuse of the defective separation of the living quarters is also missing, nor does here exist the cause of “faute de mieux,” as it is sometimes found in widowers living with their adult daughters in incestuous unions. The man here had a healthy wife. Hence it is nothing else but a case of sexual hyperaesthesia pure and simple of a weak-minded individual.
Incest is oftener found in men than in women, yet there are cases recorded where women were the seducers.