Love: A Treatise on the Science of Sex-attraction / for the use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence

by Bernard Simon Talmey

When the centre of erection 16 is directly irritated, for example, by electricity, after the spinal cord has been severed, the stimulus is directly transmitted through nerve 17 to the periphery 10 to respond with erection. The same road is taken by the excitation of the centre of erection 16 during sleep.

In spermatorrhoea the stimulus at the centre of voluptas 11 is directly transmitted through nerve 6 to the centre of ejaculation 7, hence through nerve 8 to the periphery 10, and ejaculation takes place without erection.

[E] Many authorities (among others Rohleder, Berliner Klinik, 1909, Heft 257) claim that the libido, or the pleasurable sensations, originate at the orifices of the ejaculatory ducts during the passage of the thick semen through these narrow openings. This hypothesis will not stand a critical analysis. People who began to masturbate in early childhood relate that for years they experienced orgasm without noticing the least trace of an ejaculation. One day, usually between the fourteenth and sixteenth year, they were surprised by the first ejaculation. Still there was no material change in the quality of the libido during the orgasm accompanied by ejaculation from that experienced during the previous orgasms without ejaculations. This tends to show that the libido experienced at the sexual paroxysm has its cause not in the removal of the material congestion but in the relief from the nervous tension. The orgastic paroxysm has its analogy in the epileptic crisis. The nervous tension in the epileptic patient is gradually increased until one day an explosion ensues, and the epileptic attack removes, so to say, the accumulated nervous energy. The patient is then relieved for a certain time. An analogous relief from the nervous tension is effected during the orgastic crisis, and the cause of the libido in men and in women is this discharge of nervous energy. The ejaculation of the few drops of semen or of Kristeller’s plug is only an accidental incident, which may contribute to the well-being of the individual, just as the discharge from bladder and rectum, but which is not the cause of orgastic libido.

[F] This monthly periodicity is attributed by some authorities to cosmic influences (the new moon and full moon). But since other vital processes also show a certain undulatory increase and decrease in strength (e. c. the systole and diastole of the heart), it is more probable that the periodicity of ovulation is due to an undulatory motion, where the length of the wave is about four weeks.

[G] According to Pflüger (Veit’s Handb. der Gyn. 1908, Vol. 3, p. 25) the pressure of the periodically growing Graafian follicle causes a continual irritation of the ovarian nerves, which, by reflex action, is the cause of the great congestion of the genitals. When the stimulus has reached a certain height, the congestion leads, on the one side, to the rupture of the follicle, on the other hand, to the menstrual change of the uterine mucosa. This theory has been abandoned, and the modern trend of opinion is to attribute the general congestion to chemical substances, thus returning to Brown-Sequard teachings that the periodical congestion is caused by a chemical substance which, produced within the ovary, enters the blood circulation.

According to L. Meyer, under the influence of ovulation, a continual production of substances, oophorines, necessary for the growth of the foetus, takes place. These substances circulate in the blood, and, when they are present in large amounts, cause a stimulation of the entire nervous system. This explains the nervous irritation and other phenomena of this period. During menstruation these substances are excreted.

G. Klein (Münch. med. Wochenschr. 1911, p. 997) thinks that the oophorines cause a chemical change of the uterine mucosa and of the blood circulating in the latter, and are themselves chemically changed. They then leave the body simultaneously with the menstrual blood. Hence menstruation is a real catharsis, in the sense of Hypokrates, a freeing of the body from the toxic effects of the oophorines. The presence of the oophorines during this period accounts for the different smell of menstrual blood from ordinary blood. The peculiar smell from the mouths of some menstruating women may also be attributed to the presence of the oophorines in the body.

When pregnancy has once been established, menstruation ceases for the entire period the mother is nursing her offspring, be the nursing within the uterus during gestation or later on during lactation, with the breast. Both periods comprise the time when the mother has to give her vital fluids for the nutrition of her offspring.

[H] The Hindus recommend the marriage of the girl before the first menstruation has set in. Among many savages the first menstruation is the signal for marrying off the girl. Such women become impregnated with each succeeding child immediately after they have finished nursing the preceding one. By the time propagation ceases, the climacerium sets in. In this way these women only menstruate a few times during their lives.

[I] Another reason why menstruation is so rarely observed among animals is their posture. If the preparations preceding menstruation are for the purpose of ingrafting the fertilized ovum, it follows that menstruation must occur in all those animals in which the fertilized egg is fully developed to complete maturity within the interior of the mother. This is indeed what happens. All animals with so intimate an attachment of the foetal and maternal organisms that the foetal placenta cannot be detached from the mother without a haemorrhage, show the phenomenon of menstruation.