The refusal to transfer the clitoris sexuality is, as a rule, caused by an excessive irritation of the clitoris by manusturpation during childhood. The excesses which cause impotence of libido in women are the same which cause impotence of copulation in men, namely excesses in copulation, masturbation, mental erethism, and tactile eroticism. In women the excesses in copulation are more harmful than in men. While in men these excesses are self-limited by the impossibility of provoking any erections, after a certain time of continuous indulgence; in women there is no limitation to the practice. Playing the passive rôle, she can stand congressum continuum for a considerable length of time and tire out a number of men in succession. The vaginal pavement-epithelial lining is very strong.
“Conteritur ferrum, silices teneantur ab usu.
“Sufficit et damni pars caret illa metu.”
sings Ovid in his “Ars Amandi.” Hence when a woman has any proclivity for excesses in initu, there is no natural limit to her indulgence. Through the influence of the frequent irritation in copulative excesses, the vaginal mucous membrane undergoes considerable changes. It becomes a veritable skin, a stiff parchment, and thus loses sensitiveness.
The other cause for impotence of libido are excesses in masturbation. The evil results of these practices in women are fully as great as in men, although with women it is the orgasm alone that does the damage, since there is no seminal discharge or loss of vital fluids. Through the frequent application of friction to the parts, they become first hypersensitive and later hyposensitive and non-responsive to normal excitations. Accustomed to excite the genitals by manual stimuli, which may be kept up for a considerable length of time, the masturbator is, later on, impotent to reach the acme through the normal, relatively short excitations, as they take place through the internal organic events in the genitals in normal sex-activity.
In women, the same as in men, the greater damage through excesses in masturbation is done by the greater frequency, because it requires no help, from an outsider, because it is not bound by time and locality, and may be practised by the undeveloped child, and last but not least, because of the constant conflict and struggle of the masturbator between the sensual impulse and the inability to desist and the feeling of womanly unworthiness, dissatisfaction and shame.
Excesses in mental erethism and excessive dalliance with members of the other sex have no less injurious effects in women than in men. In the long run these excesses cause in the woman a number of nervous troubles which take the form of hysteria or assume the character of neurasthenia. These excessive practices of erethism or tactile eroticism are, also in women, worse than excesses in copulation and masturbation, because the former do not lead to the orgasm and to the relief of the nervous tension and material congestion.
Another cause of impotence of libido in women is onanism or the practice of withdrawal. This coitus interruptus which rarely leads to orgasm in the woman, has the same effect upon her as excessive mental erethism or tactile eroticism, because it does not lead to relief from the nervous tension and the congestion. Excesses in onanism are, therefore, very harmful in women, while they are of lesser consequence in men. The repeated congestions of the parts in all these practices lead first to chronic hyperaemia and stasis, and in its further progress to chronic inflammations of the tissues, known under the respective names of metritis, perimetritis, parametritis, endometritis, salpingitis, and ovaritis. The inflammations constantly irritate the nerves and their centres and in this way blunt their normal sensibility. Besides the dulling of the nervous elements, these conditions give rise to great pain in commixtione, and pain and fear are the greatest enemies of libido.
Other causes of impotence of libido in women are excesses in alcohol, bromides, cocaine, morphine and other narcotics and stimulants. Sometimes impotence of libido is the result of a hard confinement. During such confinements extensive lesions in the erectile tissues of the bulbs and in the sphincter cunni muscles are apt to occur. Now, the integrity of the vaginal bulbs, of the sphincter cunni, of the intermediary net of vessels, and of the clitoris is necessary for the normal experiencing of libido. If a serious lesion occurs, the blood current is interrupted, and the blood is prevented from leaving the bulbs and from entering the corpora cavernosa of the clitoris. The following case will serve as an illustration:
The patient, twenty years of age, married twenty months, has a baby ten months old. She states that since her confinement she has no libido during coition. Before this event she always found perfect gratification. The examination shows a first-degree laceration of the perineum.