A young woman of twenty-two, who has practised stuprum manu from her early childhood, confided to the author that she derived more libidinem de stupro manu quam de initu. Yet, she added, after some abstinence from regular initus, although she is fully indulging in her favorite pastime, she has a veritable sitim seminis.
Patients afflicted with congenital impotence of libido are very seldom seen by the physician. They are not aware of their anomaly, and being otherwise normal and in full possession of the power of procreation, they never ask for treatment. The physician learns of such cases only by chance. It is different in acquired impotence of libido. Here the patient knows what she has lost, and the physician is often asked for advice and for a remedy. Hence the study of this anomaly is very important for the physician, although this impotence has not the same importance in women as it has in men, where it causes impotence of copulation and destroys the marriage relations of the couple.
Orgasmus retardatus.—The other grade in the impotence of libido is partial anaesthesia, in which the patient is able to experience the ant-orgastic pleasure, but cannot induce real orgasm. The intensity of the pleasurable feeling does not reach the sudden climax and does not diminish abruptly. The climax is never reached, and the ant-orgastic libido decreases gradually and slowly, it dies away. In idiopathic partial anaesthesia, where the anomaly is congenital, the patient has never experienced an orgasm, and hence is not aware of her anomaly.
It is different in the acquired form of partial anaesthesia or in the so-called orgasmus retardatus. The sexual excitement of the woman suffering from orgasmus retardatus is never abated, her libido is unimpeded, but the potency of experiencing orgasm is diminished or entirely absent. The following extracts of a letter from a patient suffering from a certain degree of orgasmus retardatus well illustrates the complaints of this class of patients:
I have been married over a year now, and have never experienced any satisfaction in initu. The glands seem to secrete the fluids, and the cupido congressus is there, but no satisfaction. I am always sleepless and nervous afterwards and sometimes suffer from headaches the following morning. I am at times bothered with leukorrhoea. When a child faciebam stuprum manu, but not since my sixteenth year of age, and I am at present twenty-five years old. I have never been pregnant.
The following case is extremely interesting, because the patient is able to induce orgasm only in one certain position. In all other positions she is impotent of experiencing libido. In March, 1908, the patient consulted the author about her anomaly. Being a highly educated woman (she was a school teacher before she married) she was asked to write in a letter the history of her case, and the following are the contents of her letter:
I am forty-one years of age, eleven years married, have two children, one ten, the other eight years old. I began to menstruate at the age of thirteen and was always regular, the menstruation lasting three to four days. The flow was always scanty.
As a child I was sad and dreamy. I can recall times when I would weep, I scarcely knew for what. When I was nearing puberty coepi me stuprare manu. No one taught me. I could not help it; I did not know what I did it for (I was reared on a farm). The method was sitting on a chair and moving to and fro. I must have continued till I was eighteen or nineteen years old. I stopped it long before I knew it was wrong, long before I have ever read it in books. No one told me it was wrong. I was a good girl in the eyes of every one.
At the age of twenty I went to college. I think the reason I stopped stuprum manu was that my mind was greatly engrossed in my studies. True, I often had the desire, but the association with the opposite sex would lessen it. I was fond of men in a silent way. I never, even though in their company, was familiar with them.
When twenty-three years of age I met one towards whom I was changed. I could not keep away from his presence. I remained a virgin till we married, when I was thirty years of age. I had known him seven years, but only saw him often, say three or four times a week, for the last two years. We spent only one or two evenings each week together. I allowed and deeply enjoyed all caresses, but they were not of the lewd fashion. I must have been excited sexually, for I would experience excessive humorem ut in initu.
At the age of forty-one, libidinem capio ex initu, yet experience no orgasm save in the position “vir infra,” and in this position very, very little sensation till the orgasm comes. I am fond of the concarnatio, but aside from the position just mentioned, I have not the least libido inter initum. It is a pleasure, you know, to give, but my own libido is wanting in any of these positions. My husband prefers alios positus to the one in which I have orgasm; præbente majorem libidinem.
Multum humesco in initu. Quamquam comisceor quot noctibus præferrem longum quam parvum temporis spatium concarnationi.
I am never ill, no aches or pains. The only premonition I have of the approach of the menses is a fulness and tenderness of the breasts. I menstruate very regularly.
Believe me when I say that once only in the seven years I knew the one I eventually married—I must have been twenty-three and a half years old, when I had spent hours in his company, with no more familiarity than a kiss at parting—I was so excited ut pulvillum premerem usque ad orgasmum. I could not have helped it, no matter what had occurred. Often I have been excited thus, but I never before or since did the same.
I never yielded to desire, though gently pressed to do so. Had I been urged beyond my power of endurance I cannot tell what I would have done. Yet I trust my virtue was due to a predominance of will-power and not a lack of passion.
I cannot say the lapse of years has changed my desires or lessened what I call my passions. I am affectionate by nature, but I trust my emotions are more than affection.
The patient makes these last remarks because she is unable to bring in accord her own feelings with the diagnosis frigidity,[AZ] received from several physicians whom she had consulted. She herself knows well that she is passionate enough to exclude any possibility of frigidity. Hers is a typical case of orgasmus retardatus of a slight degree (for, in the position “vir infra” orgasm is possible, for in this position coition lasts considerable longer), due probably to masturbation but mostly to the tactile eroticism, practised during the seven years of her engagement.
In pronounced orgasmus retardatus the sexual impulse is very vivid, but the patient can never find the acme of gratification in coition. It may often require hours concarnationis continuæ before the orgasm is induced, and sometimes it may never be experienced. While there is a strong desire and a theoretical ability to induce the orgasm,—the patients are able to experience the orgasm in all its intensity by masturbation—in practice it is seldom or never attained, because the male will always reach the acme of coition before the woman has arrived at this point. Her nervous system remains, therefore, excited to the highest pitch and brought to a state of expectancy which is not realized.