The case has been recorded of a married woman, in love with her doctor, who kept a day-dream diary, at last filling three bulky volumes, when it was discovered by her husband, and led to an action for divorce; it was shown that the doctor knew nothing of the romance in which he played the part of hero. Kiernan, in referring to this case (as recorded in John Paget's Judicial Puzzles), mentions a similar case in Chicago.
Uranisme, p. 125.
The acute Anstie remarked, more than thirty years ago, in his work on Neuralgia: "It is a comparatively frequent thing to see an unsocial, solitary life (leading to the habit of masturbation) joined with the bad influence of an unhealthy ambition, prompting to premature and false work in literature and art." From the literary side, M. Léon Bazalgette has dealt with the tendency of much modern literature to devote itself to what he calls "mental onanism," of which the probable counterpart, he seems to hint, is a physical process of auto-erotism. (Léon Bazalgette, "L'onanisme considéré comme principe createur en art," L'Esprit Nouveau, 1898.)