Somewhat similar may have been the origin of the attraction of blood in a case which has been reported to me of a youth of 17, the youngest of a large family who are all very strong and entirely normal. He is himself, however, delicate, overgrown, with a narrow chest, a small head, and babyish features, while mentally he is backward, with very defective memory and scant powers of assimilation. He is intensely nervous, peevish, and subject to fits of childish rage. He takes violent fancies to persons of his own sex. But he appears to have only one way of obtaining sexual excitement and gratification. It is his custom to get into a hot bath and there to produce erection and emission, not by masturbation, but by thinking of flowing blood. He does not associate himself with the causation of this imaginary flow of blood; he is merely the passive but pleased spectator. He is aware of his peculiarity and endeavors to shake it off, but his efforts to obtain normal pleasure by thinking of a girl are vain.
I may here narrate a case which has been communicated to me of algolagnia in a woman, combined with sexual hyperesthesia.
R. D., aged 25, married, and of good social position; she is a small and dark woman, restless and alert in manner. She has one child.
She has practised masturbation from an early age—ever since she can remember—by the method of external friction and pressure. From the age of 17 she was able (and is still) to produce the orgasm almost without effort, by calling up the image of any man who had struck her fancy. She has often done so while seated talking to such a man, even when he is almost a stranger; in doing it, she says, a tightening of the muscles of the thighs and the slightest movement are sufficient. Ugly men (if not deformed), as well as men with the reputation of being roués, greatly excite her sexually, more especially if of good social position, though this is not essential.
At the age of 18 she became hysterical, probably, she herself believes, in consequence of a great increase at that time of indulgence in masturbation. The doctors, apparently suspecting her habits, urged her parents to get her married early. She married, at the age of 20, a man about twice her own age.
As a child (and in a less degree still) she was very fond of watching dog-fights. This spectacle produced strong sexual feelings and usually orgasm, especially if much blood was shed during the fight. Clean cuts and wounds greatly attract her, whether on herself or a man. She has frequently slightly cut or scratched herself "to see the blood," and likes to suck the wound, thinking the taste "delicious." This produces strong sexual feelings and often orgasm, especially if at the time she thinks of some attractive man and imagines that she is sucking his blood. The sight of injury to a woman only very slightly affects her, and that, she thinks, only because of an involuntary association of ideas. Nor has the sight of suffering in illness any exciting effects, only that which is due to violence, and when there is a visible cause for the suffering, such as cuts and wounds. (Bruises, from the absence of blood, have only a slight effect.) The excitement is intensified if she imagines that she has herself inflicted the injury. She likes to imagine that the man wished to rape her, and that she fought him in order to make him more greatly value her favor, so wounding him.
Impersonal ideas of torture also excite her. She thinks Fox's Book of Martyrs "lovely," and the more horrible and bloody the tortures described the greater is the sexual excitement produced. The book excites her from the point of view of the torturer, not that of the victim. She has frequently masturbated while reading it.
So far as practicable she has sought to carry out these ideas in her relations with her husband. She has several times bitten him till the blood came and sucked the bite during coitus. She likes to bite him enough to make him wince. The pleasure is greatly heightened by thinking of various tortures, chiefly by cutting. She likes to have her husband talk to her, and she to him, of all the tortures they could inflict on each other. She has, however, never actually tried to carry out these tortures. She would like to, but dares not, as she is sure he could not endure them. She has no desire for her husband to try them on her, although she likes to hear him talk about it.
She is at the same time fond of normal coitus, even to excess. She likes her husband to remain entirely passive during connection, so that he can continue in a state of strong erection for a long time. She can thus, she says, procure for herself the orgasm a number of times in succession, even nine or ten, quite easily. On one occasion she even had the orgasm twenty-six times within about one and a quarter hours, her husband during this time having two orgasms. (She is quite certain about the accuracy of this statement.) During this feat much talk about torture was indulged in, and it took place after a month's separation from her husband, during which she was careful not to masturbate, so that she might have "a real good time" when he came back. She acknowledges that on this occasion she was a "complete wreck" for a couple of days afterward, but states that usually ten or a dozen orgasms (or spasms, as she terms them) only make her "feel lively." She becomes frenzied with excitement during intercourse and insensible to everything but the pleasure of it.