Krafft-Ebing records various cases of masochism in which the emission of urine on to the body or into the mouth formed the climax of sexual gratification, as, for instance (Psychopathia Sexualis, English translation, p. 183) in the case of a Russian official who as a boy had fancies of being bound between the thighs of a woman, compelled to sleep beneath her nates and to drink her urine, and in later life experienced the greatest excitement when practicing the last part of this early imagination.
In another case, recorded by Krafft-Ebing and by him termed "ideal masochism" (Op. cit., pp. 127-130), the subject from childhood indulged in voluptuous day-dreams in which he was the slave of a beautiful mistress who would compel him to obey all her caprices, stand over him with one foot on his breast, sit on his face and body, make him wait on her in her bath, or when she urinated, and sometimes insist on doing this on his face; though a highly intellectual man, he was always too timid to attempt to carry any of his ideas into execution; he had been troubled by nocturnal enuresis up to the age of 20.
Neri, again (Archivio delle Psicopatie Sessuali, vol. i, fasc. 7 and 8, 1896), records the case of an Italian masochist who experienced the greatest pleasure when both urination and defecation were practiced in this manner by the woman he was attached to.
In a previous volume of these Studies ("Sexual Inversion," History XXVI) I have recorded the masochistic day-dreams of a boy whose impulses were at the same time inverted; in his reveries "the central fact," he states, "became the discharge of urine from my lover over my body and limbs, or, if I were very fond of him, I let it be in my face." In actual life the act of urination casually witnessed in childhood became the symbol, even the reality, of the central secret of sex: "I stood rooted and flushing with downcast eyes till the act was over, and was conscious for a considerable time of stammering speech and bewildered faculties.... I was overwhelmed with emotion and could barely drag my feet from the spot or my eyes from the damp herbage where he had deposited the waters of secrecy. Even to-day I cannot dissociate myself from the shuddering charm that moment had for me."
It is not only the urine and the fæces which may thus acquire a symbolic fascination and attractiveness under the influence of masochistic deviations of sexual idealization. In some cases extreme rapture has been experienced in licking sweating feet. There is, indeed, no excretion or product of the body which has not been a source of ecstasy: the sweat from every part of the body, the saliva and menstrual fluid, even the wax from the ears.
Krafft-Ebing very truly points out (Psychopathia Sexualis, English translation, p. 178) that this sexual scatalogic symbolism is precisely paralleled by a religious scatalogic symbolism. In the excesses of devout enthusiasm the ascetic performs exactly the same acts as are performed in these excesses of erotic enthusiasm. To mix excreta with the food, to lick up excrement, to suck festering sores—all these and the like are acts which holy and venerated women have performed.
Not only the saint, but also the prophet and medicine-man have been frequently eaters of human excrement; it is only necessary to refer to the instance of the prophet Ezekiel, who declared that he was commanded to bake his bread with human dung, and to the practices of medicine-men at Torres Straits, in whose training the eating of human excrement takes a recognized part. (Deities, notably Baal-Phegor, were sometimes supposed to eat excrement, so that it was natural that their messengers and representatives among men should do so. As regards Baal-Phegor, see Dulaure, Des Divinités Génératrices, Chapter IV, and J. G. Bourke, Scatalogic Rites of All Nations, p. 241. See also Ezekiel, Chapter IV, v. 12, and Reports Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, p. 321.)
It must be added, however, that while the masochist is overcome by sexual rapture, so that he sees nothing disgusting in his act, the medicine-man and the ascetic are not so invariably overcome by religious rapture, and several ascetic writers have referred to the horror and disgust they experienced, at all events at first, in accomplishing such acts, while the medicine-men when novices sometimes find the ordeal too severe and have to abandon their career. Brénier de Montmorand, while remarking, not without some exaggeration, that "the Christian ascetics are almost all eaters of excrement" ("Ascétisme et Mysticisme," Revue Philosophique, March, 1904, p. 245), quotes the testimonies of Marguerite-Marie and Madame Guyon as to the extreme repugnance which they had to overcome. They were impelled by a merely intellectual symbolism of self-mortification rather than by the profoundly felt emotional symbolism which moves the masochist.
Coprophagic acts, whether under the influences of religious exaltation or of sexual rapture, inevitably excite our disgust. We regard them as almost insane, fortified in that belief by the undoubted fact that coprophagia is not uncommon among the insane. It may, therefore, be proper to point out that it is not so very long since the ingestion of human excrement was carried out by our own forefathers in the most sane and deliberate manner. It was administered by medical practitioners for a great number of ailments, apparently with entirely satisfactory results. Less than two centuries ago, Schurig, who so admirably gathered together and arranged the medical lore of his own and the immediately preceding ages, wrote a very long and detailed chapter, "De Stercoris Humani Usu Medico" (Chylologia, 1725, cap. XIII; in the Paris Journal de Médecine for February 19, 1905, there appeared an article, which I have not seen, entitled "Médicaments oubliées: l'urine et la fiente humaine.") The classes of cases in which the drug was found beneficial would seem to have been extremely various. It must not be supposed that it was usually ingested in the crude form. A common method was to take the fæces of boys, dry them, mix them with the best honey, and administer an electuary. (At an earlier period such drugs appear to have met with some opposition from the Church, which seems to have seen in them only an application of magic; thus I note that in Burchard's remarkable Penitential of the fourteenth century, as reproduced by Wasserschleben, 40 days' penance is prescribed for the use of human urine or excrement as a medicine. Wasserschleben Die Bussordnungen der Abendländlichen Kirche, p. 651.)