[435] By vaginismus we understand involuntary convulsive contraction of the vaginal muscles, associated with abnormal sensibility of the vaginal inlet, dependent on masturbation, or induced by the above-mentioned painful sensations and injuries which occur in maladroit and brutal coitus (this is by far the commonest cause of vaginismus), especially when the penis is very large and the vaginal inlet very small, or when the female genital organs are further forward than usual. Vaginismus generally arises from small injuries and lacerations, produced in this manner; with the physical sense of pain is associated also psychical anxiety with regard to renewed attempts at intercourse; and in this way the reflex spasm is produced. Sometimes the vaginal spasm does not begin until after the penis has been introduced, so that this organ is retained (penis captivus). A few years ago a remarkable case of this kind occurred in Bremen. One of the dock labourers was having sexual intercourse in an out-of-the-way corner of the docks, when the woman became affected with this involuntary spasm, and the man was unable to free himself from his imprisonment. A great crowd assembled, from the midst of which the unfortunate couple were removed in a closed carriage, and taken to the hospital, and not until chloroform had been administered to the girl did the spasm pass off and free the man!
[436] A very clever study of the conditions here described will be found in a recent English novel, “Mr. and Mrs. Villiers,” by Hubert Wales (Heinemann, London, 1907).—Translator.
[437] Rozier describes two typical examples of feminine erotomania (“The Secret Aberrations of the Female Sex,” pp. 123-128; Leipzig, 1831).
[438] Pollutions.—This term has not perhaps as yet acquired a right of residence in the English tongue, but I use it because it is needed. There is no other word which can be employed as a general term (1) to include all involuntary emissions of semen, whether nocturnal or diurnal; and (2) to include involuntary sexual orgasm in the female as well as in the male. In the female the term “seminal emission” is inapplicable; but the term “pollution” can be applied in English (as it is in German) to either sex. By American writers the term “pollution” is now generally used (see, for instance, Allen, “Disorders of the Male Sexual Organs,” Twentieth Century Practice, vol. vii., p. 612 et seq.).—Translator.
[439] L. Löwenfeld, op. cit., pp. 206, 207.
[440] Swediaur relates: “I have, although much more rarely, seen the aforesaid diseases also in the other sex” (he speaks of diurnal pollutions). “At the present time I have under treatment a woman, twenty-eight years of age, who for a year and a half, since the time when she had a miscarriage, suffers from very frequent involuntary nocturnal pollutions, which are induced by very voluptuous dreams, and are accompanied by all the symptoms of wasting of the spinal cord, which Hippocrates describes as a disease peculiar to the male sex.” Quoted by L. Deslandes, “Masturbation and other Aberrations of Sexual Intercourse,” p. 204 (Leipzig, 1835).
[441] Paul Bernhardt, “Processes Resembling Pollutions Occurring in Women, without Sexual Ideas or Lustful Feelings,” published in Die ärztliche Praxis, 1903, No. 17, pp. 193-197.
[442] The best recent work on impotence is Fürbringer’s “The Disturbances of the Sexual Function in Man,” second edition (Vienna, 1901). See also Frenzel, “On Incapacity for Procreation” (Wittenberg, 1800); F. Roubaud, “Traité de l’Impuissance et de la Stérilité chez l’Homme et chez la Femme” (Paris, 1878); V. von Gyurkovechky, “Pathology and Therapeutics of Impotence in the Male” (Vienna and Leipzig, 1897); J. Steinbacher, “Impotence in the Male,” fifth edition (Berlin, 1892); W. A. Hammond, “Sexual Impotence in the Male and Female Sexes” (Berlin, 1891); A. Eulenburg, “Sexual Neurasthenia” (pp. 177-183); Leopold Casper, “Impotentia et Sterilitas Virilis” (Munich, 1890).
[443] W. Schallmayer, “Infection as a Wedding Gift,” published in the Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1903, vol. iv., pp. 389-419.
[444] G. Hirth, “Ways to Love,” pp. 461, 463.