It would be impossible, in an essay of this kind, to review the whole mass of medical observation, inference and speculation which we have at our command. Nor is a layman, perhaps, well qualified for the task of criticism and comparison in a matter of delicacy where doctors differ as to details. I shall therefore content myself with giving an account of four of the most recent, most authoritative, and, as it seems to me, upon the whole most sensible studies. Moreau, Tarnowsky, Krafft-Ebing and Lombroso take very nearly similar views of the phenomenon; and between them they are gradually forming a theory which is likely to become widely accepted.
Des Aberrations du Sens Génésique, par le Dr. Paul Moreau, 4th edition, 1887.
Moreau starts with the proposition that there is a sixth sense, "le sens génital," which, like other senses, can be injured psychically and physically without the mental functions, whether affective or intellectual, suffering thereby. His book is therefore a treatise on the diseases of the sexual sense. These diseases are by no means of recent origin, he says. They have always and everywhere existed.
He begins with a historical survey, which, so far as antiquity is concerned, is very defective. Having quoted with approval the following passage about Greek society:—
"La sodomie se répand dans toute la Grèce; les écoles des philosophes deviennent des maisons de débauche, et les grands exemples d'amitié légués par le paganisme ne sont, pour la plupart, qu'une infâme turpitude voilée par une sainte apparence": having quoted these words of Dr. Descuret, Moreau leaves Greece alone, and goes on to Rome. The state of morals in Rome under the empire he describes as "une dépravation maladive, devenue par la force des choses héréditaire, endémique, épidémique." Then follows a short account of the emperors and their female relatives. "Cet éréthisme génésique qui, pendant près de deux siècles, régna a l'état épidémique dans Rome" he ascribes mainly to heredity. Of Julia, the daughter of Augustus, he says, "Peut-on lutter contre un état morbide héréditaire?" The union of unrestrained debauchery and ferocity with great mental gifts strikes him as a note of disease; and he winds up with this sentence: "Parmi les causes les plus fréquentes des aberrations du sens génital, l'hérédité tient la première place."
Then he passes to the middle ages, and dwells upon the popular belief in incubi and succubi. It is curious to find him placing Leo X., François I., Henri IV., Louis XIV., among the neuropathics. When it comes to this, everybody with strong sexual instincts, and the opportunity of indulging them, is a nervous invalid. Modern times are illustrated by the debaucheries of the Regency, the reign of Louis XV., Russian ladies, the Marquis de Sade. The House of Orleans seems in truth to have been tainted with hereditary impudicity of a morbid kind. But if it was so at the end of the last century, it has since the Revolution remarkably recovered health—by what miracle?
Moreau now formulates the thesis he wishes to prove: "L'aberration pathologique des sentiments génésiques doit être assimilée complètement à une névrose, et, comme telle, son existence est compatible avec les plus hautes intelligences." He discovers hereditary taint universally present in these cases. "Hérédité directe, hérédité indirecte, hérédité transformée, se trouve chez les génésiaques."
Passing to etiology, he rests mainly upon an organism predisposed by ancestry, and placed in a milieu favourable to its morbid development. Provocative causes are not sufficient to awake the aberration in healthy organisms, but the least thing will set a predisposed organism on the track. This, I may observe, seems to preclude simple imitation, upon which Moreau afterwards lays considerable stress; for if none but the already tainted can be influenced by their milieu, none but the tainted will imitate.
What he calls "General Physical Causes" are (1) Extreme Poverty, (2) Age, (3) Constitution, (4) Temperament, (5) Seasons of the Year, (6) Climate, (7) Food.
Extreme poverty leads to indiscriminate vice, incest, sodomy, &c. That is true, and we know that our city poor and the peasants of some countries are habitually immoral. Yet Moreau proves too much here. For, according to his principles, hereditary neurosis ought by this time to have become chronic, epidemic, endemic, in all the city poor and in all the peasants of all countries; which is notably not the fact. Puberty and the approach of senility are pointed out as times when genesiac symptoms manifest themselves. His observations upon the other points are commonplace enough; and he repeats the current notion that inhabitants of hot climates are more lascivious than those of the North.