Sexual hyperaesthesia signifies an abnormal intensity of the sexual instinct. The intensity of the impulse of voluptas varies in different individuals, and the line of demarkation between the physiological and the pathological increase of the impulse is not always distinctly pronounced. With some individuals the intensity may reach a high degree and still be within the physiological bounds. This is especially the case where the intensity of experiencing libido is correspondingly increased. But when there is a conflict between the two potencies, the potency of voluptas and that of libido, the least exaggeration in the intensity of voluptas becomes pathological. Such an anomaly where there is a decrease of the intensity of libido and at the same time an increase of a higher or lesser degree in the intensity of voluptas, is the phenomenon of mixoscopy. Mixoscopy thus stands upon the border-land of anaesthesia and hyperaesthesia.
Mixoscopy.—Literally, mixoscopy means assisting or rather looking at animals or at persons while they are in concarnatione. In this degree the anomaly is a very rare occurrence. In a broader sense, however, mixoscopy means every active interest in the erotic relations of others in so far as this interest bears an erotic character. In this broader sense, mixoscopy is a widely spread anomaly.
The mixoscopic complex or the system of connected ideas, having a strong emotional tone and displaying a tendency to produce or influence thought or action in a definite direction, is more or less present in every person, especially in its youth. All the world loves the lover, when the world is allowed to assist at the scene of the love-making and partake of the erotic delights of the lover. When the lover is alone, nobody notices him. This love to assist at erotic scenes is based upon the desire of procuring for oneself sensual gratification in an indirect way, by the aid of a third party, with whom one identifies himself and in whom one submerges his ego so as to experience this person’s emotions.
The erotic scenes may not be of the gross and the vulgar variety. Every desire to assist physically or mentally at scenes with an erotic coloring, even of the most refined, airy and ethereal nature has a mixoscopic foundation. Mixoscopy is responsible for the avidity of youth to devour novels and to assist at plays which generally revolve upon erotic plots. Especially the desire of those readers who are so impatient as to read the last chapter first to see if it ends in marriage, is only the refined way of satisfying the craving for mixoscopy. The gratification is secured by the reader’s identification of himself or herself with the hero or heroine. It is often self-deception of many a youth or maiden when they are petting themselves and boasting of their love of belles-lettres, as though all their reading is done in the interest of education and culture. The reader deceives himself and unconsciously changes the egotistic desire into the refined longing for mental improvement, rationalization.
Thus in a slight degree mixoscopy is a normal phenomenon. It is especially found in women, in their eagerness and talent for match-making. In the interest of others, woman is allowed to display the activity for sensual gratification which modesty denies her to develop in her own interest.
Mixoscopy becomes pathological when it degenerates into panderism or bawdry for the sole purpose of sensual gratification. The main motives of catering for the lust of others, by aiding and patronizing an existent love-affair or by calling such an affair into being, says Meller (O. Sexual Probleme, 1912, p. 480), are of three different kinds. There is 1) the pecuniary motive or the motive of avarice, found in the professional matchmaker and in the procurer; 2) there is the motive of toadyism, the sycophant will descend so low in his degradation even to the point of becoming the pander or bawd of his or her superior; 3) the erotic motive, when the pander or bawd acts out of love of the subject. The first two motives are more or less to be counted among the vices, the third motive has a pathological basis. When an erotic interest is at play only, the activity of the pander or bawd becomes pathological in nature. It is found in persons who through old age, disease, ugliness, poverty, shyness, etc., cannot themselves share in the enjoyments of love and who, by assisting at the gratification of lust by others, try to procure themselves an opportunity of experiencing a certain part of the pleasure by identifying themselves with or entering into the spirit of those whom they aided to the lust.
The emotions connected with mixoscopy or the bawdry complex is oftener found in women than in men. There are even mothers who aid and favor the love-affairs of their daughters, where no material advantage could in any way accrue to themselves or to their daughters, simply out of lust which they expect to experience when being present at or thinking of the erotic incidents between their children and their lovers. The following history well illustrates this point:
Mrs. O., forty-five years of age, married for the last twenty-five years, never had a child. She was operated upon a few years after she was married, and uterus and ovaries were removed at that operation. Twenty years after her castration, when the impotence of libido must have been complete, a nephew of hers, nineteen years old, came to live with his aunt and uncle. The aunt soon induced the mere boy to engage himself with a young lady of twenty-three years of age. Although the aunt well knew that certain legal obstacles prevented the boy from marrying the young lady, still, in order to enjoy the love-making of the young people, she did not rest until she effected the engagement. When the young fiancée left for the West where she was to stay for a considerable length of time, the aunt induced the boy to dissolve the engagement and procured him another young lady with whom he again had to become engaged. When the nephew left for a foreign country where he was to stay several years, the castrated aunt had no use any longer for the second fiancée either, began to quarrel with her and finally forbade her to enter her house.
These actions plainly show that her interest in the young people was founded upon the selfish longing to participate in their pleasure at the lovers’ dalliance, caressing, kissing, etc., which, as an old castrate, she could not experience any longer. Hers was, therefore, the kind of bawdry from love of the subject. It was the only way this voluptuous woman—but impotent of experiencing libido—could yet partake of any sexual pleasure by identifying herself with the female lovers of her young nephew. She had no other advantage to gain by her match-making.
Panderism or bawdry presumes a complete absence of jealousy of any kind. Patients, suffering from this anomaly, love to assist at erotic scenes, enacted between females among themselves where the emotion of jealousy is absent.
The love of sensual people to look at obscene pictures or to read obscene books is also based upon the impulse of mixoscopy. Sometimes the intensity of the desire to assist at erotic scenes reaches such a degree that the patients hire furnished rooms in fornicibus observandi causa actiones between the inmates and their callers, through holes in the walls of adjoining rooms, and thus participate in their libido.
To this impulse of mixoscopy may also be attributed the indulgent behavior of many a husband towards the family friend. If the world is ignorant of their wives’ relations, and ridicule is avoided, some husbands not only close their eyes to their wives' doings but even favor their flirtations. The history of the following case shows how far a husband can go in his indulgence, as to himself procuring a lover for his wife:
Mr. E., twenty-four years of age, decides to leave his country and go to America. While waiting a few days for his boat to clear the port, he spent one evening in a restaurant. After sitting there for some time, he noticed a couple entering the same hostelry. The woman was about thirty years of age, the man about twenty-five her senior. The couple soon left the place. About an hour later the man returned, sat down at the same table where E. was sitting and soon entered into a conversation with him. In the course of their talk, the old man asked E. whether he would like to have female company for the evening. Upon the affirmative answer, the old man took E. to an aristocratic apartment in a distinguished part of the city. There E. met with the young lady he saw entering the restaurant, et cum ea pernoctavit, the old man spending all this time in an adjoining room. The following day the old man prevailed on E. to give up the trip to America for a while and stay with them. E. stood this idle life for six months, but finally his rôle as a commaritus or rather as a fornicator came home to his conscience and he left for America. While he was staying there he learned that the elderly man and the young woman were husband and wife. E. gave the author the assurance that during the entire six months the husband, this he is positively sure, never approached his wife sexually. He left her to E. without manifesting the least trace of jealousy.
The only explanation for such a strange phenomenon is that the husband was impotent and that the only way for him to experience at least some pleasure from his wife was by identifying himself with the lover. Such cases represent the extreme degree of mixoscopy.
Erotomania.—The increased sexual desire in hyperaesthesia is not always directed upon the physical gratification. Sometimes it is more of an ideal nature, as in erotomania.
Physiological erotomania is often found in individuals of both sexes, especially in young girls, at the time of puberty. Many a youth and maiden are highly erotic, at this period, although, if reared in purity and attended with vigilance, they never think yet of the physical contact.
The erotomaniac individual’s love is of a platonic nature. Erotomania constitutes a diseased form of ideal love. The physical sexual appetite is generally foreign to the erotomaniac. The object of the individual’s love occupies the mind only. It is a continual obsession of the spirit. The erotomaniac individual makes an abstraction of the physical personality of the adored. It is pursuing an ideal. The erotomaniac is the victim of a mental exaltation which moves the lover to write poetry and love-letters to the object of his or her dreams, without ever sending them off. If possible the erotomaniac follows his or her lover, but never addresses a word to him or her. The erotomaniac wishes to be in possession of the beloved being, to be wedded to the beloved one, but it never thinks of the sensual part. It is after the mental possession of the beloved one.
The love of the erotomaniac individual rests upon a vague and hazy ideal. It is the purest love possible. The relation is sacred and beautiful. It is a kind of cult. The beloved object is a divinity whom the patient worships upon his or her knees and whom he and she takes care not to profane even by a carnal kiss.
The following case of a fellow-worker in the pathological institute of a university in Switzerland is not uninstructive in this respect:
While working over the microscope at the same table, the young physician told the author the following story of his life when he was a boy of sixteen. He was at that time attending college in a middle-sized city in Germany. One day a college friend took him to his home, where he saw his friend’s sister, a young lady of twenty-three years of age, and immediately fell in love with her.
Although he was, already at that time, far enough advanced in the ways of the world to see the hopelessness of his love, still the incongruity between the ideal and reality was entirely forgotten. He was altogether oblivious of the material world and imagined himself floating in the realms of the spirits, while dreaming of exquisite harmonies.
Day and night he saw before him the object of his adoration. He was filled with ecstasy over her perfection which was greatly exaggerated and only existed in his imagination. For now, with a clearer judgment, he can see distinctly that she must have had noticed at that time his childish emotions and, out of vanity, was somewhat playing with them. In his diaries he finds pledges of perennial veneration and worship and vows of eternal resignation. His memoirs are filled with descriptions of his hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, wishes and despairs.
While in her company, he became entirely unconscious of the flight of time; when she was talking about the most trivial incidents, he imagined that he was listening to the music of the spheres. Every word, every motion of her was able to awaken in him either excessive joy and excitement or to throw him into a state of despair and rob him of his appetite and sleep for a number of days.
Happily, the young lady soon married a judge, and this marriage broke the boy’s spell. It may be added that the hero of our story, now a promising pathologist, is still of a very nervous temperament, and though possessed of a strictly logical mind, he loves to frequent spiritualistic séances and to participate in spiritualistic practices.
The erotomaniac woman shows often characteristics not always found in men. She is generally well satisfied with herself and extremely vain. She is, as a rule, in love with a person of high social and intellectual position. He is a prince, a celebrated statesman, a victorious general, a famous actor, a brilliant preacher, or a great scientist. In religious mania, it is not seldom a saint who inspires the erotomaniac woman with a chaste love. Sometimes a picture or a statue may become the object of her adoration.
As a general rule, the wish for the possession of a certain man is provoked by his character, by his intellectual, moral or physical qualities. If the man she fancies fails to attain to the standard of her ideals she nevertheless attributes to him all the charms her mind is able to conjure up. A case recorded by Reuardin is a good example of erotomania in women.
The patient, a well-educated lady, thirty-two years of age, notices some time after her marriage a man of higher social standing than her husband. She at once falls in love with this man, begins to grumble at her low social position, and speaks of her husband only with contempt. Her beloved one only has all the best qualities. No one is above him. She writes letters to him, in which she reveals the most ardent passion and, at the same time, the chastest emotions. Sometimes she is found in ecstasy, with eyes fixed upon some chimerical vision, the pupils in a state of hallucination and the lips murmuring the beloved one’s name. She recoils from her husband’s caresses, refuses to share his bed, to sit near him, speak to him and to see him. Her whole life is centered in her love; her eyes are constantly fixed upon the beloved image. Finally she becomes entirely insufferable and commits so many extravagances that her husband is forced to separate from her and later on to send her to an asylum.
Ball distinguishes two categories of erotomaniacs. Some are discreet lovers. They never accost the object of their love and do not even feel the need to approach the divine hearth, whence the spark started that inflamed their hearts. It is a pure immaterial fire that feeds on itself. The other category, the indiscreet lovers, feel the necessity to impart the knowledge of their passion to the object that gave it rise.
Satyriasis and nymphomania.—Contrary to erotomania, the sexual impulse in satyriasis and in nymphomania is directed upon the physical side of love. In these cases the impulse of detumescence is greatly increased. The desires are directed upon the physical, pleasurable titillations of the sexual organs.
The dividing line between the normal and pathological increase of libido is not readily found. The libido sexualis normally varies in different individuals. Married life bridles, as a rule, sexual desire, while intercourse with different persons increases it. Total sexual abstinence may cause in certain individuals, with a neurotic taint, increased sexual desire, continuous excitement, diseased, unconquerable impulse for sexual congress, and the preoccupation of the entire attention upon the sensual act.
The immediate reawakening of desire after normal satisfaction and the excitation of libido by the sight of persons and things which in themselves should have but indifferent or no sexual effects, are decidedly abnormal.
If the increase of the impulse is only moderate, so that increased frequency of conjugal embrace is able to appease somewhat the increased desire, the anomaly generally finds expression in a desire for female respectively male society, in the reading of erotic or obscene literature, in dancing, flirting, etc. But if the increase of the sexual desire has reached the degree of true satyriasis in men or nymphomania in women, the anomaly is characterized by an irresistible exaltation and an insatiable appetite for sexual gratification. At the mere sight of a woman satyriasis gets into such a state of excitement, as to experience real orgasm.
Satyriasis is not seldom confounded with priapism. But the latter is in no respect a psycho-sexual anomaly at all. It is a nervous trouble of one of the genital organs and has nothing in common with satyriasis. On the contrary, in priapism the potencies of voluptas as well as that of experiencing libido are generally decreased, as Tarnowsky’s case shows (L’instinct sexuel, p. 150).
Benj. Tarnowsky observed a case of priapism in a soldier which had lasted for over two years and had prevented the patient from absolving his active military service. The complete erection of the organ continually existed in a chronic state and never ceased for a moment. The organ did not wilt even after several coitions, which, in the beginning of his sickness, were tried by the patient in order to free himself from the annoying state of affairs. In the course of his sickness, coition, and especially ejaculation, caused him such violent pains that commixtio was never tried again. Voluptuous thoughts and sexual desire had entirely disappeared. Even the thought of coition caused the patient disagreeable sensations.
Priapism, therefore, if it were at all a disease of a sexual nature, would more properly belong among the anomalies of sexual anaesthesia. Satyriasis, on the other hand, is a psycho-sexual anomaly of increased sexual desire. Scarcely has the desire been appeased, when it returns with the same force and vigor as before. The following case may serve as an illustration of such class of cases.
Mr. X., a soldier, twenty-three years of age, in prostibulum meretricem visit, qua concubit, pretium usitatum resolvit et relinquit. Scarcely did he reach the door of her room, cum voluptas resurgeret. Itaque revenit, iterum eam comprimit, resolvit et relinquit. This time he managed to descend half the stairs, cum voluptas experrecta esset. Qua re redit, actionem repetit, resolvit et relinquit. But he had no time to come down the stairs, cum concitatus esset. Quo modo sexies ad puellam reveniebat, until he had no more money for her services and had to leave her, but not yet entirely satisfied.
Such a case represents a true sexual neurosis of insatiable lust. In the pronounced cases of satyriasis, the individual is the personification of sexuality. In his proximity everything turns upon sex. Nothing is suffered to prevail but sexual emotions. Every glance, motion or word of his has a sex coloring. He is nothing but a demoniac sex-creature. Every word he utters has an obscene emotional tone. His exclamations of surprise, fear, anger, etc., are all borrowed from the realm of sex. He is a screaming vortex of lubescent lubricity. A continual lustful scent exudes from him. He is perennially in quest for sexual gratification. He tries to excite every woman he comes in contact with and is himself excited by her. Moral consideration is an unknown quantity for him. The inhibitions, normally emanating from the cerebral centre, are destroyed in him. He is continually bent on new sensations.
This picture of the evil spirit of satyriasis is still surpassed by nymphomania. The woman suffering from nymphomania is more excessive in her demands than the man afflicted with satyriasis.
The border-line between the normal and pathological increase of libido in women is also somewhat blotted. A considerable piece of sexuality dwells in the feminine soul of every woman. It is only covered by inhibitory counter-emotions. But we recognize her true sexuality by its pathological exaggeration. Never is there uncovered in insane men such an abundance and monstrosity of the sexual imagery as in insane women. In dreams and in the dusky twilight of insanity men and women abandon themselves to their true impulses and desires without the restraining influences of conventionality. The normal woman has learned by education to hide her true sexual feelings and was forced by tradition to produce in a quite extraordinary way the impression that she herself is nearly non-sexual, and her sexuality is only a concession to the man. But judging from her sexual emotions in abnormal states, the intensity of woman’s sexuality is of a higher degree than that of the man’s, and herein lies woman’s superior morality. Morality is the arrest of the instincts by the intellect. The intensity of her desires being greater, her higher chastity is more laudable. In certain periods, such as pregnancy and lactation, when woman is really more or less non-sexual, her chastity has no merit. But in the other states of her life when woman’s desires possess a higher degree of intensity, her chastity is of a superior kind.
Thus the determination, when the normal increase of woman’s sexual desire ceases and the abnormal state begins, is wrought with great difficulty. Sexual inclination is normally increased immediately before and after the menses. Still it may be laid down as a rule that an overweening sexual desire in a woman, considering her natural modesty and coyness, should arouse suspicion of its pathological significance.
The nymphomaniac woman seeks to attract men by indecent language, by lascivious conduct, by personal adornment, perfumes, talk of marriage, by the exhibition of her feet, legs, neck, breasts and other parts of her body, and, at the height of her excitement by invitation ad congressum, aperto stupro manu, nudatione muliebrium et motionibus initus pelve. She is often seen in the physician’s office and desires gynaecological examinations for the gratification of her excitement. Such a case was recently observed by the author.
The patient, about forty years of age, was suffering from endometritis and came to the office for treatment. At the first touch of the introitus vaginae by the finger, the patient suddenly agitata est. She tightly closed her eyes, the respiration became panting, the abdominal muscles contracted, which made the combined examination impossible, her face became red, her entire body was seized by a convulsive tremor, and her pelvis made omnes motiones commixtionis vehementis. At the end of one or two minutes the paroxysm ended with a deep sigh, and the examination could be continued. The attacks were repeated at the beginning of every treatment, and the same had to be discontinued. Without offending the patient, she was told that she needs a curettage. This advice caused her to stay away from the office.
In the pronounced cases of nymphomania, the woman will accept the embraces of any man and will solicit even boys. To him who yields to her wiles she brings misery and calamity. She is an object of attraction and carries ruin in her lap for those who become the slaves of her eroticism. A piece of destructive sexuality dwells in the bosom of these women, something of the Delilah-nature, for all who come in contact with them. They consume men’s strength and vigor physiologically and psychologically.
The nymphomaniac woman is not able to free herself from the thraldom of eroticism. Her sexual instinct is irresistible and untamable. Nymphomania leads the sufferer to any degradation, to the practice assidui stupri manu and even to bestiality.
Magnan mentions the case of a lady of forty-seven years of age, who from her early childhood manifested excessive voluptas. She was always nervous, eccentric, and of a romantic disposition. When she was only ten years old she began to practice concarnationem. At the age of nineteen she got married, but although her husband was sexually perfectly normal, he could not satisfy her often enough. Qua re jugiter cum aliis viris commiscebatur, and although this infidelity made her entirely unhappy and miserable, she was powerless to overcome her insatiable desires.
In another case of Magnan, the patient had a passion for men from her earliest youth. She was of good family, well bred, of pleasant disposition, and exceedingly modest. As a little girl she was the terror of the family. Scarcely was she alone with any male, child or adult, statim aperiebat muliebria et poscebat satisfactionem voluptatis, even going so far as to lay hold of the person. Marriage did not cure her intense desire. She loved her husband passionately, yet indiscriminately petebat placationem voluptatis a quovis viro with whom she happened to be alone, were he her servant, laborer, or even school-boy. This insatiable passion continued to possess her after she had become a grandmother. At the age of sixty-five she was yet recklessly passionate as before.
The anomaly of nymphomania is generally due to a cerebral lesion. Hence little relief can be afforded by the removal of the clitoris or the ovaries, or by any other therapeutic measure. The affection shows all the stigmata of degeneration and moral insanity. The nymphomaniac woman belongs to the type of the “deliquenta nata.”
Nymphomania is often found in periodical insanity. The case of Anjel is a good illustration.
The patient, near the climacteric period, is nowise of a passionate nature, sexually, but after a hystero-epileptic attack has the impulse to embrace and kiss boys, about ten years of age et contrectare virilia. She has no desire for coition while suffering from the attack. In the intervals she is very modest.
This paedophilia in women, suffering from hyperaesthesia, is not rare. The patients are intensely excited by young boys, while they possess only normal inclination toward adults.
Magnan’s case is interesting in this respect. The patient was a lady twenty-nine years of age. For eight years she had a strong desire complexus venerei with one of her five nephews. First her desire went toward the oldest boy, when he was five years of age. Then she transferred this desire to each of them in turn as they grew up. The sight of the child in question was sufficient to produce ejaculation and orgasm.
The case of Kisch is interesting for the coincidence of paedophilia with traces of homosexuality.
The patient is thirty years of age, married nine years, but sterile. Coition gives her not only no pleasure, but on the contrary, it causes her a feeling of disgust. But she feels irresistibly impelled contrectare pudibilia of children, no matter whether male or female. These manipulations induce ejaculation and orgasm. At the time of her menstruation this impulse is stronger than her power of resistance.
In Krafft-Ebing’s case the patient, a teacher, thirty years of age and of strict morality, enticed a boy of five who happened to play nearby, under the promise of money and food ut veniret in cubiculum. “Ibi genitalibus pueri aliquamdiu lusit, denique introductionem penis in vaginam tentavit.”
In hysterical women hyperaesthesia sexualis is of frequent occurrence.BA Giraud’s case is of great interest, showing how far the aberration may proceed.
The girl, a domestic servant, was always moral before her illness. When she began suffering from hysterical attacks, amato liberos in fidem suam commissos exhibebat ad constuprandum et noctu spectatores rerum turpium eos faciebat, while the whole household was asleep under the influence of narcotics. When she was discovered and driven out of the house, the formerly modest girl became shameless and finally meretricium fecit.
Another type of hyperaesthesia which borders on a real psychosis, is represented by one of Schrenk-Notzing’s cases.
The patient would become sexually excited to a high degree at the mere sight or touch of a man, et se satiebat congressu imaginali aut stupro manu fricando femora ultro citroque. For a long time attacks of genital erethism were brought on every morning. Once it happened in the physician’s office. Notwithstanding the presence of three male witnesses, she threw herself on a lounge and, in hysterical convulsions, se feminavit several times before their eyes.
Brouardel relates the case of a girl of sixteen who would lie in the ditch of a highway and, aperiens muliebria lacessebat præterientes viros ad concarnationem. Nothing could be done to make her desist and she had to be sent to a house of correction.
In another case, the daughter of a physician, a friend of Brouardel’s, ran away from her father’s home at the age of sixteen and in fornicem iniit in Paris to appease her sexual desires. Nothing could induce her to return home.
This case throws some light upon the etiology of prostitution. Not all prostitutes are driven to their degrading trade by idleness or necessity, as some philanthropists or socialists would like to make us believe. Not a few choose this life to satisfy their nymphomaniac desires.
Trélat tells of a young girl, the daughter of a professor who, at the age of fifteen, milites noctu fenestra cubiculi admittebat ad satiandam voluptatem.
The best and most careful rearing of girls, suffering from nymphomania, can not save them from downfall. In their wild passion, casting all moral and social considerations aside, they throw themselves into the arms of sin. The more they abandon themselves to the gratification of their lust, the greater is the desire of their morbidly excited nerve-centres for lecherous satisfaction. Every indulgence increases the desire and lessens the capacity, as Horace truly says:
“Crescit indulgens sibi durus hydrops.”
The woman loses control of her passions, and can not restrain herself from stuprum manu aut concubitus. She becomes absorbed in sexual gratification, as seen in the case reported by Reti:
The patient lived happily with her husband until after the birth of her first child. From that moment she became a slave of her insatiable lust. An irresistible craving suddenly took hold of her, an indomitable lust seized her to embrace men. She felt a morbid itching in muliebribus, an inexplicable excitement, a burning desire for sexual gratification. In the beginning her husband tried to satisfy her until he discovered his impossibility to do so. She did not allow an hour of the day to pass without demanding gratification from her husband. He was terrified to see her premere muliebria to the edge of the table or against the door or any other hard subject, in order to satisfy her sensual appetite. When she became worse from day to day, her husband took her to the hospital for examination. At the introduction of the speculum, a morbid contraction of the constrictor cunni muscle occurred suddenly. The touch of the carunculae myrtiformes provoked intense pain. After surmounting the obstacle, however, the pain ceased and a blissful rapture appeared. “Now! Now!” exclaims the patient, when the entire speculum was within the vagina. A convulsive movement seized her entire body, a thrill went through her, et motiones vehementis congressus fecit.
Some nymphomaniac women have illusions of coition. Such a case has been reported by Rosse.
A comely young woman who suffered from nymphomania practised stuprum manu to excess and declared one day that several persons, among them her clergyman, se constupraverunt. The sexual excitability in this case was exaggerated to such an extent that the mere sight of a man, even of the attending physician, suggested a repetition of the act to provoke the venereal spasm. So persistent was the habit that on tying her hands se feminavit with her heel. To prevent this her feet were secured, but she succeeded in bringing about an orgasm fricando femora ultro citroque ita ut clitoridem excitaret. The patient died at a retreat.
If the hyperaesthetic woman is unable to satisfy her desires she shows all the symptoms of general neurasthenia. Especially does she suffer from neuralgia of the ovaries. The case of Rohleder is the best example of the disturbances unsatisfied nymphomania may cause.
The patient, a girl of eighteen, and a member of a family of good social standing, was engaged to be married. Until she was sixteen and a half years of age she was always well. At that time she made the acquaintance of her intended. Then a great change took place in her disposition. She became very nervous and moody. Now she was very gay, but a moment later became deeply melancholy. Her menstruation was regular, but at that period she suffered great pains at the ovaries, especially before the menses set in. When she met with her fiancé her pains increased so that they caused convulsions. She could find some relief stupro manu. After she got married, all the symptoms disappeared.
Masturbation.—The anomaly of masturbation is the most common sexual aberration, and if found in the very young it assumes the dignity of a perversity. In the adult, masturbation, if practised with moderation, can not be considered pathological. According to Paget masturbation causes no more nor less harm than normal coitus, if practised with the same frequency and under the same conditions with regard to health, age and circumstances.
Prof. Oscar Berger (Archiv f. Psychiatrie, Vol. VI, 1876) says masturbation is such a frequent manipulation that out of a hundred boys and girls ninety-nine have temporarily been addicted to it, and the hundredth, the so-called pure individual, is concealing the truth. Moll quotes a physician as saying: “Whoever denies having masturbated, has often only forgotten it; whoever claims of never having masturbated is still doing it.”
Now, giving due allowance to the exaggeration of these authors in the heat of the discussion, the truth remains that the greater part of humanity has one time or another practised autoeroticism. If what the quacks and ignoramuses tell us about its dangers be true, humanity ought to have passed into oblivion long ago, or at least ought to have entirely degenerated. But we are all still alive, hale and healthy, hence moderate masturbation can not have the disastrous effects which some authors are pleased to describe.
Erb (Handbuch für Rückenmarkkrankheiten, p. 163) says, the effects upon the nervous system in a man must be essentially the same, whether the frictions of the glans take place in the vagina or are carried out in any other way. The nervous shock of ejaculation remains the same, and the nervous excitement ought to be greater where the female is used. Hence masturbation, moderately practised, exercises no direct destroying effects upon a good constitution.
Moderate masturbation seems to be almost a natural phenomenon. Even among animals various forms of spontaneous solitary sexual excitement are observed.
Dogs masturbate by rubbing the organ with their hind-feet, or by crossing the hind-legs or lambendo fascinum lingua.
The stag, when in heat, rubs his penis against trees until he effects ejaculation.
Porocz saw in a zoological garden an elephant, who was in the habit of masturbating himself so often that he undermined his health and had to be sold.
Prange (Revue vétér. 1856) describes a stallion that with his mentulato fascino could reach his forelegs and thus rub the organ against them. In this way he induced three to four ejaculations daily.
The author observed a baboon in the zoological park se constuprantem by quickly and repeatedly pulling with his fore-foot or hand the prepuce until ejaculation took place.
Masturbation is further found among peoples of nearly every race, however natural the conditions are under which men and women live. Masturbation was known among all races at every period of history. It is reported that the great Cynic Diogenes practised autoeroticism publicly in his tub.
Schools, academies, educational institutions, dormitories of colleges, factories or prisons are hot-beds of masturbation. Prof. Schiller published the observations in a certain gymnasium (collegiate high school) where the boys had holes in the pockets of their trousers ad stuprum mutuum faciendum during the lessons, in the presence of their professors.
Thomalla knows of a boarding school where bets are made among the boys on the skill of their exercitatio stuprosa. The boy who can induce the ejectio seminis the quickest receives the prize.
Walter Benseman (Public School and Gymnasium) describes the most deplorable conditions existing in a great many boarding schools in England.
In France, Deville and Tarnowsky found the spread of masturbation in schools, colleges and pensionates to be enormous.
Male masturbation, as a rule, is effected by fricando glandem manu. Hence such mishaps, as often happen in woman, are of rare occurrence. Still many queer objects were found in the male urethra or bladder, such as quills, pencils, penholders, blades of straw, knitting needles, pieces of bougies or of catheters, ear-spoons, tooth-picks, all introduced for masturbating purposes. Senn removed in a young man, nineteen years of age, a stem of a plant from the bladder, which was introduced into the bladder for autoerotic purposes. The author removed a pencil from the pars membranacea of a boy of eighteen, through an incision in this part.
Such cases are exceedingly rare in the male. As a rule, autoeroticism in men is accomplished by the hand alone, hence the name “masturbation.” In some cases neither the hand nor any other means is needed to obtain the desired end. The fancy of concarnatio alone will produce the orgasm, as in the following case, told the author in confidence:
A young man, twenty years of age, while sitting behind an attractive young lady in theatre, was in the habit of allowing his fancy free rein by imagining himself of being in complexu venereo with his fair neighbor. This thought alone sufficed to induce ejaculation and orgasm. One Sunday while sitting near a fair worshipper in church, he got so excited that he had to practise ideal congressum cum ea during the sermon.
The causes of masturbation are different at the different periods of the individual’s life. In early childhood, a neuropathic predisposition, eczema, pruritus, phimosis, accumulation of smegma, early retiring and late rising, spicy food and exciting drinks, absolute ignorance of sex and seduction by vicious servants will be the principal causes for autoeroticism. During the time of school-life seduction is the cause par excellence of masturbation. Self-abuse is widely spread in schools. No institution is free from it. In nearly every school there is at least one lecherous boy who is apt to be peculiarly fascinating to his fellows and who will promulgate the habit. In some schools the evil reaches a wide extension. The tradition of the school and the material of the pupils is of great influence. Particularly dangerous, as hatcheries and divulgers of the evil, are those institutions in which numerous pupils are present who have passed the normal age by several years. They come, as a rule, from the country to enter the advanced classes. The time of puberty is another period favorable for acquiring the habit of masturbation. When the genital centres are fully developed, the individual gets a conscious realization of its sexual power, and the psychological reactions of animal passion manifest themselves in the desire to cause a relaxation and a discharge of the nervous tension and of the physical genital congestion. The opportunity for the natural discharge being connected with great difficulties, especially for the girl, there is danger that the child will resort to masturbation to be relieved from the nervous tension and the material congestion.
During the post-puberty period which in men reaches to the twenty-fourth year and in women to the twentieth year of age, the extension of the masturbatic practices gradually decreases, and by the time manhood and womanhood have been reached, masturbation has almost entirely disappeared. Its presence after this period may be considered pathological except it is practised out of necessity as in the following case:
Mr. A., thirty-five years old, married twelve years, father of two healthy children, was always well. Three years ago he left his native country and came to America. Faute de mieux, he began to practise autoeroticism inordinately and continued in this practice until he became a nervous wreck, showing all the symptoms of neurasthenia besides impotence and nocturnal emissions.
In this case the patient became perfectly well after his wife arrived in this country.
While moderate masturbation at certain periods of life is almost a natural phenomenon, masturbation practised inordinately is the most disastrous psycho-sexual disease. There is in the first place general neurasthenia, with all its accompanying symptoms, as photopsias, glistening and dazzling before the eyes, photophobias, dry conjunctivitis, particularly found among masturbating girls and old maids, and functional sexual disturbances, as diurnal pollutions and spermatorrhoea. Other symptoms are indolence, lack of energy, shyness in demeanor, want of self-reliance, disinclination to study, incapacity of serious work, shortness of memory, absent-mindedness, unsteadiness of character, hypochondria and melancholia.
The children become peevish and irritable, they are reserved in conversation, apathetic in manner, hesitating in actions, slovenly in dress, and contradictory. Cerebral anemia is of common occurrence among those addicted to excesses in masturbation. Vertigo is hence a common symptom, and fainting spells are not rare. Girls especially are liable to be affected by syncope. Palpitation and arythmia of the heart is very common. Perspiration breaks forth on the slightest exertion, and the slightest exercise occasions shortness of breath. Neuralgia of the testicles, ovaries and the bladder is frequently found in these patients. The patient is frequently seized with the desire to pass water. The calls to urinate are particularly frequent in the morning hours, while in the afternoon and in the night-time the calls are less urgent. Particular danger of long-continued masturbation lies in the development of impotency in men and frigidity in women.
One of the most disastrous effects of excessive masturbation, an effect which has also a sociological bearing, is that it renders the patient unfit for marriage, not only because it is so often the cause of impotence, but because the dreams which accompany the masturbatic acts are not realized in marriage, and the patient returns to his former pastime.
Another most harmful effect of excessive masturbation is the weakness of the will which becomes more and more pronounced until it finally ends in aboulia. The patient is affected by a complete inability to act as he feels.
Masturbation in women.—In former times masturbation was considered an exclusively male vice. Very few even among the profession dreamt of the widely-spread masturbatic practices in the female sex. Nowadays we have progressed. We have learned that even in this respect perfect equality reigns among the sexes. Even female animals make no exception to the rule.
Mares rub themselves against objects. Stags, in the rutting season, when they have no mates, rub themselves against trees. Mammary masturbation is found in certain females like the dog or cat. Apes are given to masturbation even in freedom and use their hands.
Female masturbation is further found among peoples of every race and every clime and in every period of history.
Among the ancients the Lesbian women are said to have used ivory fascini or golden ones, covered with silken stuffs or linen, in solitary sexual gratification. Aristophanes relates the use by the Milesian women of the “olisbos,” an artificial leather mentula.
The Hebrew women also knew the use of the artificial phallus, as stated by Ezekiel (xvi, 17). ותעשי לך צלמי זכר ותזני בם “Et fecisti tibi imagines masculinas et fornicata es in eis.”
Fritsch found masturbation common among the young women of the Nama Hottentots. It is regarded there as the custom of the country. The same is the case among the Basutos and the Kaffirs.
The Spaniards found the women in the Philippines addicted to masturbation. It was customary to use an artificial fascinum and other abnormal methods of sexual gratification.
Jacobs found among the Balinese masturbation to be a common practice. The women employ a wax fascinum, to the use of which they devote many hours of solitude.
Throughout the East masturbation is prevalent, especially among young girls. In Cochin-China it is most practised by married women.
The Japanese women use two hollow balls of the size of a pigeon’s egg. One is empty, the other contains a small, but heavy metal ball, or some quicksilver, so that if the balls are held in hand side by side there is a continuous movement. Pila inanis primo in vaginam immittitur eo modo ut uterum tangat, deinde altera inducitur. The slightest movement of the pelvis or the thighs causes the metal or the mercury ball to roll, and the resulting vibration produces a prolonged voluptuous titillation, a gentle shock, as from a weak electric inductive apparatus. Pilae in vagina arboris lana retinentur. The women then delight to swing themselves in hammocks or rocking chairs, the delicate vibrations of the balls slowly producing the highest degree of libido.
Thus the phenomenon of spontaneous sexual emotion is found in animals as well as among savages, and in every period of human history. No wonder that the conditions of modern civilization, with its artificial mode of living, render auto-erethism a frequent occurrence.
The extent of this practice among women may be judged from the occasionally resulting mishaps that reach the surgeon’s hands. Bananas are often used feminandi causa. Country girls often use cucumbers in stuprando.
The author once removed a carrot from the vagina, which a young woman had used to obtain erotic gratification.
In another case, while trying to dilate the cervical canal preliminary to curettage for persistent leucorrhoea, he found a hair-pin in the canal which, as the girl afterwards confessed, had slipped out of her hand while tickling the external os of the cervix.
At another occasion, as house-physician in a European surgical clinic, the author assisted in the removal of a hair-pin from the bladder of a young woman, which was used to produce a tickling sensation of the clitoris, and which accidentally slipped into the urethra, and then entered the bladder.
Other objects removed by surgeons are pencils, bodkins, knitting-needles, crochet-needles, penholders, quills, etc.
Some women produce sexual excitement by frictions against the corner of a chair, table, etc.
Morris relates of a lady, a devout church member, who never had allowed herself to entertain any sexual thoughts referring to men. Tamen se stuprabat every morning while standing before the mirror by rubbing against a key in the bureau drawer.
One of the most common means to produce voluptificam titillationem, that is even found in use by children, when scarcely more than infants, is the voluntary pressure of the thighs. They are placed together and firmly crossed while the pelvis is rocked, so that the sexual organs are pressed against the inner and posterior parts of the thighs. Townsend records five cases of thigh friction in children less than one year old.
The manipulation of the sewing machine with the body on the edge of the seat is sometimes used by young women as a means to produce sexual excitement, leading to orgasm. Horseback riding is sometimes employed as a means for inducing orgasm and ejaculation in women. The stimulation caused by bicycle riding is not seldom prolonged by women until orgasm is induced.
Besides masturbation by means of tactile excitation, ideal auto-erethism is widely spread among women. The votaries induce sexual libido by means of lustful conceptions and thoughts. The mere thought concubitus induces orgasm and ejaculation in such women. Such women are able to practice auto-erethism at all times and in all places. While riding in crowded cars and upon the most serious occasions, in churches and in other sacred places, the mere libidinous thought of being in concarnatione induces orgasm. These voluptuous dreamers may stuprare without any visible manipulations while conversing with their friends or listening to a sermon.
A young lady of twenty-five prefers to ride in crowded street cars and, if possible, refuses to accept a seat when offered by a sympathetic man, but remains standing before him, holding on to the strap. She then indulges in ideal auto-erethism by fancying herself of being in concarnatione viri ante se sedentis, cujus genua tentat quam sæpessime tangere suis genibus. At one occasion while riding in a crowded car and standing before a man who was interested in reading a book, pressit suis genibus viri genu during the orgasm in such a way that the man, a physician, looked up to see what was going on. The glowing face was in a state of extreme excitement. The staring eyes were fixed on one point, the hands holding the strap were trembling. Respiration was panting and the countenance distorted to a veritable grimace.
With some women even lustful thoughts are not required to induce sexual libido. They are found among women who are the victims of sexual repression. They restrain themselves from attaining orgasm in the natural way for moral or social reasons. Occasionally the internal stimuli overmaster them and bring about a sexual paroxysm, in the absence of any external stimulus and without resorting to ideal congressus.
Sérieux records the case of a woman, fifty years of age, who lived a chaste life. At times violent crises of sexual paroxysms would come on without any accompaniment of voluptuous thoughts or any mechanical help.
In some patients orgasm may be induced by means of sensory impressions, as by listening to music or the sight of nature in the country, and by the taste and touch of things which have no bearing upon the sexual parts whatever.
Schrenk-Notzing records the case of a female masturbator who induced orgasm without any tactile manipulation, simply by listening to music or while regarding paintings that displayed nothing of a lascivious character.
Another of his patients became sexually excited by the sight of the grandeur of nature, as by the sea, or high mountains.
With another of his patients the mere sight of a specially strong and sympathetic man immediately brings on orgasm.
In Ellis’ case the patient, while still a young girl, whenever a certain artist, whom she admired, touched her hand, felt erections and moisture in muliebribus. When her uncle’s knee once accidentally came in contact with her thigh, ejaculation took place. Once, casually seeing virilia, a convulsive ejaculation occurred accompanied by a delightful sensation, every fibre tingling with an exquisite glow of warmth.
One of the author’s hysterical patients became greatly excited sexually whenever she ate liver-sausages.
Another kind of auto-erethism occurs during sleep. Pollutions are accompanied in sleep by erotic dreams. At the height of the paroxysm an abundant discharge from the Bartholinian glands takes place. The orgasm in sleep is an autoerotic process which is entirely normal. In women who have not yet experienced orgasm in the waking state, the erotic phenomena during sleep are usually of a very vague kind. The real orgasm that awakes the sleeper and leaves its traces in the individual’s consciousness occurs only after orgasm has been once induced in the waking state. Erotic dreams occur in women more frequently than is ordinarily thought of nowadays. It was better known in the darker ages. Hence the wide-spread belief in Lillith and Samaël, the evil spirits, that visit young maidens and wives and also youths and husbands while in bed at night in order to seduce them.
Sometimes automatic masturbation is practised during sleep. The patient awakes to find her finger in the vagina.
If the pollutions occur at long intervals, they cause no direct injury to a good constitution. But if the women are not robust, and the pollutions happen too often, these drains are the cause of considerable nervous depression.
One of the author’s patients, a widow of about forty years of age, is suffering from almost nightly pollutions. These weaken her so much that she is seldom able to rise before noon-time.
The same deleterious effects are caused by all other kinds of masturbatic practices. Even though we agree with Paget that moderate masturbation is no more harmful than normal intercourse, it can not be denied that masturbation, since opportunity for it is ever present, is of far more frequent occurrence than natural sexual indulgence. The habit, once established, masturbation presents an unconquerable impulse and a resultant incapacity to control it. It is then the cause of grave material injuries to the nervous system. It dwarfs the entire female organism. It makes the girl shy, offish, squeamish, repellent, and weakens and sickens the emotions of sex-attraction.
One of the author’s patients, a dress-maker, thirty-five years of age and single, has been suffering from general nervousness, headaches, palpitation of the heart, frequent urination, anorexia and constipation. One day she took courage and asked for a remedy for her excessive autoeroticism. Scarcely does she reach her bed at night time and gets warm, when the overwhelming desire for autoeroticism takes a hold of her and, fighting as she may against the impulse, ei feminandum est manu. These practices were going on nightly for the last twenty years.
Howard says: The permanent effects left from early masturbation seem to be much graver in women than in men. As the girl grows, her psychic life becomes more complicated, her natural romantic nature is fed by kiss literature and poetry of the decadents, in which perverted passion is thinly disinfected by erotic mysticism. Under such a stimulating psychic pabulum a dormant sexual volcano may become active. If it is only smoldering, suggestive dressing, the dance and wine will soon bring about the complete explosion. At home in bed, with strange and abnormal psychic pictures, she will seek relief in stupro manu. If this state of affairs is kept up for many years, when she marries her husband is certain to find that he has for a wife a female who has no use for normal sex activity and who has acquired a perverted taste for some form of autoeroticism.
It is a curious fact that autoeroticism is frequently practised by married women living with sexually normal husbands. The gynaecologist must consider this fact as the possible cause of many female complaints.
A few years ago, the author removed an ovarian tumor and performed a perinæorrhaphy on a woman of thirty-five, mother of a child of ten years of age. While in the hospital the nurse complained that the patient is soiling the wound contrectando muliebria. Three months after the patient left the hospital she called at the author’s office for treatment of ulcerations of the labia and nymphae. The clitoris was found to be one inch long, bluish-red and inflamed, the prepuce swollen and edematous, the nymphae inflamed and swollen. The author told the patient that she could not be cured unless she desisted from autoeroticism which she promised to do. This promise had the value of a confession that she did indulge in autoerotic practices. Yet she had a normal husband who very industriously performed his marital obligations. For before the operation she once asked the author to tell her husband not to have any connections, or at least, not so frequently, with her until after the operation.
The female masturbator often becomes excessively prudish, despises and hates the opposite sex, and forms passionate attachments for other women. Masturbation is not seldom the cause of a great number of female complaints. It is often the cause of obstruction and of pains of menstruation, of ovarian neuralgia, of weakness of the legs and of sexual irritation. It causes pruritus vulvae, hypertrophy of the clitoris and labia minora, hyperaemia of the vaginal orifice, fluor albus, and cervical catarrh. Masturbating women often complain of general weakness and of palpitation of the heart.
One of the author’s patients, a young masturbator of seventeen, suffered from painful menstruation, attacks of palpitation of the heart, from melancholia and fear of death, and at the same time from suicidal inclinations, which thus revealed the illogical state of her mind.
Masturbation also causes that form of increased erethism, connected with female impotency, in which the orgasm no longer occurs during the conjugal embrace. For this reason the victim prefers solitary indulgence even after marriage.
In Moll’s case the woman, thirty years of age, mother of several children, is happily married, loves her husband and is loved in return. Yet coition does not gratify her in the least. She finds satisfaction only in solitary stupro manu by which orgasm is induced in the highest degree. In this way there are times, when the patient who is a modest, moral woman, practises autoeroticism several times a day.
To this class of patients belong the cases recorded by Loiman, Laker, and others. The sexual functions were originally normal and satisfaction was possible in the normal way. Through excessive masturbation, however, the nerves became so weakened that normal coition did not give the desired satisfaction.
In Troggler’s case the woman had practised autoeroticism excessively from her thirteenth year and found satisfaction fricando et trahendo clitoridem. When she began to have normal concarnatio at the age of eighteen, she found that she could not obtain satisfaction for her excessively increased voluptuous desire except manuali fricando clitoridis inter coitum.
In Laker’s case of a married woman, twenty-four years of age, the patient never experienced the least satisfaction in concarnatione with her husband, while she found the desired effect in autoeroticism, especially in mutuo stupro manu.
In another of the same author’s cases a woman of thirty-four years of age practised stuprum manu mutuum and found great satisfaction in this activity. At the age of nineteen she was married and in spite of mutual affection she could not experience any libido. This fact did not prevent her from giving birth to two healthy children.
In another of Troggler’s cases, the woman, twenty-five years of age, was induced to practise autoeroticism when eleven years of age. On account of her increased sexual desires she began to have complexus venereus when fifteen years old. But she could not find the least satisfaction in congressu, although she practised it with a number of different men. Only stuprum manu offered her the desired libido.
In Loiman’s case the patient was induced by her friends in the convent to practise autoeroticism. When fourteen years of age she began to indulge in stupro manibus mutuo cum pueris of her own age. She married when nineteen years old and gave birth to her first child a year later. But she never found gratification in the conjugal embrace. The second case of Loiman was a widow of thirty-eight who had always been normal in her sexual functions and gave birth to a child at the age of twenty-seven. Two years later she lost her husband by death, and from that time she began “faute de mieux” to stuprare manu. Her voluptas increased to the point of becoming insatiable. When she has now normal congressus cum multis amatis she cannot find the desired gratification unless masturbatur in congressione.
This last case shows that Freud’s explanation of frigidity of intercourse by the refusal of the clitoris to transfer its sexuality at the time of puberty does not always hold good. This woman passed through her normal puberty. The cause of the impotence of libido inter coitum in these masturbators is rather the increase of the excitability of the clitoris at the expense of the vaginal mucous membrane and of the cervix uteri, through the long-continued manual irritation of this organ. The stimulation from these sources to induce libido is thus decreased, and the excitation of the glans of the clitoris by the penis alone during coition is insufficient to induce orgasm.
The immediate causes of the masturbatic practices are generally bad examples. The practice is first learned from friends in boarding schools, convents, factories or prisons. Sometimes it is also prurient curiosity which prudish educators and parents neglect to satisfy which leads young girls to self-abuse. In congenital hyperaesthesia the pleasurable titillation may accidentally be induced in complete ignorance of sexual relations. The following case is quite instructive in this respect.
A young lady, twenty-four years of age, consulted the author on account of her extremely enlarged breasts. She stated that eight years ago she discovered that by a certain manipulation muliebrium she was able to experience the highest degree of pleasure. For the last eight years until very recently she continued to enjoy the fruits of her discovery. She often wished to tell her physician about her wonderful discovery for the benefit of other young women. One day the author’s book, “Woman,” fell into her hands, and she learned for the first time to her great amazement and chagrin that what she was doing was nothing else but autoeroticism.
This simple story shows that ignorance is not always innocence, as some misled parents seem to think. Sometimes ignorance is just the cause of the early practice of sex activity.
Incest.—Another anomaly which must be attributed to hyperaesthesia sexualis is incest. Incest, as such, has nothing pathological in its essence. In the early history of human marriage incest was the rule. It was practised even in historic times. Abraham was married to his sister, according to the Bible. Cimon of Athens was also married to his sister. In the royal house of the Ptolomei it was common for brothers to marry their sisters to avoid a division of the empire. Cleopatra, the evil star of Marc Anthony, was married to her brother. But these few examples were the exceptions, generally, for the last three thousand years incest has been considered an abomination in the eyes of God and men. Its practice was constantly inveighed against by Church and State. It has, therefore, because of these constant suggestions, become the second nature of man to abhor such practices. Only an exaggerated sexual desire, coupled with the absence of understanding for laws and morals, could nowadays lead to incest in any civilized country. Even in the crowded tenements where all members of the family of both sexes live and sleep in one room, incest is still a great rarity, and when such a case happens, it deeply wounds the feelings of the entire community. Such incestuous immoral attacks are, as a rule, made by low, brutal men in a state of intoxication or by those who suffer from weak-mindedness, by epileptics and by paranoiacs. Hence in every case of incest, we are justified in assuming that the seducer is suffering from sexual hyperaesthesia. An asylum and castration may be a more appropriate treatment for such a patient than the treatment in prison.
The following case came under the author’s observation while he was house-physician in the Woman’s Hospital of a well-known European university:
A mother brought her twelve-year-old girl to the skin department of the general hospital to be treated for a certain rash the child was suffering from, for some time. The rash was diagnosed there as pityriasis versicolor, and the child was recommended to go to the Woman’s Hospital for treatment. At the examination here it was found that the twelve-year-old child was six months pregnant. Being too small and delicate, even for her age, to give birth to a full-term child, it was decided to induce premature labor. Before the operation, the child was asked for the name of the man who was responsible for her predicament, and the following was her version of the accident:
One day, while returning from school, she was addressed, on the street, by a man whom she had never seen before and who asked her whether she did not know him, her cousin from X. He said that he was just going to see her parents, his uncle and aunt. On the way he took her to a candy-store and bought her candy. When leaving the store he told her that he had forgotten to take along a present for her parents which he left in his room, and they both went to fetch it. Upon entering his room, he locked the door and abused her.
Upon hearing the story the indignation of the medical authorities of the hospital was beyond all description. The police was immediately notified to hunt for the criminal. A representative from the district attorney’s office (Untersuchungsrichter) and a detective soon appeared at the hospital to get more particulars from the child. The officers of the court seemed to have a much better experience in the examination of such cases than the doctors, for when they left the child’s room her story read quite differently.
The girl’s father had a workshop in the business section of the city, while the family lived in another part. When leaving school in the afternoon the child used often to visit the father’s shop and take home the dishes he took along in the morning. One day, while in the shop with her father, he took her in the back room of the shop and abused her. Under threat of death these immoral attacks were often repeated for months afterwards, until one day the unnatural father noticed that his child conceptavit ab eo. He then made up the story with the cousin which the child first told the hospital authorities.
The father was arrested, tried, and sentenced to ten years’ hard labor.
This case shows how low the sufferers of hyperaesthesia may fall. The man was not drunk when he made the repeated attacks upon his child. The excuse of the defective separation of the living quarters is also missing, nor does here exist the cause of “faute de mieux,” as it is sometimes found in widowers living with their adult daughters in incestuous unions. The man here had a healthy wife. Hence it is nothing else but a case of sexual hyperaesthesia pure and simple of a weak-minded individual.
Incest is oftener found in men than in women, yet there are cases recorded where women were the seducers.
Legrand describes the case of a girl, fifteen years of age, who seduced her brother to all manner actionum voluptificarum in se.
His other case is that of a woman of thirty-six who, although married, indulged in abusing her brother, a boy of eighteen. The same woman was otherwise abnormal, suffering from the anomaly known as exhibitionism, which is seldom found in women, except among the insane in asylums. She often exposed her breasts from the window to attract men.
In another case of the same author, a mother, thirty-nine years of age, practised incest with her own son and ab eo comprehendit.
Tardieu cites a case of a woman whose victim of criminal attack was no other than her own son, a boy of nine years of age.