Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 — Appendix B: The Development of the Sexual Instinct, Concluded

HISTORY XVI.

--This history is given in the subject's own words: A.

N.

, 34 years of age, a university graduate, devoted to learning and interested in philosophy and theology.

He is happily married and the father of an only daughter.

Since puberty he has enjoyed excellent health.

"Looking back he finds the beginnings of sexual feeling obscure.

This feeling is by no means identical in its progress with the knowledge of the phenomena of sex generally.

The latter he acquired thus: His mother told him at a very early age the outlines of the phenomena of birth and explained to him (perhaps at that time unnecessarily) that the genital organs of little girls were different from his own.

This piece of knowledge led to his asking, when 9 years old, a little girl cousin who came to live with the family (he was an only child) and who shared his bed to let him see her genitalia.

This she readily did and also invited him to coitus, which she described as a 'nice game.'

He complied, but without, of course, any feeling of pleasure or any understanding of the nature of what he was doing.

Shortly after this he went to a day school, where, amid the extraordinarily coarse conversation of the boys, he was initiated into all the more obvious phenomena of sex.

But still it was only a matter of intellectual curiosity.

As such it had a strange fascination for him, and to this day he remembers many of the obscene words and phrases, as, for example, a set of indecent verses beginning 'William, the milkman, sat under a tree,' describing coitus, though some of the details were yet misunderstood by him.

That up to his tenth or eleventh year no real sexual desire was awakened is plain from the fact that there was no desire for any repetition of attempts at coitus with his cousin, though he did indeed, again out of curiosity, finger her genitals sometimes, a thing which she, grown evidently more fastidious, reported to his mother, who gravely reprimanded him, telling him that it was the 'beginning of all evil.'

"Desire was awakened gradually and, as I have said, obscurely.

Not only at school, but among his own cousins, especially two girls (other than the one above mentioned) and a boy, the conversation was lascivious in the extreme, though words never proceeded to deeds as between the boys and the girls.

He was soon, however, about his fifteenth year, so far as he can remember, initiated into the practice of masturbation, first, sleeping with his boy cousin, the two used to play at 'husband and wife,' and then, more directly, a neighbor, a heavy, sensual type of boy, took him aside one day and drawing out his own penis asked him 'if he knew how to make some buttermilk.'

Out of curiosity at first, and to obtain the new and voluptuous sensation afterward, he began assiduously to practise this vice, which, as he afterward found out, was very common, if not universal about him.

That it was morally reprehensible he had not at that time the ghost of a notion; he considered that it belonged to the category of the 'dirty' only.

His father quite neglected this development, believing, I suppose, in the superstition of the 'innocence of childhood.'

"This practice of masturbation went on assiduously to his sixteenth year, when its true nature and danger were revealed to him by a good clergyman who prepared him for confirmation.

He had at this time gone far, in both solitary vice and vice 'à deux,' with his male cousin, with whom he practised even 'fellatio' and 'intromissio in anum.'

But now he began to struggle against it and made some headway, but never entirely shook it off before his marriage at 26, so deeply rooted was the hold it had on him.

Especially at the time between sleeping and waking, or while lying sleepless at night--when the monks prayed 'ne polluantur corpora'--did its attacks come insidiously upon him.

He would struggle for weeks and then would come a relapse.

On one occasion he slept with a young uncle who amused himself, thinking he was asleep, by playing with his penis until he had an emission.

A.

N.

hailed the occasion with keen joy--he caustically argued that he experienced the pleasure without being culpable in its production!

Then on 'coming to himself' he would agonize over his vice, remembering, for example, that, while _he_ had rejoiced in what had been done, the very cousin who some time before used to share his sin was genuinely annoyed at the same uncle's attentions when it was he who suffered them.

"Looking back over the whole period of his youth and adolescence, he can trace the psychological effect of what was going on secretly, in his relations to girls and women.

In a word, these relations were sentimental only.

He often imagined himself in love; but it was imagination only.

He was in love with a wraith, not a girl of flesh and blood.

He hesitated to regard in any sexual way any girl of whom he had a high opinion; sexual desire and 'love' seemed for him to inhabit different worlds and that it would be a pollution to bring them together.

In hours of relaxation from the very hard intellectual work which he was at this time engaged on at school and at the university, he was quite content with the society of quite young girls or even children when most of his friends would have sought out females of their own age.

Nothing could have been farther from his desires or intention than any lascivious or, indeed, unseemly act toward any female in whose company he might be: no mother need have hesitated to trust her daughter in his company.

I firmly believe that the discipline of the same bed which Gibbon (_Decline and Fall_, ed.

Bury, vol. ii, p. 37) makes so merry over could have been endured by him without difficulty.

His outward conduct was in all these respects most seemly and decorous, yet night after night he could masturbate, his imagination glowing with visions of female nakedness.

"Curiously the one and only actual female for whom he felt any desire at the earlier period (aged 14 to 16) began to be the cousin who lived in the house.

On one occasion he touched her breasts, on another her naked thighs--and that was all!

As she grew to puberty, she would have allowed far more liberties, but he contented himself with a sly glance now and again, when he could procure it, at her swelling bosom.

The fear of putting her with child was ample to keep him away from her bed.

Later on even so much as the foregoing occurred no more, and, as I have said, his outward life became absolutely decorous.

"Consequently he was in no danger of having dealings with prostitutes.

The preliminaries, the conversation of such women, especially their drinking habits, would have been disgusting and repugnant to him in the extreme.

He would have shunned the possibility of acquiring venereal disease like the plague.

But he was never free from solitary vice; he secretly envied those who had occasions for coitus in what I may call a seemly and cleanly manner, friends in the country with farm girls, etc. , of whom he had heard.

He indulged also in lascivious reading, the obscene when he could procure it, rather than the merely suggestive, which has never been to his taste.

He was familiar with quite a large number of Latin and Greek indecent passages, knew the broader farces of the _Canterbury Tales_ and of the _Decameron_, and, later, the 'contes' of La Fontaine and the _Facetiæ_ of Poggio.

As Ste.

-Beuve says of Gibbon, I think, he acquired an 'erudite and cold' sort of obscenity in this way.

"All this, of course, is only one half, and by no means always the dominant half, of his nature.

He was often repentant for these delinquencies, and he was sincerely religious.

He was also fond of serious learning and contrived to take a first-class university degree.

Yet, ever and anon, the deeply sensual side of his nature made itself felt.

Scotched for a time it could be, but killed never.

"Yet, I do not think it could be said that he had the sexual instinct in any really high degree.

It was more like a small fly that makes a large buzz than any considerable factor in his constitution.

He had a companion about this time of whom such a remark is even more true.

This man's mind was replete with all manner of risky stories, all sorts of sexual details.

He would take long walks with girls of loose character, talk with prostitutes at home and abroad, and yet, I believe, he never proceeded to coitus.

"Such then, was the subject of this notice up to the time of his marriage.

Two men, one might say, in one skin.

One learned, one merely obscene; one a pattern of decorousness, the other a self-polluter.

"On the sexual side he was as one knowing everything there is to know--yet knowing nothing.

Like the boy-hero in Wedekind's _Frühling's Erwachen_, he had been long in Egypt, yet he had never seen the pyramids.

He began to distress himself with questions as to whether he was yet capable; whether his recurring vice had not permanently injured him; whether he had made himself unfit for marriage.

So shy and reserved was he about his secret that he could never have brought himself to mention it to a medical man.

'What!

he!

the good, the religious!

the wholly moral and decorous!'

(such was, indeed, the reputation he had among his friends); 'he, the victim of a vice so black!'

No, no!

'_Secretum meum mihi_,' he cried.

"Fortune, however, was kind to him.

He was at an early age free from financial worries, which had almost crushed him earlier in his career, and he met in course of time the family from which he selected his excellent wife.

"The society in which he lived was of all English classes, I should suppose, the most reticent in matters of sex--the respectable, lower middle class; shopkeepers and the like, with a tradition of homely religion and virtue.

The classes a little higher in the scale (to which, by the way, his mother had belonged) could far better sympathize with one in his position.

Well, the family of his future wife was of a higher class and, what is far more, of foreign origin, for whom a large number of our English 'convenances' do not exist.

To them sex was frankly recognized as a factor in life, and the mother of this household, as he grew more intimate, broached subjects which he had never, in such a manner, discussed before.

It is unnecessary to give here any general history of his relationships with this household, as they have nothing to do with the matter in hand.

After some time he became engaged to the youngest daughter, two years his senior, a woman of remarkable beauty and splendid development, one who attracted him as none other had done, both on account of her intellectual and social qualities and her physical beauty (he had hitherto despaired of finding the two combined in one person), for she is certainly the most beautiful woman with whom he has ever been acquainted.

"He now began to make the practical acquaintance of a woman--and one who, in impulses, temper, manner, and habit of thought, differed _toto cælo_ from the girls he had known in his old home.

Her sexual nature was ripe and developed, and it is lucky that the engagement was of short duration, or the strain and anticipation of that time might have been injurious to the health of both.

As usual, in his outward relations toward women, so toward his _fiancée_, he was prepared for chaste caresses only.

This, however, did not suffice for her hot and passionate nature.

They went as far as possible short of actual coitus.

"After a few months, however, the marriage took place, and, at first, this brought him bitter disappointment and seemed to confirm his worst fears.

He found himself quite unable to have pleasure or satisfactory coitus; quite incapable, with any erection that he could command, of introducing his well-developed penis into his wife's extremely narrow and contracted vagina.

About a fortnight after the marriage, however, on his return from their short wedding tour, he felt much stronger and copulated with her, especially in the early mornings, so satisfactorily that she soon found herself with child.

Coitus now began to be much more pleasurable for him, but to his wife still attended with pain.

"After nine months of married life, the child, the only offspring of the marriage, a healthy girl, was born.

The stress of this time, the upsetting of his wife's health, her nervous breakdown and consequently uncertain temper, seemed for a period of nearly two years effectually to repress any sexual desire in the husband, and this period is perhaps the chastest of his life.

Desire seemed to be the one thing absent.

The revulsion of feeling in his wife was remarkable.

The erstwhile amorous _fiancée_, who could hardly wait until marriage to test her lover, became now the wife and mother who hardly wished to be touched by her husband.

"Her health, however, gradually improved and a more normal state of affairs was brought about, which has continued to the present day, broken only by periods of abstention, chiefly caused by the attacks of anemia and menstrual irregularities from which his wife suffers from time to time.

Ordinarily, he enjoys coitus once or twice in the month, hardly oftener, taking one month with another.

At one time he exemplified in his own person the saying _omne animal post coitum triste_, but now happily this depression of spirits is rarely felt.

Sometimes he has felt a depression of spirits, a general discontentedness, before experiencing a strong erection; in these cases coitus has cleared his spirits.

He would naturally look upon coitus as an evacuation, although he recognizes the imperfectness of that view.

For one thing he is constantly sorry, viz.

, that the act gives no pleasure to his wife, and that he has never been able to induce a crisis with her by normal means.

In this state of affairs, knowing that 'après coup' she was still unsatisfied, he slipped into the practice of rubbing the clitoris with his fingers until the emission takes place.

To do this, they assume the position 'ille sub, illa super.'

From his own limited marital experience, he has never been able to understand the stories of women who masturbate several times a day, as his wife would be physically incapable (so he believes) of anything of the kind, and only easily reaches the crisis in any circumstances during the first few days after the menstrual flow has ceased.

In fine, while agreeing theoretically with Sir Richard Burton and others that the eastern style of coitus (directed with a view to the pleasure of your partner) is the right one, it is one of his standing regrets that he is unable to practise it.

In the place of the twenty minutes required by the women of India (according to Burton) he is happy if he can give two or three at the most, much as he would wish to prolong a pleasure as keen to himself as he could desire it to be to his dear and excellent spouse."

HISTORY XVII.

--R.

L.

, American; aged 43; height, 5 ft. 7 in.

;

weight, about 145 lbs.

; occupation, teacher; somewhat neurotic; a slight myopia associated with acute astigmatism and muscular weakness of the eyes, producing a tendency to migraine.

Uric acid diathesis, producing occasionally severe neuralgia, particularly in the intestines.

These symptoms have been more or less constant since very early childhood.

General health very good.

Not inclined to indulge in athletic sports, but prefers sedentary occupations and recreations.

"My early ideas of sexual things are not very clear in recollection.

I think that when 7 or 8 years of age I had a knowledge of the common or vulgar terms for intercourse and for the genital organs.

Boys of my own age and slightly older would discuss sex relations, and I had a general knowledge that, in some way connected with the sexual act, 'babies were made.'

We would tell, occasionally, lewd stories, and a few times attempted sexual practices with one another.

Not till after puberty did I ever attempt masturbation.

I must have been 9 or 10 years old before I learned that there was a difference in the sex organs of boys and girls.

Up to this time I had supposed that intercourse was _per anum.

_ I attended a public school with both sexes.

Talk among my boy associates was often nasty and concerned the sexual act with girls.

At about 12 years I began to have erotic day dreams.

I always had a sentimental attachment for some girl acquaintance whom I would idealize and with whom I would imagine myself having sex relations.

As a matter of fact, there was no real sexual feeling about this.

As I was very shy and timid naturally, I never made any kind of advances toward any of them, and they were entirely ignorant of any sentiments of affection in me.

"Pubertal changes commenced, I presume, about the age of 13½ years.

I place it at this period from the following circumstances, which are fixed very strongly in my memory: I had, as a child, a soprano voice that was praised considerably by older friends, and about which I was inordinately conceited, I enjoyed greatly taking part in operettas, cantatas, etc. The dramatic instinct, if so it may be called, has always been marked with me, and amateur dramatics are still my chief diversion.

When I was about the age mentioned above my voice changed quite rapidly, greatly to my distress of mind, as I was obliged to give up taking a part for which I had been cast in a school entertainment.

The memory of that disappointment is still poignant.

Other changes, such as the appearance of the pubertal hair, must have made no impression on my mind, as I cannot recollect anything in connection therewith.

No involuntary emissions occurred.

Indeed, during periods of continence in later life, when the sexual tension has been very strong, I have had very few such emissions.

"As a lad of 11 or 12, I had heard frequent allusions to masturbation by other boys who were older, but always in a way that indicated contempt.

Yet there is no doubt now in my mind that the practice was very general.

I think that I was probably about 15 when I decided to try the act.

I think that there was little sex impulse in this decision.

The animating purpose was rather curiosity.

I succeeded in producing the complete orgasm and found it pleasurable, though there was a considerable shock of surprise at the ejaculation of semen.

As nearly as I can estimate in my memory of an event as far back as this was, this was the beginning of definite sexual sensibility in me.

I cannot but believe, however, that it would have been aroused sooner or later in some other way.

Thereafter I would imagine myself embracing some of the girl friends to whom I have referred above, and, when excited, would masturbate.

The act was in every instance a psychic intercourse.

For some time I did not know that the practice was considered harmful.

I indulged whenever I felt the inclination.

This at times was rather frequent; again only at considerable intervals.

I did know that it was looked upon as being unmanly, and never admitted, except to perhaps two or three boy friends, that I ever indulged.

With these boys I practised mutual masturbation a few times.

There was no homosexual feeling connected with these acts in any of us.

It was only that the normal method of gratifying our desires was not available.

I know the subsequent history of each of these boys, and there has been nothing to indicate any perverted instinct in any of them.

About the age of 16 I heard a talk on sexual matters by a traveling evangelist, who portrayed the effects of masturbation in fearful colors.

I now realize that he was an ignorant though well-intentioned man; but the general effect of his talk upon me was a bad one.

One of the results of the habit, according to his statements, was insanity.

Therefore I expected at any moment to lose my mind.

I felt that I must stop the practice at once, but the matter became so great an obsession that again and again I broke my resolutions for reform.

I undertook exercise, dieting, the reading of serious literature: all of which I had seen referred to in books as methods of lessening sexual desire.

The object of these disciplinary practices was always the thing most prominently in mind, and so they were of no avail.

Fortunately I entered college a little later, and the affairs of school life gradually took a commanding place in my thoughts, and the practice was not so much in mind.

I did not, however, completely break away from it until almost the time of my marriage.

If the present attitude of the scientific medical world toward the subject had been known to me, I do not believe that any evil would have come to me from the practice.

At a later period of my life, say between 21 and 24, I would not indulge the habit for a considerable interval.

At times I did not notice the presence or lack of desire.

But then there would come periods when I would be under a severe sexual tension.

This would be marked by intense nervousness, an inability to fix my attention upon any one thing, and a great desire to have intercourse.

An act of masturbation at such a time would generally give relief.

However, when I yielded to this form of relief, there would always follow feelings of profound self-reproach and of self-repugnance.

Had I had nocturnal emissions they might have relieved me; but, as I have said before, they very rarely occurred.

When, rarely, one did occur I would be greatly frightened, for I had the old, erroneous idea that they meant serious weakness and always ascribed them to my bad habit.

That my habit of masturbation had any relation to the rarity of the involuntary emissions would, of course, be a matter of pure conjecture.

In passing from the discussion of personal masturbation, I wish to say that my associations with boys as a pupil and as a teacher lead me to believe that the practice is practically universal.

When discussing the hygienic evils of prostitution with boy pupils I have noted that, whereas not infrequently a boy will voluntarily protest that he has never had intercourse, there has always been a significant silence when masturbation is mentioned.

I have never heard a boy make a denial, direct or indirect, that he had indulged in the practice.

But it has seldom been a perversion.

It has rather been, as in my own case, an available means of relieving a sexual impulse.

"During my college life I associated with many boys who had more or less regular sexual relations with prostitutes or with girls who were not virtuous.

Their attitude toward the practice was an immoral one.

The ethical aspect of irregular sexual relations never concerned them.

It certainly did not concern me.

What I have learned through my conversations on the subject with my pupils makes it evident to me that this is the common feeling of most boys of the adolescent period.

I think of two things which operated strongly to prevent my entering into sexual relations with girls during this period of my life.

One was an esthetic repugnance to the average prostitute.

These are the women most easily available to the youth whose sexual desires are developed.

I do not remember ever having seen an avowed prostitute who did not seem repulsive to me.

I confess to an inclination to priggishness.

I preferred to associate with people whom I called 'nice people.'

It was fortunate for me that I was thrown into the society of a rather rough crowd of youths, who knocked a great deal of this snobbishness out of me.

But it did act to prevent my having recourse to prostitution.

A second preventive was my natural timidity in making advances to people.

This has been a trait that I have never completely overcome.

In my professional life this has been some detriment to my advancement.

In the matter of sex relationship it tended to prevent my taking advantage of association with and even of advances from girls who, not prostitutes, were nevertheless not virtuous.

There were a number of such in the town and neighborhood in which I lived, and I undoubtedly could have had sexual relations with them if I had only been able to overcome my shyness.

The desire was not wanting.

I really craved intercourse with them.

It was simply a matter of cowardice.

There was one girl whom I knew very well, with whom I was on friendly terms, who I knew had had sexual relations with other boys.

She showed, at times, a marked preference for me, and I am sure would have welcomed any advances that I should have made.

A number of times I sought her company with the intention of suggesting intercourse, but my resolution always failed.

"All through my college course I was much in the society of girls.

We were in class together, associated very freely in society, frequently studied together.

This is the most usual state of things in the western part of our country.

But they were simply comrades: sex thoughts never arose in connection with such association.

And I am quite certain that this was the general attitude of the other boys.

Although the talk among the boy students was at times, very frankly and crudely, about sexual relations, no breath of scandal ever touched one of the college girls.

Again my experience as teacher and student brings a conclusion that coeducation of the sexes does not affect, in one way or the other, the strictly sexual life of the male student.

A

very intimate friend who has had a varied experience in school work has told me recently that his conclusions are the same.

"When I was about 20 years old I became acquainted with a very beautiful girl, four years my junior.

Our acquaintance very rapidly developed into deeper affection, and about five years later we were married.

During all this time very little of the physical aspects of love entered into our attachment.

My sweetheart had much of the same shyness as was so pronounced in my own character.

For several years I think that the thought of marriage was never distinctly present in our minds.

A formal betrothal between us did not take place until within a year and a half of our marriage.

Yet each of us had a very distinct understanding of the feelings of the other.

But until our betrothal there were none of even those very innocent expressions of endearment common, I imagine, to all lovers.

I am sure that during this period of our attachment no thought of any physical relations between us was ever in my mind; or, at any rate, was promptly banished if it occurred.

Yet all this time my sex desires were very strong and at times became an obsession.

Never, though, were they directed toward my sweetheart.

The first time that we engaged in the endearments and caresses allowed to lovers I became conscious, after a time, of a state of sexual excitement.

I experienced an erection.

It was absolutely reflex;

no thought had entered into it.

I was at once overwhelmed with a feeling of shame.

I felt that I had been guilty of unthinkable indecency toward my betrothed.

Then there arose a fear that it might be noticed.

(Men at that time wore abominably tight clothing.

) As a matter of fact, I now know that there was no real danger of this, for she was absolutely ignorant of the nature of the male sexual organs.

But I made a pretext for withdrawing from the room and tried to adjust my clothing so that no exposure could occur.

I was fearful of coming into close proximity to her again, lest there should be a recurrence of the feeling.

As a matter of fact it did occur a number of times, but my good sense finally suggested the explanation and after a time it ceased to trouble me.

The thought was latent in my mind that sexual excitement was necessarily more or less indecent at all times, and I could not reconcile its manifestation with a pure love.

"I have said that my sexual desire was strong.

Up to the time of marriage it was never gratified in the normal manner.

My esthetic abhorrence of prostitutes continued to prevent its gratification in that manner.

No other opportunity offered.

I am positive that moral considerations did not enter into the matter at all.

I

think now that it was strange that the thought that it would be disloyal to my promised wife to have connection with other women did not affect me.

But I am sure that it did not.

I am inclined to think that conscientious scruples very rarely enter into the average young man's considerations of contemplated sexual relations.

"As the time of my marriage drew near, thoughts of the physical relationship of husband and wife became, of course, more insistent.

The idea of establishing sexual relations was not at all a pleasant one.

I dreaded it as an ordeal.

I wondered if it would be possible for us to retain the same love and affection for one another after such intimate relations were established.

This was a recurrence of the fallacious notion that there was something inherently indecent in sexual things.

I am in hopes that other ideas are replacing this wrong one, in the minds of the younger generation, as the result of the saner and franker discussion of sex.

By a great effort, I had practically stopped masturbating.

At times I felt almost maddened by desire.

But never did the prospect of marriage seem desirable from this point of view.

Up to the very day of our wedding my affection for my betrothed seemed free from sexual desire.

But my physical being was craving sexual companionship.

"Theoretically I knew a great deal of the nature of intercourse.

Practically I was absolutely ignorant.

In some ways I was better informed, on matters that a new husband should know, than the average man entering the married life.

A physician's library had been at my disposal, and I had read somewhat extensively on physiology and hygiene.

My chosen lines of study had given me a theoretical knowledge of the anatomy of the female genital organs that was fairly thorough.

I knew a little about the physiology of reproduction and rather less of intercourse.

Fortunately, I learned in the course of my reading that the first sexual approaches were likely to be quite painful to a woman, and that great care should be exercised at this time.

I tried to put into practice what little I had learned in theory and I imagine that we got through the introductory attempts with less than the average difficulties.

Our first efforts were not satisfactory to either of us.

My wife was absolutely unprepared so far as any definite knowledge of the act was concerned.

I sincerely hope that the prudish notions of the past generations will give way to more sensible views in the future, and that the girl becoming a wife will be just as chaste, but wiser in matters of such importance to her happiness.

I presume that my timidity was a valuable asset at this time; for I was afraid to force matters in any way, and time and repeated attempts finally overcame our difficulties.

And when our sexual relations were once established, the whole tenor of my life was changed.

All the former sexual unrest disappeared.

My former feeling toward sexual relations was altered.

They no longer seemed that which, though very desirable, was yet necessarily indecent.

Fortunately, after the first few weeks, they have been quite pleasurable to my wife.

I am sure that our sexual life since marriage has been a large factor in deepening the love that has made our married life an ideal one.

As I look back at the first year of marriage, I wonder that we got through it so well.

My knowledge of sexual hygiene was a strange mixture of fact and nonsense.

If the frequency of acts of intercourse advocated by some of the authorities I have lately read is correct, then we must have passed the bounds of moderation.

But it is certain that our general health has been very good: better in both cases than before marriage.

"In reviewing these phases of the development of my sexual life, one or two conclusions seem to me to be strongly emphasized.

It was unfortunate that the real sexual desire was aroused as early and in the manner that it was.

Whether this would have been prevented by more definite education in the hygiene and the purpose of the function, I can only conjecture.

I believe that mine was and is the common experience of boys.

I am decidedly of the opinion that there should be instruction given of the anatomy of the genital organs and of the hygiene of intercourse, and this shortly after the youth has reached puberty.

How this is to be done is a grave question.

It will require tact and knowledge not possessed by the average teacher and parent.

However it is done, it should be honest, frank, and free from piosity.

"I am certain that, in my own case, rather frequent intercourse is decidedly beneficial.

Any prolonged abstinence always brings about the same nervous disturbances that I have referred to above.

It is fortunate for me that this repetition of the act is satisfactory to both concerned."

HISTORY XVIII.

--E.

W.

, dentist, aged 32, of New England Puritan stock.