Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume V Part 8

[67]

Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Section II, Mem. III, Subs. I.

[68]

Judith Cladel, Auguste Rodin Pris sur la Vie, 1903, pp. 103-104. Some slight modifications have been made in the translation of this pa.s.sage on account of the conversational form of the original.

[69]

W. Cyples, The Process of Human Experience, p. 462. Even if (as we have already seen, ante, p. 58) the saint cannot always feel actual physical pleasure in the intimate contact of humanity, the ardor of devoted service which his vision of humanity arouses remains unaffected.

[70]

"To love," as Stendhal defined it (De l'Amour, Chapter II), "is to have pleasure in seeing, touching, and feeling by all the senses, and as near as possible, a beloved object by whom one is oneself loved."

[71]

Pillon's study of "La Memoire Affective" (Revue Philosophique, February, 1901) helps to explain the psychic mechanism of the process.

THE MECHANISM OF DETUMESCENCE.

I.

The Psychological Significance of Detumescence-The Testis and the Ovary-Sperm Cell and Germ Cell-Development of the Embryo-The External s.e.xual Organs-Their Wide Range of Variation-Their Nervous Supply-The p.e.n.i.s-Its Racial Variations-The Influence of Exercise-The s.c.r.o.t.u.m and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es-The Mons Veneris-The v.u.l.v.a-The l.a.b.i.a Majora and their Varieties-The Pubic Hair and Its Characters-The c.l.i.toris and Its Functions-The a.n.u.s as an Erogenous Zone-The Nymphae and their Function-The v.a.g.i.n.a-The Hymen-Virginity-The Biological Significance of the Hymen.

In a.n.a.lyzing the s.e.xual impulse we have seen that the process whereby the conjunction of the s.e.xes is achieved falls naturally into two phases: the first phase, of tumescence, during which force is generated in the organism, and the second phase, of detumescence, in which that force is discharged during conjugation.[72] Hitherto we have been occupied mainly with the first phase, that of tumescence, and with its a.s.sociated psychic phenomena. It was inevitable that this should be so, for it is during the slow process of tumescence that s.e.xual selection is decided, the crystallizations of love elaborated, and, to a large extent, the individual erotic symbols determined. But we can by no means altogether pa.s.s over the final phase of detumescence. Its consideration, it is true, brings us directly into the field of anatomy and physiology; while tumescence is largely under control of the will, when the moment of detumescence arrives the reins slip from the control of the will; the more fundamental and uncontrollable impulses of the organism gallop on unchecked; the chariot of Phaethon dashes blindly down into a sea of emotion.

Yet detumescence is the end and climax of the whole drama; it is an anatomico-physiological process, certainly, but one that inevitably touches psychology at every point.[73] It is, indeed, the very key to the process of tumescence, and unless we understand and realize very precisely what it is that happens during detumescence, our psychological a.n.a.lysis of the s.e.xual impulse must remain vague and inadequate.

From the point of view we now occupy, a man and a woman are no longer two highly sensitive organisms vibrating, voluptuously it may indeed be, but vaguely and indefinitely, to all kinds of influences and with fluctuating impulses capable of being directed into any channel, even in the highest degree divergent from the proper ends of procreation. They are now two genital organisms who exist to propagate the race, and whatever else they may be, they must be adequately const.i.tuted to effect the act by which the future of the race is ensured. We have to consider what are the material conditions which ensure the most satisfactory and complete fulfillment of this act, and how those conditions may be correlated with other circ.u.mstances in the organism. In thus approaching the subject we shall find that we have not really abandoned the study of the psychic aspects of s.e.x.

The two most primary s.e.xual organs are the testis and the ovary; it is the object of conjugation to bring into contact the sperm from the testis with the germ from the ovary. There is no reason to suppose that the germ-cell and the sperm-cell are essentially different from each other. s.e.xual conjugation thus remains a process which is radically the same as the non-s.e.xual mode of propagation which preceded it. The fusion of the nuclei of the two cells was regarded by Van Beneden, who in 1875 first accurately described it, as a process of conjugation comparable to that of the protozoa and the protophyta. Boveri, who has further extended our knowledge of the process, considers that the spermatozoon removes an inhibitory influence preventing the commencement of development in the ovum; the spermatozoon replaces a portion of the ovum which has already undergone degeneration, so that the object of conjugation is chiefly to effect the union of the properties of two cells in one, s.e.xual fertilization achieving a division of labor with reciprocal inhibition; the two cells have renounced their original faculty of separate development in order to attain a fusion of qualities and thus render possible that production of new forms and qualities which has involved the progress of the organized world.[74]

While in fishes this conjugation of the male and female elements is usually ensured by the female casting her sp.a.w.n into an artificial nest outside the body, on to which the male sheds his milt, in all animals (and, to some extent, birds, who occupy an intermediate position) there is an organic nest, or incubation chamber as Bland Sutton terms it, the womb, in the female body, wherein the fertilized egg may develop to a high degree of maturity sheltered from those manifold risks of the external world which make it necessary for the sp.a.w.n of fishes to be so enormous in amount. Since, however, men and women have descended from remote ancestors who, in the manner of aquatic creatures, exercised functions of sperm-extrusion and germ-extrusion that were exactly a.n.a.logous in the two s.e.xes, without any specialized female uterine organization, the early stages of human male and female ftal development still display the comparatively undifferentiated s.e.xual organization of those remote ancestors, and during the first months of ftal life it is practically impossible to tell by the inspection of the genital regions whether the embryo would have developed into a man or into a woman. If we examine the embryo at an early stage of development we see that the hind end is the body stalk, this stalk in later stages becoming part of the umbilical cord. The urogenital region, formed by the rapid extension of the hind end beyond its original limit, which corresponds to what is later the umbilicus, develops mainly by the gradual differentiation of structures (the Wolffian and Mullerian bodies) which originally exist identically in both s.e.xes. This process of s.e.xual differentiation is highly complex, so that it cannot yet be said that there is complete agreement among investigators as to its details. When some irregularity or arrest of development occurs in the process we have one or other of the numerous malformations which may affect this region. If the arrest occurs at a very early stage we may even find a condition of things which seems to approximate to that which normally exists in the adult reptilia.[75] Owing to the fact that both male and female organs develop from more primitive structures which were s.e.xually undifferentiated, a fundamental a.n.a.logy in the s.e.xual organs of the s.e.xes always remains; the developed organs of one s.e.x exist as rudiments in the other s.e.x; the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es correspond to the ovaries; the female c.l.i.toris is the h.o.m.ologue of the male p.e.n.i.s; the s.c.r.o.t.u.m of one s.e.x is the l.a.b.i.a majora in the other s.e.x, and so throughout, although it is not always possible at present to be quite certain in regard to these h.o.m.ologics.

Since the object to be attained by the s.e.xual organs in the human species is identical with that which they subserve in their pre-human ancestors, it is not surprising to find that these structures have a clear resemblance to the corresponding structures in the apes, although on the whole there would appear to be in man a higher degree of s.e.xual differentiation. Thus the uterus of various species of semnopithecus seems to show a noteworthy correspondence with the same organ in woman.[76] The somewhat less degree of s.e.xual differentiation is well shown in the gorilla; in the male the external organs are in the pa.s.sive state covered by the wrinkled skin of the abdomen, while in the female, on the contrary, they are very apparent, and in s.e.xual excitement the large c.l.i.toris and nymphae become markedly prominent. The p.e.n.i.s of the gorilla, however, more nearly resembles that of man, according to Hartmann, than does that of the other anthropoid apes, which diverge from the human type in this respect more than do the cynocephalic apes and some species of baboon.

From the psychological point of view we are less interested in the internal s.e.xual organs, which are most fundamentally concerned with the production and reception of the s.e.xual elements, than with the more external parts of the genital apparatus which serve as the instruments of s.e.xual excitation, and the channels for the intromission and pa.s.sage of the seminal fluid. It is these only which can play any part at all in s.e.xual selection; they are the only part of the s.e.xual apparatus which can enter into the formation of either normal or abnormal erotic conceptions; they are the organs most prominently concerned with detumescence; they alone enter normally into the conscious process of s.e.x at any time. It seems desirable, therefore, to discuss them briefly at this point.

Our knowledge of the individual and racial variations of the external s.e.xual organs is still extremely imperfect. A few monographs and collections of data on isolated points may be found in more or less inaccessible publications. As regards women, Ploss and Bartels have devoted a chapter to the s.e.xual organs of women which extends to a hundred pages, but remains scanty and fragmentary. (Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter VI.) The most systematic series of observations have been made in the case of the various kinds of degenerates-idiots, the insane, criminals, etc.-but it would be obviously unsafe to rely too absolutely on such investigations for our knowledge of the s.e.xual organs of the ordinary population.

There can be no doubt, however, that the external s.e.xual organs in normal men and women exhibit a peculiarly wide range of variation. This is indicated not only by the unsystematic results attained by experienced observers, but also by more systematic studies. Thus Herman has shown by detailed measurements that there are great normal variations in the conformation of the parts that form the floor of the female pelvis. He found that the projection of the pelvic floor varied from nothing to as much as two inches, and that in healthy women who had borne no children the distance between the coccyx and a.n.u.s, the length of the perineum, the distance between the fourchette and the symphysis pubis, and the length of the v.a.g.i.n.a are subject to wide variations. (Lancet, October 12, 1889.) Even the female urethral opening varies very greatly, as has been shown by Bergh, who investigated it in nearly 700 women and reproduces the various shapes found; while most usually (in about a third of the cases observed), a longitudinal slit, it may be cross-shaped, star-shaped, crescentic, etc.; and while sometimes very small, in about 6 per cent. of the cases it admitted the tip of the little finger. (Bergh, Monatsheft fur Praktische Dermatologie, 15 Sept., 1897.)

As regards both s.e.xes, Stanley Hall states that "Dr. F. N. Seerley, who has examined over 2000 normal young men as well as many young women, tells me that in his opinion individual variations in these parts are much greater even than those of face and form, and that the range of adult and apparently normal size and proportion, as well as function, and of both the age and order of development, not only of each of the several parts themselves, but of all their immediate annexes, and in females as well as males, is far greater than has been recognized by any writer. This fact is the basis of the anxieties and fears of morphological abnormality so frequent during adolescence." (G. S. Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 414).

In accordance with the supreme importance of the part they play, and the intimately psychic nature of that part, the s.e.xual organs, both internal and external, are very richly supplied with nerves. While the internal organs are very abundantly furnished with sympathetic nerves and ganglia, the external organs show the highest possible degree of specialization of the various peripheral nervous devices which the organism has developed for receiving, acc.u.mulating, and transmitting stimuli to the brain.[77]

"The number of conducting cords which attach the genitals to the nervous centers is simply enormous," writes Bryan Robinson; "the pudic nerve is composed of nearly all the third sacral and branches from the second and fourth sacral. As one examines this nerve he is forced to the conclusion that it is an enormous supply for a small organ. The periphery of the pudic nerve spreads itself like a fan over the genitals." The lesser sciatic nerve supplies only one muscle-the gluteus maximus-and then sends the large pudendal branch to the side of the p.e.n.i.s, and hence the friction of coitus induces active contraction of the gluteus maximus, "the main muscle of coition." The large pudic and the pudendal const.i.tute the main supply of the external genitals. In women the pudic nerve is equally large, but the pudendal much smaller, possibly, Bryan Robinson suggests, because women take a less active part in coitus. The nerve supply of the c.l.i.toris, however, is three or four times as large as that of the p.e.n.i.s in proportion to size. (F. B. Robinson, "The Intimate Nervous Connection of the Genito-Urinary Organs With the Cerebro-Spinal and Sympathetic Systems," New York Medical Journal, March 11, 1893; id., The Abdominal Brain, 1899.)

Of all the s.e.xual organs the p.e.n.i.s is without doubt that which has most powerfully impressed the human imagination. It is the very emblem of generation, and everywhere men have contemplated it with a mixture of reverence and shuddering awe that has sometimes, even among civilized peoples, amounted to horror and disgust. Its image is worn as an amulet to ward off evil and invoked as a charm to call forth blessing. The s.e.xual organs were once the most sacred object on which a man could place his hands to swear an inviolate oath, just as now he takes up the Testament. Even in the traditions of the great cla.s.sic civilization which we inherit the p.e.n.i.s is fascinus, the symbol of all fascination. In the history of human culture it has had far more than a merely human significance; it has been the symbol of all the generative force of Nature, the embodiment of creative energy in the animal and vegetable worlds alike, an image to be held aloft for worship, the sign of all unconscious ecstasy. As a symbol, the sacred phallus, it has been woven in and out of all the highest and deepest human conceptions, so intimately that it is possible to see it everywhere, that it is possible to fail to see it anywhere.

In correspondence with the importance of the p.e.n.i.s is the large number of names which men have everywhere bestowed upon it. In French literature many hundred synonyms may be found. They were also numerous in Latin. In English the literary terms for the p.e.n.i.s seem to be comparatively few, but a large number of non-literary synonyms exist in colloquial and perhaps merely local usage. The Latin term p.e.n.i.s, which has established itself among us as the most correct designation, is generally considered to be a.s.sociated with pendere and to be connected therefore with the usually pendent position of the organ. In the middle ages the general literary term throughout Europe was coles (or colis) from caulis, a stalk, and virga, a rod. The only serious English literary term, yard (exactly equivalent to virga), as used by Chaucer-almost the last great English writer whose vocabulary was adequate to the central facts of life-has now fallen out of literary and even colloquial usage.

Pierer and Chaulant, in their anatomical and physiological Real-Lexicon (vol. vi, p. 134), give nearly a hundred synonyms for the p.e.n.i.s. Hyrtl (Topographisches Anatomie, seventh edition, vol. ii, pp. 67-69), adds others. Schurig, in his Spermatologia (1720, pp. 89-91), also presents a number of names for the p.e.n.i.s; in Chapter III (pp. 189-192) of the same book he discusses the p.e.n.i.s generally with more fullness than most authors. Louis de Landes, in his Glossaire Erotique of the French language (pp. 239-242), enumerates several hundred literary synonyms for the p.e.n.i.s, though many of them probably only occur once.

There is no thorough and comprehensive modern study of the p.e.n.i.s on an anthropological basis (though I should mention a valuable and fully ill.u.s.trated study of anthropological and pathological variations of the p.e.n.i.s in a series of articles by Marandon de Montyel, "Des Anomalies des Organs Genitaux Externes Chez les Alienees," etc., Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, 1895), and it would be out of place here to attempt to collect the scattered notices regarding racial and other variations. It may suffice to note some of the evidence showing that such variations seem to be numerous and important. The Arab p.e.n.i.s (according to Kocher) is slender and long (a third longer than the average European p.e.n.i.s) and with a club-shaped glans. It undergoes little change when it enters the erect state. The clothes leaves it quite free, and the Arab practices manual excitement at an early age to favor its development.

Among the Fuegians, also, according to Hyades and Deniker (Cap Horn, vol. vii, p. 153), the average length of the p.e.n.i.s is 77 millimeters, which is longer than in Europeans.

In men of black race, also, the p.e.n.i.s is decidedly large. Thus Sir H. H. Johnston (British Central Africa, p. 399) states this to be a universal rule. Among the w.a.n.kenda of Northern Nya.s.sa, for instance, he remarks that, while the body is of medium size, the p.e.n.i.s is generally large. He gives the usual length as about six inches, reaching nine or ten in erection. The prepuce, it is added, is often very long, and circ.u.mcision is practiced by many tribes.

Among the American negroes Hrdlicka has found, also (Proceedings American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science, vol. xlvii, p. 475), that the p.e.n.i.s in black boys is larger than in white boys.

The pa.s.sages cited above suggest the question whether the p.e.n.i.s becomes larger by exercise of its generative functions. Most old authors a.s.sert that frequent erection makes the p.e.n.i.s large and long (Schurig, Spermatologia, p. 107). Galen noted that in singers and athletes, who were chaste in order to preserve their strength, the s.e.xual parts were small and rugrose, like those of old men, and that exercise of the organs from youth develops them; Roubaud, quoting this observation (Traite de l'Impuissance, p. 373), agrees with the statement. It seems probable that there is an element of truth in this ancient belief. At the same time it must be remembered that the p.e.n.i.s is only to small extent a muscular organ, and that the increase of size produced by frequent congestion of erectile tissues cannot be either rapid or p.r.o.nounced. Variations in the size of the s.e.xual organs are probably on the whole mainly inherited, though it is impossible to speak decisively on this point until more systematic observations become customary.

The s.c.r.o.t.u.m has usually, in the human imagination, been regarded merely as an appendage of the p.e.n.i.s, of secondary importance, although it is the garment of the primary and essential organs of s.e.x, and the fact that it is not the seat of any voluptuous sensation has doubtless helped to confirm this position. Even the name is merely a mediaeval perversion of scortum, skin or hide. In cla.s.sic times it was usually called the pouch or purse. The importance of the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es has not, however, been altogether ignored, as the very word testis itself shows, for the testis is simply the witness of virility.[78]

It is easy to understand why the p.e.n.i.s should occupy this special place in man's thoughts as the supreme s.e.xual organ. It is the one conspicuous and prominent portion of the s.e.xual apparatus, while its apt.i.tude for swelling and erecting itself involuntarily, under the influence of s.e.xual emotion, gives it a peculiar and almost unique position in the body. At the same time it is the point at which, in the male body, all voluptuous sensation is concentrated, the only normal masculine center of s.e.x.[79]

It is not easy to find any correspondingly conspicuous symbol of s.e.x in the s.e.xual region of women. In the normal position nothing is visible but the peculiarly human cushion of fat picturesquely termed the Mons Veneris (because, as Palfyn said, all those who enroll themselves under the banner of Venus must necessarily scale it), and even that is veiled from view in the adult by the more or less bushy plantation of hair which grows upon it. A triangle of varyingly precise definition is thus formed at the lower apex of the trunk, and this would sometimes appear to have been regarded as a feminine symbol.[80] But the more usual and typical symbol of femininity is the idealized ring (by some savages drawn as a lozenge) of the v.u.l.v.ar opening-the yoni corresponding to the masculine lingam-which is normally closed from view by the larger lips arising from beneath the shadow of the mons. It is a symbol that, like the masculine phallus, has a double meaning among primitive peoples and is sometimes used to call down a blessing and sometimes to invoke a curse.[81]

This external opening of the feminine genital pa.s.sage with its two enclosing lips is now generally called the v.u.l.v.a. It would appear that originally (as by Celsus and Pliny) this term included the womb, also, but when the term "uterus" came into use "v.u.l.v.a" was confined (as its sense of folding doors suggests that it should be) to the external entrance. The cla.s.sic term cunnus for the external genitals was chiefly used by the poets; it has been the etymological source of various European names for this region, such as the old French con, which has now, however, disappeared from literature while even in popular usage it has given place to lapin and similar terms. But there is always a tendency, marked in most parts of the world, for the names of the external female parts to become indecorous. Even in cla.s.sic antiquity this part was the pudendum, the part to be ashamed of, and among ourselves the ma.s.s of the population, still preserving the traditions of primitive times, continue to cherish the same notion.

The anatomy, anthropology, folk-lore, and terminology of the external and to some extent the internal feminine s.e.xual region may be studied in the following publications, among others: Ploss, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter VI; Hyrtl, Topographisches Anatomie, vol. ii, and other publications by the same scholarly anatomist; W. J. Stewart Mackay, History of Ancient Gynaecology, especially pp. 244-250; R. Bergh, "Symbolae ad Cognitionem Genitalium Externorum Fminearum" (in Danish), Hospitalstidende, August, 1894; and also in Monatshefte fur Praktische Dermatologie, 1897. D. S. Lamb, "The Female External Genital Organs," New York Journal of Gynaecology, August, 1894; R. L. d.i.c.kinson, "Hypertrophies of the l.a.b.i.a Minora and Their Significance," American Gynecology, September, 1902; ???pt?d?a (in various languages), vol. viii, pp. 3-11, 11-13, and many other pa.s.sages. Several of Schurig's works (especially Gynaecologia, Muliebria, and Parthenologia) contain full summaries of the statements of the early writers.

The external or larger lips, like the mons veneris, are specifically human in their full development, for in the anthropoid apes they are small as is the mons, and in the lower apes absent altogether; they are, moreover, larger in the white than in the other human races. Thus in the negro, and to a less degree in the j.a.panese (Wernich) and the Javanese (Scherzer) they are less developed than in women of white race. The greater lips develop in the ftus later than the lesser lips, which are thus at first uncovered; this condition thus const.i.tutes an infantile state which occasionally (in less than 2 per cent. of cases, according to Bergh) persists in the adult. Their generally accepted name, l.a.b.i.a majora, is comparatively modern.[82]

The outer sides of the l.a.b.i.a majora are covered with hair, and on the inner sides, which are smooth and moist, but are not true mucous membrane, there are a few sweat glands and numerous large sebaceous glands. Bergh considers that there is little or no hair on the inner sides of the l.a.b.i.a majora, but Lamb states that careful examination shows that from one- to two-thirds of the inner surface in adult women show hairs like those of the external surface. In brunettes and women of dark races this surface is pigmented; in dark races it is usually a slate gray. From an examination of 2200 young Danish prost.i.tutes Bergh has found that there are two main varieties in the shape of the l.a.b.i.a majora, with transitional forms. In the first and most frequent form the l.a.b.i.a tend to be less marked and more effaced and separated at the upper and anterior part, often being lost in the sides of the mons and presenting a fissure which is broader in its upper part and showing the inner lips more or less bare. In the second form the l.a.b.i.a are thicker and more outstanding and the inner edges lie in contact throughout their whole length, showing the rima pudendi as a long narrow fissure. Whatever the form, the l.a.b.i.a close more tightly together in virgins and in young individuals generally than in the deflowered and the elderly. In children, as Martineau pointed out, the v.u.l.v.a appears to look directly forward and the c.l.i.toris and urinary meatus easily appear, while in adult women, and especially after attempts at coitus have been made, the v.u.l.v.a appears directed more below and behind, and the c.l.i.toris and meatus more covered by the l.a.b.i.a majora; so that the child urinates forward, while the adult woman is usually able to urinate almost directly downwards in the erect position, though in some cases (as may occasionally be observed in the street) she can only do so when bending slightly forwards. This difference in the direction of the stream formerly furnished one of the methods of diagnosing virginity, an uncertain one, since the difference is largely due to age and individual variation. The main factor in the position and aspect of the v.u.l.v.a is pelvic inclination. (See Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, p. 64; Stratz, Die Schonheit des Weiblichen Korpers, Chapter XII.) In the European woman, according to Stratz, a considerable degree of pelvic inclination is essential to beauty, concealing all but the anterior third of the v.u.l.v.a. In negresses and other women of lower race the v.u.l.v.a, however, usually lies further back, being more conspicuous from behind than in European women; in this respect lower races resemble the apes. Those women of dark race, therefore, whose modesty is focused behind rather than in front thus have sound anatomical considerations on their side.

As Ploss and Bartels remark, a very common variation among European women consists in an unusually posterior position of the v.u.l.v.a and v.a.g.i.n.al entrance, so that unless a cushion is placed under the b.u.t.tocks it is difficult for the man to effect coitus in the usual position without giving much pain to the woman. They add that another anomaly, less easy to remedy, consists in an abnormally anterior position of the v.a.g.i.n.al entrance close beneath the pelvic bone, so that, although intromission is easy, the spasmodic contraction of the v.a.g.i.n.a at the culmination of o.r.g.a.s.m presses the p.e.n.i.s against the bone and causes intolerable pain to the man.

The mons veneris and the l.a.b.i.a majora are, after the age of p.u.b.erty, always normally covered by a more or less profuse growth of hair. It is notable that the apes, notwithstanding their general tendency to hairiness, show no such special development of hair in this region. We thus see that all the external and more conspicuous portions of the s.e.xual sphere in woman-the mons veneris, the l.a.b.i.a majora, and the hair-represent not so much an animal inheritance, such as we commonly misrepresent them to be, but a higher and genuinely human development. As none of these structures subserve any clear practical use, it would appear that they must have developed by s.e.xual selection to satisfy the aesthetic demands of the eye.[83]

The character and arrangement of the pubic hair, investigated by Eschricht and Voigt more than half a century ago, have been more recently studied by Bergh. As these observers have pointed out, there are various converging hair streams from above and below, the c.l.i.toris seeming to be the center towards which they are directed. The hair-covering thus formed is usually ample and, as a rule, is more so in brunettes than in blondes. It is nearly always bent, curly and more or less spirally twisted.[84] There are frequently one or two curls at the commencement of the fissure, rolled outwards, and occasionally a well marked tuft in the middle line. In abundance the pubic hair corresponds with the axillary hair; when one region is defective in hair the other is usually so also. Strong eyebrows also usually indicate a strong development of pubic hair. But the hair of the head usually varies independently, and Bergh found that of 154 women with spare pubic hair 72 had good and often profuse hair on the head. Complete or almost complete absence of pubic hair is in Bergh's experience only found in about 3 per cent. of women; these were all young and blonde.

Rothe, in his investigation of the pubic hair of 1000 Berlin women, found that no two women were really alike in this respect, but there was a tendency to two main types of arrangement, with minor subdivisions, according as the hair tended to grow chiefly in the middle line extending laterally from that line, or to grow equally over the whole extent of the pubic region; these two groups included half the cases investigated.

In men the pubic hair normally ascends anteriorly in a faint line up to the navel, with tendency to form a triangle with the apex above, and posteriorly extends backwards to the a.n.u.s. In women these anterior and posterior extensions are comparatively rare, or at all events are only represented by a few stray hairs. Rothe found this variation in 4 per cent. of North German women, though a triangle of hair was only found in 2 per cent.; Lombroso found it in 5 per cent, of Italian women; Bergh found it in only 1.6 per cent. among 1000 Danish prost.i.tutes, all sixteen of whom with three exceptions were brunettes. In Vienna, among 600 women, Coe found only 1 per cent, with this distribution of hair, and states that they were women of decidedly masculine type, though Ploss and Bartels, as well as Rothe, find, however, that heterogeny, as they term the masculine distribution, is more common in blondes. The anterior extension of hair is usually accompanied by the posterior extension around the a.n.u.s, usually very slight, but occasionally as p.r.o.nounce as in men. (According to Rothe, however, anterior heterogeny comparatively rare.) These masculine variations in the extension of the pubic hair appear to be not uncommonly a.s.sociated with other physical and psychic anomalies; it is on this account that they have sometimes been regarded as indications of a vicious or a criminal temperament; they are, however, found in quite normal women.

The pubic hair of women is usually shorter than that of men, but thick, and the individual hairs stronger and larger in diameter than those of men, as Pfaff first showed; dark hair is usually stronger than light. In both length and size the individual variations are considerable. The usual length is about 2 inches, or 3-5 centimeters, occasionally reaching about 4 inches, or 9-10 centimeters, in the larger curls. In a series of 100 women attended during confinement in London and the north of England I have only once (in a rather blonde Lancashire woman) found the hair on l.a.b.i.a reaching a conspicuous length of several inches and forming an obstruction to the manipulations involved in delivery. But Jahn delivered a woman whose pubic hair was longer than that of her head, reaching below her knee; Paulini also knew a woman whose pubic hair nearly reached her knees and was sold to make wigs; Bartholin mentions a soldier's wife who plaited her pubic hair behind her back; while Brantome has several references to abnormally long hair in ladies of the French court during the sixteenth century. In 8 cases out of 2200 Bergh found the pubic hair forming a large curly wig extending to the iliac spines. The individual hairs have occasionally been found so stiff and brush-like as to render coitus difficult.

In color the pubic hair, while generally approximating to that of the head, is sometimes (according to Rothe, in Germany, in one-third cases) lighter, and sometimes somewhat darker, as is found to be the case by Coe, especially in brunettes, and also by Bergh, in Denmark. Bergh remarks that it is generally intermediate in color between the eyebrows and the axillary hair, the latter being more or less decolorized by sweat, and that, owing to the influence of the urine and v.a.g.i.n.al discharges, the l.a.b.i.al hair is paler than that on the mons; blondes with dark eyebrows usually have dark hair on the mons. The hair on this spot, as Aristotle observed, is usually the last to turn gray.

The key to the genital apparatus in women from the psychic point of view, and, indeed, to some extent, its anatomical center, is to be found in the c.l.i.toris. Anatomically and developmentally the c.l.i.toris is the rudimentary a.n.a.logue of the masculine p.e.n.i.s. Functionally, however, its scope is very much smaller. While the p.e.n.i.s both receives and imparts specific voluptuous sensations, and is at the same time both the intromittent organ for the s.e.m.e.n and the conduit for the urine, the sole function of the c.l.i.toris is to enter into erection under the stress of s.e.xual emotion and receive and transmit the stimulatory voluptuous sensations imparted to it by friction with the masculine genital apparatus. It is so insignificant an organ that it is only within recent times that its h.o.m.ology with the p.e.n.i.s has been realized. In 1844 Kobelt wrote in his important book, Die Mannlichen und Weiblichen Woll.u.s.t-Organe, that in his attempt to show that the female organs are exactly a.n.a.logous to the male the reader will probably be unable to follow him, while even Johannes Muller, the father of scientific physiology, declared at about the same period that the c.l.i.toris is essentially different from the p.e.n.i.s. It is indeed but three centuries since the c.l.i.toris was so little known that (in 1593) Realdus Columbus actually claimed the honor of discovering it. Columbus was not its discoverer, for Fallopius speedily showed that Avicenna and Albucasis had referred to it.[85] The Arabs appear to have been very familiar with it, and, from the various names they gave it, clearly understood the important part it plays in generating voluptuous emotion.[86] But it was known in cla.s.sic antiquity; the Greeks called it ??t??, the myrtle-berry; Galen and Sora.n.u.s called it ??f? because it is covered as a bride is veiled, while the old Latin name was tentigo, from its power of entering into erection, and columella, the little pillar, from its shape. The modern term, which is Greek and refers to the sensitiveness of the part to voluptuous t.i.tillation, is said to have originated with Suidas and Pollux.[87] It was mentioned, though not adopted, by Rufus.

"The c.l.i.toris," declared Haller, "is a part extremely sensible and wonderfully prurient." It is certainly the chief though by no means the only point through which the immediate call to detumescence is conveyed to the female organism. It is, indeed, as Bryan Robinson remarks, "a veritable electrical bell b.u.t.ton which, being pressed or irritated, rings up the whole nervous system."

The nervous supply of this little organ is very large, and the dorsal nerve of the c.l.i.toris is relatively three or four times larger than that of the p.e.n.i.s. Yet the sensitive point of this organ is only 5 to 7 millimeters in extent. The length of the c.l.i.toris is usually rather over 2 centimeters (or about an inch) and 3 centimeters when erect; a length of 4 centimeters or more was regarded by Martineau as within the normal range of variation. It is not usual to find the c.l.i.toris longer than this in Europe (for among some races like the negro the c.l.i.toris is generally large), but all degrees of magnitude may be found as rare exceptions. (See, e.g., Sir J. Y. Simpson, "Hermaphrodites," Obstetric Memoirs and Contributions, vol. ii, pp. 217-226; also d.i.c.kinson, loc. cit.) It was formerly thought that the c.l.i.toris is easily enlarged by masturbation, and Martineau believed that in this way it might be doubled in length. It is probable that slight enlargement of the c.l.i.toris may be caused by very frequent masturbation, but only to an insignificant extent, and it is impossible to diagnose masturbation from the size of the c.l.i.toris. Among the women of Lake Nya.s.sa, as well as in the Caroline Islands, special methods are practiced for elongating the c.l.i.toris, but in Europe, at all events, it is probable that the variations in the size of the organ are mainly congenital. It may well be that a congenitally large c.l.i.toris is a.s.sociated with an abnormally developed excitability of the s.e.xual apparatus. Tilt stated (On Uterine and Ovarian Inflammation, p. 37) that in his experience there was a frequent though not invariable connection between a large c.l.i.toris and s.e.xual proclivity. (Schurig referred to a case of intense and life-long s.e.xual obsession a.s.sociated with an extremely large c.l.i.toris, Gynaecologia, pp. 16-17.) Of recent years considerable importance has been attached by some gynecologists (e.g., R. T. Morris, "Is Evolution Trying to Do Away With the c.l.i.toris?" Transactions American a.s.sociation of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, vol. v, 1893) to preputial adhesions around the c.l.i.toris as a source of nervous disturbance and invalidism in young women.

While the c.l.i.toris is anatomically a.n.a.logous to the p.e.n.i.s, its actual mechanism under the stress of s.e.xual excitement is somewhat different. As Lietaud long since pointed out, it cannot rise freely in erection as the p.e.n.i.s can; it is apparently bound down by its prepuce and its frenulum. Waldeyer, in his book on the pelvis, states more precisely that, unlike the p.e.n.i.s, when erect it retains its angle, only this becomes somewhat rounded so that the organ is to some slight extent lifted and protruded. Waldeyer considered that the c.l.i.toris was thus perfectly fitted to fulfill its part as the recipient of erotic stimulation from friction by the p.e.n.i.s. Adler, however, has pointed out with considerable justice, that this is not altogether the case. The c.l.i.toris was developed in mammals who practiced the posterior mode of coitus; in this position the c.l.i.toris was beneath the p.e.n.i.s, which was thus easily able in coitus to press it against the pubic bone close beneath which it is situated, and thus impart the compression and friction which the feminine organ craves. But in the human anterior mode of coitus it is not necessarily brought into close contact with the p.e.n.i.s during the act of coitus, and thus fails to receive powerful stimulation. Its restricted position, which is an advantage in posterior coitus, is a disadvantage in anterior coitus. Adler observes that it thus comes about that the human method of coitus, while by bringing breast to breast and face to face it has added a new dignity and refinement, a fresh source of enjoyment, to the embrace of the s.e.xes, has not been an unmixed advantage to woman, for while man has lost nothing by the change, woman has now to contend with an increased difficulty in attaining an adequate amount of pressure on that "electric b.u.t.ton" which normally sets the whole mechanism in operation.[88]

We may well bring into connection with the changed conditions brought about by anterior coitus the interesting fact that while the c.l.i.toris remains the most exquisitely sensitive of the s.e.xual centers in woman, voluptuous sensitivity is much more widely diffused in woman than in man. Over the whole body, indeed, it is apt to be more distinctly marked than is usually the case in man. But even if we confine ourselves to the genital region, while in man that portion of the p.e.n.i.s which enters the v.a.g.i.n.a, and especially the glans, is normally the only portion which, even during turgescence, is sensitive to voluptuous contacts, in woman the whole of the region comprised within the larger lips, including even the a.n.u.s and internally the v.a.g.i.n.a and the v.a.g.i.n.al portion of the womb,[89] become sensitive to voluptuous contacts. Deprived of the p.e.n.i.s the ability of a man to experience specifically s.e.xual sensations becomes very limited indeed. But the loss of the c.l.i.toris or of any other structure involves no correspondingly serious disability on women. Ablation of the c.l.i.toris for s.e.xual hyperaesthesia has for this reason been abandoned, except under special circ.u.mstances. The members of the Russian Skoptzy sect habitually amputate the c.l.i.toris, nymphae, and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, yet many young Skoptzy women told the Russian physician, Guttceit, that they were perfectly well able to enjoy coitus.