gaze, took me up to the girl, who blushed, lowered her face, and murmured some incoherent words before the forewoman had opened her mouth, to advise her to sit fully on the chair, and not on its edge.

“As I was leaving, I heard another machine at another part of the room in accelerated movement.  The forewoman smiled at me, and remarked that that was so frequent that it attracted no notice.  It was specially observed, she told me, in the case of young work-girls, apprentices, and those who sat on the edge of their seats, thus much facilitating friction of the labia.”

In cases where the sewing-machine does not lead to direct self-excitement it has been held, as by Fothergill,[209] to predispose to frequency of involuntary sexual orgasm during sleep, from the irritation set up by the movement of the feet in the sitting posture during the day.  The essential movement in working the sewing-machine is the flexion and extension of the ankle, but the muscles of the thighs are used to maintain the feet firmly on the treadle, the thighs are held together, and there is a considerable degree of flexion or extension of the thighs on the trunk; by a special adjustment of the body, and sometimes perhaps merely in the presence of sexual hyperaesthesia, it is thus possible to act upon the sexual organs; but this is by no means a necessary result of using the sewing-machine, and inquiry of various women, with well-developed sexual feelings, who are accustomed to work the treadle, has not shown the presence of any tendency in this direction.

Sexual irritation may also be produced by the bicycle in women.  Thus, Moll[210] remarks that he knows many married women, and some unmarried, who experience sexual excitement when cycling; in several cases he has ascertained that the excitement is carried as far as complete orgasm.  This result cannot, however, easily happen unless the seat is too high, the peak in contact with the organs, and a rolling movement is adopted; in the absence of marked hyperaesthesia these results are only effected by a bad seat or an improper attitude, the body during cycling resting under proper conditions on the buttocks, and the work being mainly done by the muscles of the thighs and legs which control the ankles, flexion of the thigh on the pelvis being very small.  Most medical authorities on cycling are of opinion that when cycling leads to sexual excitement the fault lies more with the woman than with the machine.  This conclusion does not appear to me to be absolutely correct.  I find on inquiry that with the old-fashioned saddle, with an elevated peak rising toward the pubes, a certain degree of sexual excitement, not usually producing the orgasm (but, as one lady expressed it, making one feel quite ready for it), is fairly common among women.  Lydston finds that irritation of the genital organs may unquestionably be produced in both males and females by cycling.  The aggravation of haemorrhoids sometimes produced by cycling indicates also the tendency to local congestion.  With the improved flat saddles, however, constructed with more definite adjustment to the anatomical formation of the parts, this general tendency is reduced to a negligible minimum.