I may quote the following remarks from a communication sent to me by an experienced physician in Australia:  “No rule can be laid down in cases in which both ovaries have been extirpated.  Some women say that, though formerly passionate, they have since become quite indifferent, but I am of opinion that the majority of women who have had prior sexual experience retain desire and gratification in an equal degree to that they had before operation.  I know one case in which a young girl hardly 19 years old, who had been accustomed to congress for some twelve months, had trouble which necessitated the removal of the ovaries and tubes on both sides.  Far from losing all her desire or gratification, both were very materially increased in intensity.  Menstruation has entirely ceased, without loss of femininity in either disposition or appearance.  During intercourse, I am told, there is continuous spasmodic contraction of various parts of the vagina and vulva.”

The independence of the sexual impulse from the distention of the sexual glands is further indicated by the great frequency with which sexual sensations, in a faint or even strong degree, are experienced in childhood and sometimes in infancy, and by the fact that they often persist in women long after the sexual glands have ceased their functions.

In the study of auto-erotism in another volume of these Studies I have brought together some of the evidence showing that even in very young children spontaneous self-induced sexual excitement, with orgasm, may occur.  Indeed, from an early age sexual differences pervade the whole nervous tissue.  I may here quote the remarks of an experienced gynecologist:  “I venture to think,” Braxton Hicks said many years ago, “that those who have much attended to children will agree with me in saying that, almost from the cradle, a difference can be seen in manner, habits of mind, and in illness, requiring variations in their treatment.  The change is certainly hastened and intensified at the time of puberty; but there is, even to an average observer, a clear difference between the sexes from early infancy, gradually becoming more marked up to puberty.  That sexual feelings exist [it would be better to say ‘may exist’] from earliest infancy is well known, and therefore this function does not depend upon puberty, though intensified by it.  Hence, may we not conclude that the progress toward development is not so abrupt as has been generally supposed?...  The changes of puberty are all of them dependent on the primordial force which, gradually gathering in power, culminates in the perfection both of form and of the sexual system, primary and secondary.”

There appear to have been but few systematic observations on the persistence of the sexual impulse in women after the menopause.  It is regarded as a fairly frequent phenomenon by Kisch,