An eminent gynecologist, the late Dr. Matthews Duncan, has (in his work on Sterility in Women) presented a table which, although foreign to this subject, has a certain bearing on the matter.  Matthews Duncan, believing that the absence of sexual desire and of sexual pleasure in coitus are powerful influences working for sterility, noted their presence or absence in a number of cases, and found that, among 191 sterile women between the ages of 15 and 45, 152, or 79 per cent., acknowledged the presence of sexual desire; and among 196 sterile women (mostly the same cases), 134, or 68 per cent., acknowledged the presence of sexual pleasure in coitus.  Omitting the cases over 35 years of age, which were comparatively few, the largest proportion of affirmative answers, both as regards sexual pleasure and sexual desire, was from between 30 and 34 years of age.  Matthews Duncan assumes that the absence of sexual desire and sexual pleasure in women is thoroughly abnormal.[166]

An English non-medical author, in the course of a thoughtful discussion of sexual phenomena, revealing considerable knowledge and observation,[167] has devoted a chapter to this subject in another of its aspects.  Without attempting to ascertain the normal strength of the sexual instinct in women, he briefly describes 11 cases of “sexual anesthesia” in Women (in 2 or 3 of which there appears, however, to be an element of latent homosexuality) from among the circle of his own friends.  This author concludes that sexual coldness is very common among English women, and that it involves questions of great social and ethical importance.

I have not met with any series of observations made among seemingly healthy and normal women in other countries; there are, however, various series of somewhat abnormal cases in which the point was noted, and the results are not uninstructive.  Thus, in Vienna at Krafft-Ebing’s psychiatric clinic, Gattel (Ueber die sexuellen Ursachen der Neurasthenie und Angstneurose, 1898) carefully investigated the cases of 42 women, mostly at the height of sexual life,—­i.e., between 20 and 35,—­who were suffering from slight nervous disorders, especially neurasthenia and mild hysteria, but none of them from grave nervous or other disease.  Of these 42, at least 17 had masturbated, at one time or another, either before or after marriage, in order to obtain relief of sexual feelings.  In the case of 4 it is stated that they do not obtain sexual satisfaction in marriage, but in these cases only coitus interruptus is practised, and the fact that the absence of sexual satisfaction was complained of seems to indicate an aptitude for experiencing it.  These 4 cases can therefore scarcely be regarded as exceptions.  In all the other cases sexual desire, sexual excitement, or sexual satisfaction is always clearly indicated, and in a considerable proportion of cases it is noted that the sexual impulse is very strongly developed.  This