series is valuable, since the facts of the sexual life are, as far as possible, recorded with much precision.  The significance of the facts varies, however, according to the view taken as to the causation of neurasthenia and allied conditions of slight nervous disorder.  Gattel argues that sexual irregularities are a peculiarly fruitful, if not invariable, source of such disorders; according to the more commonly accepted view this is not so.  If we accept the more usual view, these women fairly correspond to average women of lower class; if, however, we accept Gattel’s view, they may possess the sexual instinct in a more marked degree than average women.

In a series of 116 German women in whom the operation of removing the ovaries was performed, Pfister usually noted briefly in what way the sexual impulse was affected by the operation ("Die Wirkung der Castration auf den Weiblichen Organismus,” Archiv fuer Gynaekologie, 1898, p. 583).  In 13 cases (all but 3 unmarried) the presence of sexual desire at any time was denied, and 2 of these expressed disgust of sexual matters.  In 12 cases the point is left doubtful.  In all the other cases sexual desire had once been present, and in 2 or 3 cases it was acknowledged to be so strong as to approach nymphomania.  In about 30 of these (not including any in which it was previously very strong) it was extinguished by castration, in a few others it was diminished, and in the rest unaffected.  Thus, when we exclude the 12 cases in which the point was not apparently investigated, and the 10 unmarried women, in whom it may have been latent or unavowed, we find that, of 94 married women, 91 women acknowledged the existence of sexual desire and only 3 denied it.

Schroeter, again in Germany, has investigated the manifestations of the sexual impulse among 402 insane women in the asylum at Eichberg in Rheingau. ("Wird bei jungen Unverheiratheten zur Zeit der Menstruation staerkere sexuelle Erregheit beobaehtet?” Allgemeine Zeitschrift fuer Psychiatrie, vol. lvi, 1899, pp. 321-333.) There is no reason to suppose that the insane represent a class of the community specially liable to sexual emotion, although its manifestations may become unrestrained and conspicuous under the influence of insanity; and at the same time, while the appearance of such manifestations is evidence of the aptitude for sexual emotions, their absence may be only due to disease, seclusion, or to an intact power of self-control.

Of the 402 women, 166 were married and 236 unmarried.  Schroeter divided them into four groups:  (1) those below 20; (2) those between 20 and 30; (3) those between 30 and 40; (4) those from 40 to the menopause.  The patients included persons from the lowest class of the population, and only about a quarter of them could fairly be regarded as curable.  Thus the manifestations of sexuality were diminished, for with advance of mental disease sexual manifestations cease