that belonged to him.  She was constantly thinking about him; she loved him for his eyes, which seemed to her those of her own child, and especially for his intelligence.  Gradually, however, the lower nervous centers began to take part in these emotions; one day in passing her the master chanced to touch her shoulder; this contact was sufficient to produce sexual turgescence.  She began to masturbate daily, thinking of her master, and for the first time in her life she desired coitus.  She evoked the image of her master so constantly and vividly that at last hallucinations of sight, touch, and hearing appeared, and it seemed to her that he was present.  These hallucinations were only with difficulty dissipated. (P.  Serieux, Les Anomalies de L’Instinct Sexuel, 1888, p. 50.) This case presents in an insane form a phenomenon which is certainly by no means uncommon and is very significant.  Up to the age of 31 we should certainly have been forced to conclude that this woman was sexually anesthetic to an almost absolute degree.  In reality, we see this was by no means the case.  Weak health, hard work, and a brutal husband had prolonged the latency of the sexual emotions; but they were there, ready to explode with even insane intensity (this being due to the unsound heredity) in the presence of a man who appealed to these emotions.

In connection with the late evolution of the sexual emotions in women reference may be made to what is usually termed “old maid’s insanity,” a condition not met with in men.  In these cases, which are not, indeed, common, single women who have led severely strict and virtuous lives, devoting themselves to religious or intellectual work, and carefully repressing the animal side of their natures, at last, just before the climacteric, experience an awakening of the erotic impulse; they fall in love with some unfortunate man, often a clergyman, persecute him with their attentions, and frequently suffer from the delusion that he reciprocates their affections.

When once duly aroused, there cannot usually be any doubt concerning the strength of the sexual impulse in normal and healthy women.  There would, however, appear to be a distinct difference between the sexes at this point also.  Before sexual union the male tends to be more ardent; after sexual union it is the female who tends to be more ardent.  The sexual energy of women, under these circumstances, would seem to be the greater on account of the long period during which it has been dormant.

Sinibaldus in the seventeenth century, in his Geneanthropeia, argued that, though women are cold at first, and aroused with more difficulty and greater slowness than men, the flame of passion spreads in them the more afterward, just as iron is by nature cold, but when heated gives a great degree of heat.  Similarly Mandeville said of women that “their passions are not so easily raised nor so suddenly fixed upon any particular