intense pleasure. (Alienist and Neurologist, August, 1901, p. 558.) In the light of such observations as these we may understand a morbid perversion of affection such as was recorded in the London police news some years ago (1894).  A man of 30 was charged with ill-treating his wife’s illegitimate daughter, aged 3, during a period of many months; her lips, eyes, and hands were bitten and bruised from sucking, and sometimes her pinafore was covered with blood.  “Defendant admitted he had bitten the child because he loved it.”

It is not surprising that such phenomena as these should sometimes be the stimulant and accompaniment to the sexual act.  Ferriani thus reports such a case in the words of the young man’s mistress:  “Certainly he is a strange, maddish youth, though he is fond of me and spends money on me when he has any.  He likes much sexual intercourse, but, to tell the truth, he has worn out my patience, for before our embraces there are always struggles which become assaults.  He tells me he has no pleasure except when he sees me crying on account of his bites and vigorous pinching.  Lately, just before going with me, when I was groaning with pleasure, he threw himself on me and at the moment of emission furiously bit my right cheek till the blood came.  Then he kissed me and begged my pardon, but would do it again if the wish took him.” (L.  Ferriani, Archivio di Psicopatie Sessuale, vol. i, fasc. 7 and 8, 1896, p. 107.)

In morbid cases biting may even become a substitute for coitus.  Thus, Moll (Die Kontraere Sexualempfindung, second edition, p. 323) records the case of a hysterical woman who was sexually anesthetic, though she greatly loved her husband.  It was her chief delight to bite him till the blood flowed, and she was content if, instead of coitus, he bit her and she him, though she was grieved if she inflicted much pain.  In other still more morbid cases the fear of inflicting pain is more or less abolished.

An idealized view of the impulse of love to bite and devour is presented in the following passage from a letter by a lady who associates this impulse with the idea of the Last Supper:  “Your remarks about the Lord’s Supper in ‘Whitman’ make it natural to me to tell you my thoughts about that ’central sacrament of Christianity.’  I cannot tell many people because they misunderstand, and a clergyman, a very great friend of mine, when I once told what I thought and felt, said I was carnal.  He did not understand the divinity and intensity of human love as I understand it.  Well, when one loves anyone very much,—­a child, a woman, or a man,—­one loves everything belonging to him:  the things he wears, still more his hands, and his face, every bit of his body.  We always want to have all, or part, of him as part of ourselves.  Hence the expression:  I could devour you, I love you so.  In some such warm, devouring way Jesus Christ, I have