Among some Brazilian Indians a similar practice exists among mothers as regards their young children, less, however, for the sake of cleanliness than in order to facilitate sexual intercourse in future years. (Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter VI.) The manipulations of vaginal masturbation will, of course, similarly destroy the hymen.  It is also quite possible for the hymen to be ruptured by falls and other accidents. (See, e.g., a lengthy study by Nina-Rodrigues, “Des Ruptures de l’Hymen dans les Chutes,” Annales d’Hygiene Publique, September, 1903.)

On the other hand, integrity of the hymen is no proof of virginity, apart from the obvious fact that there may be intercourse without penetration. (The case has even been recorded of a prostitute with syphilitic condylomata, a somewhat masculine type of pubic arch, and vulva rather posteriorly placed, whose hymen had never been penetrated.) The hymen may be of a yielding or folding type, so that complete penetration may take place and yet the hymen be afterwards found unruptured.  It occasionally happens that the hymen is found intact at the end of pregnancy.  In some, though not all, of these cases there has been conception without intromission of the penis.  This has occurred even when the entrance was very minute.  The possibility of such conception has long been recognized, and Schurig (Syllepsilogia, 1731, Section I, cap.  VIII, p. 2) quotes ancient authors who have recorded cases.  For some typical modern cases see Guerard (Centralblatt fuer Gynaekologie, No. 15, 1895), in one of whose cases the hymen of the pregnant woman scarcely admitted a hair; also Braun (ib., No. 23, 1895).

The hymen has played a very definite and pronounced part in the social and moral life of humanity.  Until recently it has been more difficult to decide what precise biological function it has exercised to ensure its development and preservation.  Sexual selection, no doubt, has worked in its favor, but that influence has been very limited and comparatively very recent.  Virginity is not usually of any value among peoples who are entirely primitive.  Indeed, even in the classic civilization which we inherit, it is easy to show that the virgin and the admiration for virginity are of late growth; the virgin goddesses were not originally virgins in our modern sense.  Diana was the many-breasted patroness of childbirth before she became the chaste and solitary huntress, for the earliest distinction would appear to have been simply between the woman who was attached to a man and the woman who followed an earlier rule of freedom and independence; it was a later notion to suppose that the latter woman was debarred from sexual intercourse.  We certainly must not seek the origin of the hymen in sexual selection; we must find it in natural selection.  And here it might seem at first sight that we come upon a contradiction in Nature, for Nature is always devising contrivances