Associated with this vascular activity in detumescence we find a general tendency to glandular activity.  Various secretions are formed abundantly.  Perspiration is copious, and the ancient relationship between the cutaneous and sexual systems seems to evoke a general activity of the skin and its odoriferous secretions.  Salivation, which also occurs, is very conspicuous in many lower animals, as for instance in the donkey, notably the female, who just before coitus stands with mouth open, jaws moving, and saliva dribbling.  In men, corresponding to the more copious secretion in women, there is, during the latter stages of tumescence, a slight secretion of mucus—­Fuerbringer’s urethrorrhoea ex libidine—­which appears in drops at the urethral orifice.  It comes from the small glands of Littre and Cowper which open into the urethra.  This phenomenon was well known to the old theologians, who called it distillatio, and realized its significance as at once distinct from semen and an indication that the mind was dwelling on voluptuous images; it was also known in classic times[113]; more recently it has often been confused with semen and has thus sometimes caused needless anxiety to nervous persons.  There is also an increased secretion of urine, and it is probable that if the viscera were more accessible to observation we might be able to demonstrate that the glands throughout the body share in this increased activity.

The phenomena of detumescence culminate, however, and have their most obvious manifestation in motor activity.  The genital act, as Vaschide and Vurpas remark, consists essentially in “a more and more marked tension of the motor state which, reaching its maximum, presents a short tonic phase, followed by a clonic phase, and terminates in a period of adynamia and repose.”  This motor activity is of the essence of the impulse of detumescence, because without it the sperm cells could not be brought into the neighborhood of the germ cell and be propelled into the organic nest which is assigned for their conjunction and incubation.

The motor activity is general as well as specifically sexual.  There is a general tendency to more or less involuntary movement, without any increase of voluntary muscular power, which is, indeed, decreased, and Vaschide and Vurpas state that dynamometric results are somewhat lower than normal during sexual excitement, and the variations greater.[114] The tendency to diffused activity of involuntary muscle is well illustrated by the contraction of the bladder associated with detumescence.  While this occurs in both sexes, in men erection produces a mechanical impediment to any evacuation of the bladder.  In women there is not only a desire to urinate but, occasionally, actual urination.  Many quite healthy and normal women have, as a rare accident supervening on the coincidence of an unusually full bladder with an unusual degree of sexual excitement, experienced a powerful and quite