existed as due to “latent masochism.”  Such a point of view is quite untenable.  Certainly the connection is common, but in the majority of cases of slightly marked scatalogical fetichism no masochism is evident.  And when we bear in mind the various considerations, already brought forward, which show how widespread and clearly realized is the natural and normal basis furnished for such symbolism, it becomes quite unnecessary to invoke any aid from masochism.  There is ample evidence to show that, either as a habitual or more usually an occasional act, the impulse to bestow a symbolic value on the act of urination in a beloved person, is not extremely uncommon; it has been noted of men of high intellectual distinction; it occurs in women as well as men; when existing in only a slight degree, it must be regarded as within the normal limits of variation of sexual emotion.

The occasional cases in which the urine is drunk may possibly suggest that the motive lies in the properties of the fluid acting on the system.  Support for this supposition might be found in the fact that urine actually does possess, apart altogether from its magic virtues embodied in folk-lore, the properties of a general stimulant.  In composition (as Masterman first pointed out) “beef-tea differs little from healthy urine,” containing exactly the same constituents, except that in beef-tea there is less urea and uric acid.  Fresh urine—­more especially that of children and young women—­is taken as a medicine in nearly all parts of the world for various disorders, such as epistaxis, malaria and hysteria, with benefit, this benefit being almost certainly due to its qualities as a general stimulant and restorative.  William Salmon’s Dispensatory, 1678 (quoted in British Medical Journal, April 21, 1900, p. 974), shows that in the seventeenth century urine still occupied an important place as a medicine, and it frequently entered largely into the composition of Aqua Divina.

Its use has been known even in England in the nineteenth century.  (Masterman, Lancet, October 2, 1880; R. Neale, “Urine as a Medicine,” Practitioner, November, 1881; Bourke brings together a great deal of evidence as to the therapeutic uses of urine in his Scatalogic Rites, especially pp. 331-335; Lusini has shown that normal urine invariably increases the frequency of the heart beats, Archivio di Farmacologia, fascs. 19-21, 1893.)

But it is an error to suppose that these facts account for the urolagnic drinking of urine.  As in the gratification of a normal sexual impulse, the intense excitement of gratifying a scatalogic sexual impulse itself produces a degree of emotional stimulation far greater than the ingestion of a small amount of animal extractives would be adequate to effect.  In such cases, as much as in normal sexuality, the stimulation is clearly psychic.

When, as is most commonly the case, it is the process