this cause, and either masturbate when sexual intercourse is impossible or fall into hystero-neurasthenic states.  Busch stated (Das Geschlechtsleben des Weibes, 1839, vol. i, pp. 69, 71) that not only is the working of the sexual functions in the organism stronger in women than in men, but that the bad results of sexual abstinence are more marked in women.  Sir Benjamin Brodie said long ago that the evils of continence to women are perhaps greater than those of incontinence, and to-day Hammer (Die Gesundheitlichen Gefahren der Geschlechtlichen Enthaltsamkeit, 1904) states that, so far as reasons of health are concerned, sexual abstinence is no more to be recommended to women than to men.  Nystroem is of the same opinion, though he thinks that women bear sexual abstinence better than men, and has discussed this special question at length in a section of his Geschlechtsleben und seine Gesetze.  He agrees with the experienced Erb that a large number of completely chaste women of high character, and possessing distinguished qualities of mind and heart, are more or less disordered through their sexual abstinence; this is specially often the case with women married to impotent men, though it is frequently not until they approach the age of thirty, Nystroem remarks, that women definitely realize their sexual needs.

A great many women who are healthy, chaste, and modest, feel at times such powerful sexual desire that they can scarcely resist the temptation to go into the street and solicit the first man they meet.  Not a few such women, often of good breeding, do actually offer themselves to men with whom they may have perhaps only the slightest acquaintance.  Routh records such cases (British Gynaecological Journal, Feb., 1887), and most men have met with them at some time.  When a woman of high moral character and strong passions is subjected for a very long period to the perpetual strain of such sexual craving, especially if combined with love for a definite individual, a chain of evil results, physical and moral, may be set up, and numerous distinguished physicians have recorded such cases, which terminated at once in complete recovery as soon as the passion was gratified.  Lauvergne long since described a case.  A fairly typical case of this kind was reported in detail by Brachet (De l’Hypochondrie, p. 69) and embodied by Griesinger in his classic work on “Mental Pathology.”  It concerned a healthy married lady, twenty-six years old, having three children.  A visiting acquaintance completely gained her affections, but she strenuously resisted the seducing influence, and concealed the violent passion that he had aroused in her.  Various serious symptoms, physical and mental, slowly began to appear, and she developed what seemed to be signs of consumption.  Six months’ stay in the south of France produced no improvement, either in the bodily or mental symptoms.  On returning home she became still worse.  Then she again met