had not even a rudimentary idea of sex matters.  At twenty-nine, a few months before marriage, he came to ask me how coitus was performed, and displayed an ignorance that I could not believe to exist in the mind of an otherwise intelligent man.  He had evidently no instinct to guide him, as the brutes have, and his reason was unable to supply the necessary knowledge.  It is very curious that man should lose this instinctive knowledge.  I have known another man almost equally ignorant.  He also came to me for advice in marital duties.  Both of these men masturbated, and they were normally passionate.”  Such cases are not so very rare.  Usually, however, a certain amount of information has been acquired from some for the most part unsatisfactory source, and the ignorance is only partial, though not on that account less dangerous.

Balzac has compared the average husband to an orang-utan trying to play the violin.  “Love, as we instinctively feel, is the most melodious of harmonies.  Woman is a delicious instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its quivering strings, study the pose of it, its timid keyboard, the changing and capricious fingering.  How many orangs—­men, I mean, marry without knowing what a woman is!...  Nearly all men marry in the most profound ignorance of women and of love” (Balzac, Physiologie du Mariage, Meditation VII).

Neugebauer (Monatsschrift fuer Geburtshuelfe, 1889, Bk. ix, pp. 221 et seq.) has collected over one hundred and fifty cases of injury to women in coitus inflicted by the penis.  The causes were brutality, drunkenness of one or both parties, unusual position in coitus, disproportion of the organs, pathological conditions of the woman’s organs (Cf.  R.W.  Taylor, Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders, Ch.  XXXV).  Blumreich also discusses the injuries produced by violent coitus (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. ii, pp. 770-779).  C.M.  Green (Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 13 Ap., 1893) records two cases of rupture of vagina by sexual intercourse in newly-married ladies, without evidence of any great violence.  Mylott (British Medical Journal, Sept. 16, 1899) records a similar case occurring on the wedding night.  The amount of force sometimes exerted in coitus is evidenced by the cases, occurring from time to time, in which intercourse takes place by the urethra.

Eulenburg finds (Sexuale Neuropathie, p. 69) that vaginismus, a condition of spasmodic contraction of the vulva and exaggerated sensibility on the attempt to effect coitus, is due to forcible and unskilful attempts at the first coitus.  Adler (Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, p. 160) also believes that the scarred remains of the hymen, together with painful memories of a violent first coitus, are the most frequent cause of vaginismus.

The occasional cases, however, of physical