injury or of pathological condition produced by violent coitus at the beginning of marriage constitute but a very small portion of the evidence which witnesses to the evil results of the prevalent ignorance regarding the art of love.  As regards Germany, Fuerbringer writes (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, p. 215):  “I am perfectly satisfied that the number of young married women who have a lasting painful recollection of their first sexual intercourse exceeds by far the number of those who venture to consult a doctor.”  As regards England, the following experience is instructive:  A lady asked six married women in succession, privately, on the same day concerning their bridal experiences.  To all, sexual intercourse had come as a shock; two had been absolutely ignorant about sexual matters; the others had thought they knew what coitus was, but were none the less shocked.  These women were of the middle class, perhaps above the average in intelligence; one was a doctor.

Breuer and Freud, in their Studien ueber Hysterie (p. 216), pointed out that the bridal night is practically often a rape, and that it sometimes leads to hysteria, which is not cured until satisfying sexual relationships are established.  Even when there is no violence, Kisch (Sexual Life of Woman, Part II) regards awkward and inexperienced coitus, leading to incomplete excitement of the wife, as the chief cause of dyspareunia, or absence of sexual gratification, although gross disproportion in the size of the male and female organs, or disease in either party, may lead to the same result.  Dyspareunia, Kisch adds, is astonishingly frequent, though sometimes women complain of it without justification in order to arouse sympathy for themselves as sacrifices on the altar of marriage; the constant sign is absence of ejaculation on the woman’s part.  Kisch also observes that wedding night deflorations are often really rapes.  One young bride, known to him, was so ignorant of the physical side of love, and so overwhelmed by her husband’s first attempt at intercourse, that she fled from the house in the night, and nothing would ever persuade her to return to her husband. (It is worth noting that by Canon law, under such circumstances, the Church might hold the marriage invalid.  See Thomas Slater’s Moral Theology, vol. ii, p. 318, and a case in point, both quoted by Rev. C.J.  Shebbeare, “Marriage Law in the Church of England,” Nineteenth Century, Aug., 1909, p. 263.) Kisch considers, also, that wedding tours are a mistake; since the fatigue, the excitement, the long journeys, sight-seeing, false modesty, bad hotel arrangements, often combine to affect the bride unfavorably and produce the germs of serious illness.  This is undoubtedly the case.

The extreme psychic importance of the manner in which the act of defloration is accomplished is strongly emphasized by Adler.  He regards