of sexual excitement.  J. Inglis Parsons (British Medical Journal, Oct. 22, 1904, p. 1062) refers to the ovarian pain produced by strong unsatisfied sexual excitement, often in vigorous unmarried women, and sometimes a cause of great distress.  An experienced Austrian gynaecologist told Hirth (Wege zur Heimat, p. 613) that of every hundred women who come to him with uterine troubles seventy suffered from congestion of the womb, which he regarded as due to incomplete coitus.

It is frequently stated that the evil of incomplete gratification and absence of orgasm in women is chiefly due to male withdrawal, that is to say coitus interruptus, in which the penis is hastily withdrawn as soon as involuntary ejaculation is impending; and it is sometimes said that the same widely prevalent practice is also productive of slight or serious results in the male (see, e.g., L.B.  Bangs, Transactions New York Academy of Medicine, vol. ix, 1893; D.S.  Booth, “Coitus Interruptus and Coitus Reservatus as Causes of Profound Neurosis and Psychosis,” Alienist and Neurologist, Nov., 1906; also, Alienist and Neurologist, Oct., 1897, p. 588).

It is undoubtedly true that coitus interruptus, since it involves sudden withdrawal on the part of the man without reference to the stage of sexual excitation which his partner may have reached, cannot fail to produce frequently an injurious nervous effect on the woman, though the injurious effect on the man, who obtains ejaculation, is little or none.  But the practice is so widespread that it cannot be regarded as necessarily involving this evil result.  There can, I am assured, be no doubt whatever that Blumreich is justified in his statement (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. ii, p. 783) that “interrupted coitus is injurious to the genital system of those women only who are disturbed in their sensation of delight by this form of cohabitation, in whom the orgasm is not produced, and who continue for hours subsequently to be tormented by feelings of an unsatisfied desire.”  Equally injurious effects follow in normal coitus when the man’s orgasm occurs too soon.  “These phenomena, therefore,” he concludes, “are not characteristic of interrupted coitus, but consequences of an imperfectly concluded sexual cohabitation as such.”  Kisch, likewise, in his elaborate and authoritative work on The Sexual Life of Woman, also states that the question of the evil results of coitus interruptus in women is simply a question of whether or not they receive sexual satisfaction. (Cf. also Fuerbringer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, pp. 232 et seq.) This is clearly the most reasonable view to take concerning what is the simplest, the most widespread, and certainly the most ancient of the methods of preventing conception.  In the Book of Genesis we find it practiced by Onan,