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PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS.
III. Degree: Stage of Transition to Metamorphosis Sexualis Paranoica.
A further degree of development is represented by those cases in which bodily sensation is also transformed in the sense of a transmutatio secus. In this respect the following case is unique:—
- ↑ The following description of the “bote” is taken from Dr. J. G. Kiernan’s article on “Responsibility in Sexual Perversion,” read before the Chicago Medical Society, March 7, 1892: “In accordance with the well-known physiological law, that too frequent excitation of a nerve exhausts the reaction of that nerve to that excitant, sexual excess exhausts the normal reaction, whence it occurs that abnormal stimulus is required and the vice type of sexual perversion results. Such vice types crop up among savages. Dr. A. B. Holder (N. Y. Med. Jour., 1889) describes a sexual pervert called the ‘bote’ by the Montana and the ‘burdach’ by the Washington Indians. Such a pervert is found among all the tribes of the Northwest. Like all other sexual perverts, these ‘botes’ can recognize each other. Dr. Holder has found that the ‘bote’ wears the squaw dress, parts his hair like a squaw, and assumes feminine speech and manners. Their features are often masculine. In childhood feminine dress and manners are assumed, but not until puberty do ‘bote’ practices result. These consist in taking the male organ of the active party in the lips of the ‘bote,’ who experiences the sexual orgasm at the same time. A ‘bote’ examined by Dr. Holder was a splendidly formed fellow, of prepossessing face, in perfect health, active in movement, and happy in disposition. By offering payment, he induced him to submit himself, though with considerable reluctance, to a thorough examination. He was five feet eight inches high, weighed one hundred and fifty-eight pounds, and had a frank, intelligent face,—being an Indian, of course beardless. He was thirty-three years of age, and had worn woman’s dress for twenty-eight years. His dress was the usual dress of the Indian female, consisting of four articles,—a single dress or gown of half a dozen yards of cloth, made loose with wide sleeves, and skirt reaching to the ankles, the skirt and body of one piece, very much like the ‘Mother Hubbard’ negligée worn by ladies; a beaded belt loosely confining this at the waist; stockings from government annuity goods, and buckskin moccasins extending above the ankles. The hair, twenty-four or twenty-six inches long, was parted in the centre and allowed to hang loose in two masses behind the shoulders. Since among the Sioux and some other tribes it is usual for men to wear their hair in this way, it is well to observe that in this tribe (Absaroke) the men usually wear the hair in long braids, and always part it on the side and ‘roach’ the front. His skin was smooth and free from hair, there being absolutely none on the legs, arms, or breast, or in the arm-pits. This is of no special significance, as male and female Indians are both free from hair on these parts of the body. The mammæ were as rudimentary as those of the male. When he removed his dress he threw his thighs together so as to completely conceal the organs, whether male or female; such a movement is made by timid women under examination,—a movement usually successful in the female, owing to the non-projecting character of the genitals and to the rotundity of the thighs; but not usually easy, for the reverse reasons, in the male. In this the ‘bote’—either from the conformation of the thighs, which had the feminine rotundity, or from skill acquired by habit—succeeded completely. When he separated his thighs, male organs came into view, in size perhaps not quite so large as the physique of the man would indicate, but in position and shape altogether normal. The penis was flaccid. The ‘pote’ in habits very closely resembles a class described by Hippocrates among the Scythians of Caucasus, called by the Greeks anandreis, a word strikingly similar in meaning to ‘bote.’”—Trans.
