much due to a lustful desire as to be induced by habit, ennui, anxiety, and the impulse to change temporarily the painful mental condition.
Hysteria.—In this neurosis the sexual life is very frequently abnormal; indeed, always in predisposed individuals. All the possible anomalies of the sexual function may occur here, with sudden changes and peculiar activity; and, on an hereditary degenerate basis and in moral imbecility, they may appear in the most perverse forms. The abnormal change and inversion of the sexual feeling are never without effect upon the patient's disposition.
The following case, reported by Giraud, is one of this nature worthy of repetition:—
Case 164. Marian L., of Bordeaux. At night, while the household was asleep under the influence of narcotics she had administered, she had given the children of the house to her lover for sexual enjoyment, and had looked on at the immoral acts. It was found that L. was hysterical (hemianæsthesia and convulsive attacks), but before her illness she had been a moral, trustworthy person. Since her illness she had become a shameless prostitute, and lost all moral sense.
In the hysterical the sexual sphere is often abnormally excited. This excitement may be intermittent (menstrual?). Shameless prostitution, even in married women, may result. In a milder form the sexual impulse expresses itself in onanism, going about in a room naked, smearing the person with urine and other things, or wearing male attire, etc.
Schüle (Klin. Psychiatrie, 1886, p. 237) finds very frequently an abnormally intense sexual impulse "which disposes girls, and even women living in happy marriage, to become Messalinas."
The author cited knows cases in which, on the wedding-journey, attempts at flight with men, who had been accidentally met, were made; and respected wives who entered into liaisons, and sacrificed everything to their insatiable impulse.
In hysterical insanity the abnormally intense sexual impulse may express itself in delusions of jealousy, unfounded
