no part in increasing unhappiness and adding to the number of men. He hated the female sex because it was a means of procreation. Only twice in his life had he allowed women to practice manustupration on him, and, with the exception of this, he had never had anything to do with them. Occasionally he had sexual desire, but never for a natural satisfaction of it. When nature did not help him, he occasionally helped himself by means of masturbation.
He is a powerful, muscular man. The formation of the genitals presents no abnormality. On the scrotum and penis are numerous scars, which resulted from his attempts at self-emasculation, but which, he asserts, were not carried out on account of pain. Genu valgum of right limb. No evidence of onanism could be discovered. He is moody, defiant, irritable. Social feelings are absolutely foreign to him. With the exception of imperfect sleep and frequent headaches, there are no functional disturbances.
From cases of this kind, depending on cerebral causes, there must be distinguished others where the absence of function arises from an absence or malformation of the generative organs, as in certain hermaphrodites, idiots, and cretins. A case belonging here is found in Maschka's hand-book.
Case 10. Complainant pleads for divorce on account of impotence of her husband, who has never had intercourse with her. She is thirty-one years old, and a virgin. The husband is somewhat weak mentally, physically strong; the genitals well developed. He declares that he has never had a complete erection or a flow of semen, and says that he is totally indifferent about intercourse with women.
Ultzmann's[1] observations show that anæsthesia sexualis is not caused by aspermia simply. He shows that even in congenital aspermia the vita sexualis and sexual power may be entirely satisfying; an additional proof that defective libido ab origine is to be sought for in cerebral conditions.
The naturæ frigidas of Zacchias are examples of a milder form of anæsthesia. They are met more frequently among women than among men. The characteristic signs of this anomaly are: slight inclination to sexual intercourse, or pronounced disinclination to coitus without sexual equivalent, and
- ↑ "Ueber männliche Sterilität," Wiener med. Presse, 1878, Nr. 1. "Ueber Potentia generandi et coeundi," Wiener Klinik, 1885, Heft 1, S. 5. Translated under the title of Genito-Urinary Neuroses, etc. The F. A. Davis Company, Philadelphia.
