brain was combined with masculine glands of sex. Magnan hypothesised a woman's brain in a man's body.
Krafft-Ebing asserts that hardly any of these Urnings are conscious of morbidity. They look upon themselves as unfortunate mainly because law and social prejudices stand in the way of their natural indulgence.[1] He also takes for proved, together with all the authorities he cites, that the abnormal sexual appetite is constitutional and inborn.
Krafft-Ebing, as might have been expected, refers the phenomenon to functional degeneration, dependent upon neuropathical conditions in the patient, which are mainly derived from hereditary affliction.
He confirms the account reported above from Casper as to the platonic or semi-platonic relations of the Urning with the men he likes, his abhorrence of coition, and his sexual gratification through acts of mutual embracement. The number of Urnings in the world, he says, is far greater than we can form the least conception of from present means of calculation.
At this point he begins to subdivide the subjects of congenital inversion. The first class he constitutes are
- ↑ This is a hit at Westphal, Krafft-Ebing's predecessor, who laid down the doctrine that Urnings are conscious of their own morbidity. Of course, both authorities are equally right. Approach an Urning with terrors of social opinion and law; and he will confess his dreadful apprehensions. Approach him from the point of view of science; and he will declare that, within four closed walls, he has no thought of guilt.
they have adopted his designation for a puzzling and still unclassified member of the human race. A Dr. Kaserer, of Vienna, is said to have invented the term Urning.
