obvious preliminary would seem to be a study of the castrated. If we know
the special peculiarities of those who by removal of the sexual glands at
a very early age have been deprived of all ability to present the
manifestations of detumescence, we shall probably be in possession of a
type which is the reverse of that which we may expect in persons of a
vigorously erotic temperament.
The most general characteristics of eunuchs would appear to be an unusual
tendency to put on fat, a notably greater length of the legs, absence of
hair in the sexual and secondary sexual regions, a less degree of
pigmentation, as noted both in the castrated negro and the white man, a
puerile larynx and puerile voice. In character they are usually described
as gentle, conciliatory, and charitable.
There can be little doubt that castration in man tends to lead to
lengthening of the legs (tibia and fibula) at puberty, from
delayed ossification of the epiphyses. The hands and feet are
also frequently longer and sometimes the forearms.
At the same
time the bones are more slender. The pelvis also is narrower. The
eunuchs of Cairo are said to be easily seen in a crowd from their
tall stature. (Collineau, quoting Lortet, _Revue Mensuelle de
l'Ecole d'Anthropologie_, May, 1896.) The castrated Skoptzy show
increased stature, and, it seems, large ears, with decreased
chest and head (L. Pittard, _Revue Scientifique_, June 20, 1903.)
Féré shows that in most of these respects the eunuch resembles
beardless and infantile subjects. ("Les Proportions des Membres
et les Caractères Sexuels," _Journal de l'Anatomie et de la
Physiologie_, November-December, 1897.) Similar phenomena are
found in animals generally. Sellheim, carefully investigating
castrated horses, swine, oxen and fowls, found retardation of
ossification, long and slender extremities, long, broad, but low
skull, relatively smaller pelvis and small thorax.
("Zur Lehre
von den Sekundären Geschlechtscharakteren,"
_Beiträge zur
Geburtshülfe und Gynäkologie_, 1898, summarized in _Centralblatt
für Anthropologie_, 1900, Heft IV.)
As regards the mental qualities and moral character of the
castrated, Griffiths considers that there is an undue prejudice
against eunuchs, and refers to Narses, who was not only one of
the first generals of the Roman Empire, but a man of highly
estimable character. (_Lancet_, March 30, 1895.) Matignon, who
has carefully studied Chinese eunuchs, points out that they
occupy positions of much responsibility, and, though regarded in
many respects as social outcasts, possess very excellent and
amiable moral qualities (_Archives Cliniques de Bordeaux_, May,
1896.) In America Everett Flood finds that epileptics and
feeble-minded boys are mentally and morally benefited by
castration. ("Notes on the Castration of Idiot Children,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, January, 1899.) It is often
forgotten that the physical and psychic qualities associated with
and largely dependent on the ability to experience the impulse of
detumescence, while essential to the perfect man, involve many
egoistic, aggressive and acquisitive characteristics which are of
little intellectual value, and at the same time inimical to many
moral virtues.
We have a further standard--positive this time rather than negative--to
aid us in determining the erotic temperament: the phenomena of puberty.
The efflorescence of puberty is essentially the manifestation of the
ability to experience detumescence. It is therefore reasonable to suppose
that the individuals in whom the special phenomena of puberty develop most
markedly are those in whom detumescence is likely to be most vigorous. If
such is the case we should expect to find the erotic temperament marked by
developed larynx and deep voice, a considerable degree of pigmentary
development in hair and skin, and a marked tendency to hairiness; while
in women there should be a pronounced growth of the breasts and
pelvis.[144]
There is yet another standard by which we may measure the individual's
aptitude for detumescence: the presence of those activities which are most
prominently brought into play during the process of detumescence. The
individual, that is to say, who is organically most apt to manifest the
physiological activities which mainly make up the process of detumescence,
is most likely to be of pronounced erotic temperament.
"Erotic persons are of motor type," remark Vaschide and Vurpas, "and we
may say generally that nearly all persons of motor type are erotic." The
state of detumescence is one of motor and muscular energy and of great
vascular activity, so that habitual energy of motor response and an active
circulation may reasonably be taken to indicate an aptitude for the
manifestation of detumescence.
These three types may be said, therefore, to furnish us valuable though
somewhat general indications. The individual who is farthest removed from
the castrated type, who presents in fullest degree the characters which
begin to emerge at the period of puberty, and who reveals a physiological
aptitude for the vigorous manifestation of those activities which are
called into action during detumescence, is most likely to be of erotic
temperament. The most cautious description of the characteristics of this
temperament given by modern scientific writers, unlike the more detailed
and hazardous descriptions of the early physiognomists, will be found to
be fairly true to the standards thus presented to us.
The man of sexual type, according to Biérent (_La Puberté_, p.
148), is hairy, dark and deep-voiced.
"The men most liable to satyriasis," Bouchereau states (art.
"Satyriasis," _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences
Médicales_), "are those with vigorous nervous system, developed
muscles, abundant hair on body, dark complexion, and white
teeth."
Mantegazza, in his _Fisiologia del Piacere_, thus describes the
sexual temperament: "Individuals of nervous temperament, those
with fine and brown skins, rounded forms, large lips and very
prominent larynx enjoy in general much more than those with
opposite characteristics. A universal tradition," he adds,
"describes as lascivious humpbacks, dwarfs, and in general
persons of short stature and with long noses."
In a case of nymphomania in a young woman, described by Alibert
(and quoted by Laycock, _Nervous Diseases of Women_, p. 28) the
hips, thighs and legs were remarkably plump, while the chest and
arms were completely emaciated. In a somewhat similar case
described by Marc in his _De la Folie_ a peasant woman, who from
an early age had experienced sexual hyperæsthesia, so that she
felt spasmodic voluptuous feelings at the sight of a man, and was
thus the victim of solitary excesses and of spasmodic movements
which she could not repress, the upper part of the body was very
thin, the hips, legs and thighs highly developed.
In his work on _Uterine and Ovarian Inflammation_
(1862, p. 37)
Tilt observes: "The restless, bashful eye, and changing
complexion, in presence of a person of the opposite sex, and a
nervous restlessness of body, ever on the move, turning and
twisting on sofa or chair, are the best indications of sexual
temperament."
An extremely sensual little girl of 8, who was constantly
masturbating when not watched, although brought up by nuns, was
described by Busdraghi (_Archivio di Psichiatria_, fas. i, 1888,
p. 53) as having chestnut hair, bright black eyes, an elevated
nose, small mouth, pleasant round face, full colored cheeks, and
plump and healthy aspect.
A highly intelligent young Italian woman with strong and somewhat
perverted sexual impulses is described as of attractive
appearance, with olive complexion, small black almond-shaped
eyes, dilated pupils, oblique thin eyebrows, very thick black
hair, rather prominent cheek-bones, largely developed jaw, and
with abundant down on lower part of cheeks and on upper lip.
(_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1899, fasc. v-vi.) As the type of the sensual woman in word and act, led by her
passions to commit various sexual offenses, Ottolenghi describes
(_Archivio di Psichiatria_, vol. xii, fasc. v-vi, p.
496) a woman
of 32 who attempted to kill her lover. The daughter of parents
who were neurotic and themselves very erotic, she was a highly
intelligent and vivacious woman, with a pleasing and open face,
very thick dark chestnut hair, large cheek-bones, adipose
buttocks almost resembling those of a Hottentot, and very thick
pubic hair. She was very fond of salt things. Sexual inclination
began at the age of 7.
Adler and Moll remark, very truly, that, so far at least as women are
concerned, sexual anæsthesia or sexual proclivity cannot be unfailingly
read on the features. Every woman desires to please, and coquetry is the
sign of a cold, rather than of an erotic temperament.[145] It may be added
that a considerable degree of congenital sexual anæsthesia by no means
prevents a woman from being beautiful and attractive, though it must
probably still always be said that, as Roubaud points out,[146] the woman
of cold and intellectual temperament, the "femme de tête," however
beautiful and skillful she may be, cannot compete in the struggle for love
with the woman whose qualities are of the heart and of the emotions. But
it seems sufficiently clear that the practical observations of skilled and
experienced observers agree in attributing to persons of erotic type
certain general characteristics which accord with those negative and
positive standards we may frame on the basis of castration, of puberty,
and of detumescence. It may be worth while to note a few of these
characteristics briefly.
The abnormal lengthening of the long bones at the age of puberty in the
castrated is, as we have seen, very pronounced. There is little tendency
to associate length of limb with an erotic temperament, and a certain
amount of data as well as of more vague opinion points in the opposite
direction. The Arabs would appear to believe that it is short rather than
tall people in whom the sexual instinct is strongly developed, and we read
in the _Perfumed Garden_: "Under all circumstances little women love
coitus more and evince a stronger affection for the virile member than
women of a large size." In his elaborate investigation of criminals Marro
found that prostitutes and women guilty of sexual offenses, as also male
sexual offenders, tend to be short and thick set.[147]
In European
folk-lore the thick, bull neck is regarded as a sign of strong
sexuality.[148] Mantegazza refers to a strong sexual temperament as being
associated with arrest or disorder of bony development, and Marro suggests
that the proverbial salacity of rachitic individuals may be due to an
increased activity of the sexual organs.[149] It may be added that
acromegaly, with its excessive bony growths, tends to be associated with
premature sexual involution.
A further point which is frequently mentioned in the case of women is the
development of the chief secondary sexual regions: the pelvis and the
breasts. It is, indeed, almost inevitable that there should be some degree
of correlation between the aptitude for bearing children and the aptitude
for experiencing detumescence. The reality of such a connection is not
only evidenced by medical observations, but receives further testimony in
popular beliefs. In Italy women with large buttocks are considered wanton,
and among the South Slavs they are regarded as especially fruitful.[150]
Blumenbach asserted that precocious venery will enlarge the breasts, and
believed that he had found evidence of this among young London
prostitutes.[151]
The association of the aptitude for detumescence with a tendency to a deep
rather than to a high voice, both in men and women, has frequently been
noted and has seldom been denied. The onset of puberty always affects the
voice; in general, Biérent states, the more bass the voice is the more
marked is the development of the sexual apparatus; "a very robust man,
with very developed sexual organs, and very dark and abundant hairy
system, a man of strong puberty in a word, is nearly always a bass."[152]
The influence of sexual excitement in deepening the voice is shown by the
rules of sexual hygiene prescribed to tenors, while a bass has less need
to observe similar precautions. In women every phase of sexual
life--puberty, menstruation, coitus, pregnancy--tends to affect the voice
and always by giving it a deeper character. The deepening of the voice by
sexual intercourse was an ancient Greek observation, and Martial refers to
a woman's good or bad singing as an index to her recent sexual habits.
Prostitutes tend to have a deep voice. Venturi points out that married
women preserve a fresh voice to a more advanced age than spinsters, this
being due to the precocious senility in the latter of an unused function.
Such a phenomenon indicates that the relationship of detumescence to the
deepening of the voice is not quite simple. This is further indicated by
the fact that in robust men abstinence still further deepens the voice
(the monk of melodrama always has a bass voice), while excessive or
precocious sexual indulgence tends to be associated with the same kind of
puerile voice as is found in those persons in whom pubertal development
has not been carried very far, or who are of what Griffiths terms
eunuchoid type. Idiot boys, who are often sexually undeveloped, tend to
have a high voice, while idiot girls (who often manifest marked sexual
proclivities) not infrequently have a deep voice.[153]
Bright dilated eyes are among the phenomena of detumescence, and are very
frequently noted in persons of a pronounced erotic temperament. This is,
indeed, an ancient observation, and Burton says of people with a black,
lively, and sparkling eye, "without question they are most amorous,"
drawing his illustrations mostly from classic literature.[154] Tardieu
described the erotic woman as having bright eyes, and Heywood Smith states
that the eyes of lascivious women resemble, though in a less degree, those
of the insane.[155] Sexual excitement is one among many causes--intellectual excitement, pain, a loud noise, even any sensory
irritation--which produce dilatation of the pupils and enlargement of the
palpebral fissure, with some protrusion of the eyeball.
The influence of
the sexual system upon the eye appears to be far less potent in men than
in women.[156] Sexual desire is, however, by no means the only irritant
within the sexual sphere which may thus influence the eye; morbid
irritations may produce the same effect. Milner Fothergill, in his book on
_Indigestion_, vividly describes the appearance of the eyes sometimes
seen in ovarian disorder: "The glittering flash which glances out from
some female irides is the external indication of ovarian irritation, and
'the ovarian gleam' has features quite its own. The most marked instance
which ever came under my notice was due to irritation in the ovaries,
which had been forced down in front of the uterus and been fixed there by
adhesions. Here there was little sexual proclivity, but the eyes were very
remarkable. They flashed and glittered unceasingly, and at times perfect
lightning bolts shot from them. Usually there is a bright glittering sheen
in them which contrasts with the dead look in the irides of sexual excess
or profuse uterine discharges."
The activity of the glandular secretions, and especially those of the
skin, during detumescence, would lead us to expect that such secretory
activity is an index to an aptitude for detumescence. As a matter of fact
it is occasionally, though not frequently, noted by medical observers. It
is stated that the erotic temperament is characterized by a special
odor.[157] The activity of the sweat-glands is seldom referred to by
medical observers in describing persons of erotic temperament, although
the descriptions of novelists not infrequently contain allusions to this
point, and the literature of an earlier age shows that the tendency to
perspiration, especially the moist hand, was regarded as a sure sign of a
sensual temperament. "The moist-handed Madonna Imperia, a most rare and
divine creature," remarks Lazarillo in Middleton's comedy _Blurt,
Master-Constable_, to quote one of many allusions to this point in the
Elizabethan drama.
The lips are sometimes noted as red and everted, perhaps thick[158];
Tardieu remarked that the typically erotic woman has thick red lips. This
corresponds with the characteristic type of the satyr in classic statues
as in later paintings; his lips are always thick and everted. Fullness,
redness, and eversion of the lips are correlated with good breathing, the
absence of anæmia, laughter, a well-fleshed face.
This kind of mouth indicates, perhaps, not so much a congenitally
erotic temperament, as an abandonment to impulse.
The opposite
type of mouth--with inverted, thin, and retracted lips--would
appear to be found with especial frequency in persons who
habitually repress their impulses on moral grounds.
Any kind of
effort to restrain involuntary muscular action may lead to
retraction of the lips: the effort to overcome anger or fear, or
even the resistance to a strong desire to urinate or defecate. In
religious young men, however, it becomes habitual and fixed. I
recall a small band of medical students, gathered together from a
large medical school, who were accustomed to meet together for
prayer and Bible-reading; the majority showed this type of mouth
to a very marked degree: pale faces, with drawn, retracted lips.
It may be termed the Christian or pious _facies_. It is much less
frequently seen in religious women (unless of masculine type),
doubtless because religion for women is in a much less degree
than for men a moral discipline.
It may be added that an interesting form of this contraction of
the lips, and one that is not purely repressive, is that which
indicates the state of muscular tension associated with the
impulse to guard and protect. In this form the contracted mouth
is the index of tenderness, and is characteristic of the mother
who is watching over the infant she is suckling at her breast. I
have observed precisely the same expression in the face of a boy
of 14 with a large congenital scrotal hernia; when the tumor was
being examined his lower lip became retracted, well marked lines
appearing from the angles downwards, though the upper lip
retained its normal expression It was precisely the tender look
we may see in the faces of mothers who are watching anxiously
over their offspring, and the emotion is evidently the same in
both cases: solicitude for a sensitive and tenderly guarded
object.
The degree of pigmentation is clearly correlated with sexual vigor. "In
general," Heusinger laid down, in 1823, "the quantity of pigment is
proportional to the functional effectiveness of the genital organs." This
connection is so profound that it may be traced very widely throughout the
organic world.
The connection between pigmentation and sexual activity is very ancient.
Even leaving out of account the wedding apparel of animals, nearly always
gorgeous in scales and plumage and hair, the sexual orifice shows a more
or less marked tendency to pigmentation during the breeding season from
fishes upward, while in mammals the darker pigmentation of this region is
a constant phenomenon in sexually mature individuals.[159]
In the human species both the negative standard of castration and the
positive standard of puberty alike indicate a correlation of this kind.
Those individuals in whom puberty never fully develops and who are
consequently said to be affected by infantilism, reveal a relative absence
of pigment in the sexual centers which are normally pigmented to a high
degree.[160] Among those Asiatic races who extirpate the ovaries in young
girls the skin remains white in the perineum, round the anus, and in the
armpits.[161] Even in mature women who undergo ovariotomy, as Kepler
found, the pigmentation of the nipples and areola disappears, as well as
of the perineum and anus, the skin taking on a remarkable whiteness.
Normally the sexual centers, and in a high degree the genital orifice,
represent the maximum of pigmentation, and under some circumstances this
is clearly visible even in infancy. Thus babies of mixed black and white
blood may show no traces of negro ancestry at birth, but there will always
be increased pigmentation about the external genitalia.[162] The linea
fusca, which reaches from the pubes to the navel and occasionally to the
ensiform cartilage, is a line of sexual pigmentation sometimes regarded as
characteristic of pregnancy, but as Andersen, of Copenhagen, has found by
the examination of several hundred children of both sexes, it exists in a
slight form in about 75 per cent. of young girls, and in almost as large a
proportion of boys. But there is no doubt that it tends to increase with
age as well as to become marked at pregnancy. At puberty there is a
general tendency to changes in pigmentation; thus Godin found that in 28
per cent, adolescent changes occurred in the eyes and hair at this period,
the hair becoming darker, though the eyes sometimes become lighter. Ammon,
in his investigation of conscripts at the age of 20
(_post_, p. 196),
discovered the significant fact that the eyes and hair darken _pari passu_
with sexual development. In women, during menstruation, there is a general
tendency to pigmentation; this is especially obvious around the eyes, and
in some cases black rings of true pigment form in this position. Even the
skin of the negro women of Loango sometimes becomes a few shades darker
during menstruation.[163] During pregnancy this tendency to pigmentation
reaches its climax. Pregnancy constantly gives rise to pigmentation of the
face, the neck, the nipples, the abdomen, and this is especially marked in
brunettes.
This association of pigmentation and sexual aptitudes has been recognized
in the popular lore of some peoples. Thus the Sicilians, who admire brown
skin and have no liking either for a fair skin or light hair, believe that
a white woman is incapable of responding to love. It is the brown woman
who feels love; as it is said in Sicilian dialect:
"Fimmina scura, fimmina
amurusa."[164]
The dependence of pigmentation upon the sexual system is shown by
the fact that irritation of the genital organs by disease will
frequently suffice to produce a high degree of pigmentation. This
may the neck, the trunk, the hands. Simpson long since noted that
uterine irritation apart from pregnancy may produce pigmentation
of the areolæ of the nipples (_Obstetric Works_, vol. i, p. 345).
Engelmann discussed the subject and gave cases, "The Hystero-Neuroses," pp. 124-139, in _Gynæcological Transactions_,
vol. xii, 1887; and a summary of a memoir by Fouquet on this
subject in _La Gynécologie_, February, 1903, will be found in