The character and arrangement of the pubic hair, investigated by
Eschricht and Voigt more than half a century ago, have been more
recently studied by Bergh. As these observers have pointed out,
there are various converging hair streams from above and below,
the clitoris seeming to be the center towards which they are
directed. The hair-covering thus formed is usually ample and, as
a rule, is more so in brunettes than in blondes. It is nearly
always bent, curly and more or less spirally twisted.[84] There
are frequently one or two curls at the commencement of the
fissure, rolled outwards, and occasionally a well marked tuft in
the middle line. In abundance the pubic hair corresponds with the
axillary hair; when one region is defective in hair the other is
usually so also. Strong eyebrows also usually indicate a strong
development of pubic hair. But the hair of the head usually
varies independently, and Bergh found that of 154
women with
spare pubic hair 72 had good and often profuse hair on the head.
Complete or almost complete absence of pubic hair is in Bergh's
experience only found in about 3 per cent. of women; these were
all young and blonde.
Rothe, in his investigation of the pubic hair of 1000
Berlin women, found
that no two women were really alike in this respect, but there was a
tendency to two main types of arrangement, with minor subdivisions,
according as the hair tended to grow chiefly in the middle line extending
laterally from that line, or to grow equally over the whole extent of the
pubic region; these two groups included half the cases investigated.
In men the pubic hair normally ascends anteriorly in a faint line
up to the navel, with tendency to form a triangle with the apex
above, and posteriorly extends backwards to the anus. In women
these anterior and posterior extensions are comparatively rare,
or at all events are only represented by a few stray hairs. Rothe
found this variation in 4 per cent. of North German women, though
a triangle of hair was only found in 2 per cent.; Lombroso found
it in 5 per cent, of Italian women; Bergh found it in only 1.6
per cent. among 1000 Danish prostitutes, all sixteen of whom with
three exceptions were brunettes. In Vienna, among 600 women, Coe
found only 1 per cent, with this distribution of hair, and states
that they were women of decidedly masculine type, though Ploss
and Bartels, as well as Rothe, find, however, that heterogeny, as
they term the masculine distribution, is more common in blondes.
The anterior extension of hair is usually accompanied by the
posterior extension around the anus, usually very slight, but
occasionally as pronounce as in men. (According to Rothe,
however, anterior heterogeny comparatively rare.) These masculine
variations in the extension of the pubic hair appear to be not
uncommonly associated with other physical and psychic anomalies;
it is on this account that they have sometimes been regarded as
indications of a vicious or a criminal temperament; they are,
however, found in quite normal women.
The pubic hair of women is usually shorter than that of men, but
thick, and the individual hairs stronger and larger in diameter
than those of men, as Pfaff first showed; dark hair is usually
stronger than light. In both length and size the individual
variations are considerable. The usual length is about 2 inches,
or 3-5 centimeters, occasionally reaching about 4
inches, or 9-10
centimeters, in the larger curls. In a series of 100
women
attended during confinement in London and the north of England I
have only once (in a rather blonde Lancashire woman) found the
hair on labia reaching a conspicuous length of several inches and
forming an obstruction to the manipulations involved in delivery.
But Jahn delivered a woman whose pubic hair was longer than that
of her head, reaching below her knee; Paulini also knew a woman
whose pubic hair nearly reached her knees and was sold to make
wigs; Bartholin mentions a soldier's wife who plaited her pubic
hair behind her back; while Brantôme has several references to
abnormally long hair in ladies of the French court during the
sixteenth century. In 8 cases out of 2200 Bergh found the pubic
hair forming a large curly wig extending to the iliac spines. The
individual hairs have occasionally been found so stiff and
brush-like as to render coitus difficult.
In color the pubic hair, while generally approximating to that of
the head, is sometimes (according to Rothe, in Germany, in
one-third cases) lighter, and sometimes somewhat darker, as is
found to be the case by Coe, especially in brunettes, and also by
Bergh, in Denmark. Bergh remarks that it is generally
intermediate in color between the eyebrows and the axillary hair,
the latter being more or less decolorized by sweat, and that,
owing to the influence of the urine and vaginal discharges, the
labial hair is paler than that on the mons; blondes with dark
eyebrows usually have dark hair on the mons. The hair on this
spot, as Aristotle observed, is usually the last to turn gray.
The key to the genital apparatus in women from the psychic point of view,
and, indeed, to some extent, its anatomical center, is to be found in the
clitoris. Anatomically and developmentally the clitoris is the rudimentary
analogue of the masculine penis. Functionally, however, its scope is very
much smaller. While the penis both receives and imparts specific
voluptuous sensations, and is at the same time both the intromittent organ
for the semen and the conduit for the urine, the sole function of the
clitoris is to enter into erection under the stress of sexual emotion and
receive and transmit the stimulatory voluptuous sensations imparted to it
by friction with the masculine genital apparatus. It is so insignificant
an organ that it is only within recent times that its homology with the
penis has been realized. In 1844 Kobelt wrote in his important book, _Die
Mannlichen und Weiblichen Wollust-Organe_, that in his attempt to show
that the female organs are exactly analogous to the male the reader will
probably be unable to follow him, while even Johannes Müller, the father
of scientific physiology, declared at about the same period that the
clitoris is essentially different from the penis. It is indeed but three
centuries since the clitoris was so little known that (in 1593) Realdus
Columbus actually claimed the honor of discovering it.
Columbus was not
its discoverer, for Fallopius speedily showed that Avicenna and Albucasis
had referred to it.[85] The Arabs appear to have been very familiar with
it, and, from the various names they gave it, clearly understood the
important part it plays in generating voluptuous emotion.[86] But it was
known in classic antiquity; the Greeks called it myrton, the myrtle-berry;
Galen and Soranus called it nymphê because it is covered as a bride is
veiled, while the old Latin name was _tentigo_, from its power of entering
into erection, and _columella_, the little pillar, from its shape. The
modern term, which is Greek and refers to the sensitiveness of the part to
voluptuous titillation, is said to have originated with Suidas and
Pollux.[87] It was mentioned, though not adopted, by Rufus.
"The clitoris," declared Haller, "is a part extremely sensible and
wonderfully prurient." It is certainly the chief though by no means the
only point through which the immediate call to detumescence is conveyed to
the female organism. It is, indeed, as Bryan Robinson remarks, "a
veritable electrical bell button which, being pressed or irritated, rings
up the whole nervous system."
The nervous supply of this little organ is very large, and the
dorsal nerve of the clitoris is relatively three or four times
larger than that of the penis. Yet the sensitive point of this
organ is only 5 to 7 millimeters in extent. The length of the
clitoris is usually rather over 2 centimeters (or about an inch)
and 3 centimeters when erect; a length of 4
centimeters or more
was regarded by Martineau as within the normal range of
variation. It is not usual to find the clitoris longer than this
in Europe (for among some races like the negro the clitoris is
generally large), but all degrees of magnitude may be found as
rare exceptions. (See, e.g., Sir J.Y. Simpson,
"Hermaphrodites,"
_Obstetric Memoirs and Contributions_, vol. ii, pp.
217-226; also
Dickinson, loc. cit.) It was formerly thought that the clitoris
is easily enlarged by masturbation, and Martineau believed that
in this way it might be doubled in length. It is probable that
slight enlargement of the clitoris may be caused by very
frequent masturbation, but only to an insignificant extent, and
it is impossible to diagnose masturbation from the size of the
clitoris. Among the women of Lake Nyassa, as well as in the
Caroline Islands, special methods are practiced for elongating
the clitoris, but in Europe, at all events, it is probable that
the variations in the size of the organ are mainly congenital. It
may well be that a congenitally large clitoris is associated with
an abnormally developed excitability of the sexual apparatus.
Tilt stated (_On Uterine and Ovarian Inflammation_, p. 37) that
in his experience there was a frequent though not invariable
connection between a large clitoris and sexual proclivity.
(Schurig referred to a case of intense and life-long sexual
obsession associated with an extremely large clitoris,
_Gynæcologia_, pp. 16-17.) Of recent years considerable
importance has been attached by some gynecologists (e.g., R.T.
Morris, "Is Evolution Trying to Do Away With the Clitoris?"
_Transactions American Association of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists_, vol. v, 1893) to preputial adhesions around the
clitoris as a source of nervous disturbance and invalidism in
young women.
While the clitoris is anatomically analogous to the penis, its actual
mechanism under the stress of sexual excitement is somewhat different. As
Liétaud long since pointed out, it cannot rise freely in erection as the
penis can; it is apparently bound down by its prepuce and its frenulum.
Waldeyer, in his book on the pelvis, states more precisely that, unlike
the penis, when erect it retains its angle, only this becomes somewhat
rounded so that the organ is to some slight extent lifted and protruded.
Waldeyer considered that the clitoris was thus perfectly fitted to fulfill
its part as the recipient of erotic stimulation from friction by the
penis. Adler, however, has pointed out with considerable justice, that
this is not altogether the case. The clitoris was developed in mammals who
practiced the posterior mode of coitus; in this position the clitoris was
beneath the penis, which was thus easily able in coitus to press it
against the pubic bone close beneath which it is situated, and thus impart
the compression and friction which the feminine organ craves. But in the
human anterior mode of coitus it is not necessarily brought into close
contact with the penis during the act of coitus, and thus fails to receive
powerful stimulation. Its restricted position, which is an advantage in
posterior coitus, is a disadvantage in anterior coitus.
Adler observes
that it thus comes about that the human method of coitus, while by
bringing breast to breast and face to face it has added a new dignity and
refinement, a fresh source of enjoyment, to the embrace of the sexes, has
not been an unmixed advantage to woman, for while man has lost nothing by
the change, woman has now to contend with an increased difficulty in
attaining an adequate amount of pressure on that
"electric button" which
normally sets the whole mechanism in operation.[88]
We may well bring into connection with the changed conditions brought
about by anterior coitus the interesting fact that while the clitoris
remains the most exquisitely sensitive of the sexual centers in woman,
voluptuous sensitivity is much more widely diffused in woman than in man.
Over the whole body, indeed, it is apt to be more distinctly marked than
is usually the case in man. But even if we confine ourselves to the
genital region, while in man that portion of the penis which enters the
vagina, and especially the glans, is normally the only portion which, even
during turgescence, is sensitive to voluptuous contacts, in woman the
whole of the region comprised within the larger lips, including even the
anus and internally the vagina and the vaginal portion of the womb,[89]
become sensitive to voluptuous contacts. Deprived of the penis the ability
of a man to experience specifically sexual sensations becomes very limited
indeed. But the loss of the clitoris or of any other structure involves no
correspondingly serious disability on women. Ablation of the clitoris for
sexual hyperæsthesia has for this reason been abandoned, except under
special circumstances. The members of the Russian Skoptzy sect habitually
amputate the clitoris, nymphæ, and breasts, yet many young Skoptzy women
told the Russian physician, Guttceit, that they were perfectly well able
to enjoy coitus.
Freud believes that in very young girls the clitoris is the
exclusive seat of sexual sensation, masturbation at this age
being directed to the clitoris alone, and spontaneous sexual
excitement being confined to twitchings and erection of this
organ, so that young girls are able, from their own experience,
to recognize without instruction the signs of sexual excitement
in boys. At a later age sexual excitability spreads from the
clitoris to other regions--just as the easy inflammability of
wood sets light to coal--though in the male the penis remains
from first to last normally the almost exclusive seat of specific
excitability. (S. Freud, _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_,
p. 62.)
The anus would, however, seem to be sometimes an erogenous zone
even at an early age. Titillation of the anus appears to be
frequently pleasurable in women; and this is not surprising
considering the high degree of erotic sensitivity which is easily
developed at the body orifices where skin meets mucous membrane.
(Thus the meatus of the urethra is a highly erogenous zone, as is
sufficiently shown by the frequency with which hair-pins and
other articles used in masturbation find their way into the
bladder.) It is in this germinal sensitivity, undoubtedly, that
we find a chief key to the practice of _pedicatio_.
Freud
attaches great importance to the anus as a sexually erogenous
zone at a very early age, and considers that it very frequently
makes its influence felt in this respect. He believes that
intestinal catarrhs in very early life and hæmorrhoids later tend
to develop sensibility in the anus. He finds an indication that
the anus has become a sexually erogenous zone when children wish
to allow the contents of the rectum to accumulate so that
defecation may by its increased difficulty involve voluptuous
sensations, and adds that masturbatory excitation of the anus
with the fingers is by no means rare in older children. (S.
Freud, _Op. cit._, pp. 40-42.) A medical correspondent in India
tells me of a European lady who derived, she said,
"quite as
much, indeed more," pleasure from digitally titillating her
rectum as from vulvo-vaginal titillation; she had several times
submitted to _pedicatio_ and enjoyed it, though it was painful
during penetration. The anus may retain this erogenous
irritability even in old age, and Routh mentions the case of a
lady of over 70, the reverse of lustful, who was so excited by
the act of defecation that she was invariably compelled to
masturbate, although this state of things was a source of great
mental misery to her. (C.H.F. Routh, _British Gynæcological
Journal_, February, 1887, p. 48.)
Bölsche has sought the explanation of the erogenous nature of the
anus, and the key to _pedicatio_, in an atavistic return to the
very remote amphibian days when the anus was combined with the
sexual parts in a common cloaca. But it is unnecessary to invoke
any vestigial inheritance from a vastly remote past when we bear
in mind that the innervation of these two adjoining regions is
inevitably very closely related. The presence of a body exit with
its marked and special sensitivity at a point where it can
scarcely fail to receive the nervous overflow from an immensely
active center of nervous energy quite adequately accounts for the
phenomenon in question.
The inner lips, the nymphæ or labia minora, running parallel with the
greater lips which enclose them, embrace the clitoris anteriorly and
extend backward, enclosing the urethral exit between them as well as the
vaginal entrance. They form little wings whence their old Latin name,
_alæ_, and from their resemblance to the cock's comb were by Spigelius
termed crista galli. The red and (especially in brunettes) dark appearance
of the nymphæ suggests that they are mucous membrane and not
integumentary; it is, however, now considered that even on the inner
surface they are covered by skin and separated from the mucous membrane by
a line.[90] In structure, as described by Waldeyer, they consist of fine
connective tissue rich in elastic fibers as well as some muscular tissue,
and full of large veins, so that they are capable of a considerable degree
of turgescence resembling erection during sexual excitement, while
Ballantyne finds that the nymphæ are supplied to a notable extent with
nervous end-organs.
More than any other part of the sexual apparatus in either sex, the lesser
lips, on account of their shape, their position, and their structure, are
capable of acquired modifications, more especially hypertrophy and
elongation. By stretching, it is stated, a labium can be doubled in its
dimensions. The "Hottentot apron," or elongated nymphæ, commonly found
among some peoples in South Africa, has long been a familiar phenomenon.
In such cases a length or transverse diameter of 3 to 5
centimeters is
commonly found. But such elongated nymphæ are by no means confined to one
part of the world or to one race; they are quite common among women of
European race, and reach a size equal to most of the more reliably
recorded Hottentot cases. Dickinson, who has very carefully studied this
question in New York, finds that in 1000 consecutive gynæcological cases
the labia showed some form of hypertrophy in 36 per cent., or more than 1
in 3; while among 150 of these cases who were neurasthenic, the proportion
reached 56 per cent., even when minor or doubtful enlargements were
disregarded. Bergh, in about 16 per cent. cases, found very enlarged
nymphæ, the height reached in about 5 per cent. of the cases of
enlargement being nearly six centimeters. Ploss and Bartels, in a full
discussion: of the "Hottentot apron," come to the conclusion that this
condition is perhaps in most cases artificially produced. It is known that
among the Basutos it is the custom for the elder girls to manipulate the
nymphæ of younger children, when alone with them, almost from birth, and
on account of the elastic nature of these structures such manipulation
quite adequately accounts for the elongation. It is not necessary to
suppose that the custom is practiced for the sake of producing sexual
stimulation--though this may frequently occur--since there are numerous
similar primitive customs involving deformation of the sexual organs
without the production of sexual excitement. Dickinson has come to a
similar conclusion as regards the corresponding elongation of the nymphæ
in civilized European women. In 361 out of 1000 women of good social class
he found elongation or thickening, often with a notable degree of
wrinkling and pigmentation, and believes that this is always the result of
frequently repeated masturbation practiced with the separation of the
nymphæ; in 30 per cent. of the cases admission of masturbation was
made.[91] While this conclusion is probably correct in the main, it
requires some qualification. To assert that whenever in women who have
not been pregnant the marked protrusion of the inner lips beyond the outer
lips means that at some period manipulation has been practiced with or
without the production of sexual excitement is to make too absolute a
statement. It is highly probable that the nymphæ, like the clitoris, are
congenitally more prominent in some of the lower human races, as they are
also in the apes; among the Fuegians, for instance, according to Hyades
and Deniker, the labia minora descend lower than in Europeans, although
there is not the slightest reason to suppose that these women practice any
manipulations. Among European women, again, the nymphæ sometimes protrude
very prominently beyond the labia majora in women who are organically of
somewhat infantile type; this occurs in cases in which we may be convinced
that no manipulations have ever been practiced.[92]
It is difficult to speak very decisively as to the function of the labia
minora. They doubtless exert some amount of protective influence over the
entrance to the vagina, and in this way correspond to the lips of the
mouth after which they are called. They fulfill, however, one very
definite though not obviously important function which is indicated by the
mythologic name they have received. There is, indeed, some obscurity in
the origin of this term, nymphæ, which has not, I believe, been
satisfactorily cleared up. It has been stated that the Greek name nymphê
has been transferred from the clitoris to the labia minora. Any such
transfer could only have taken place when the meaning of the word had been
forgotten, and nymphê had become the totally different word _nymphæ_, the
goddesses who presided over streams. The old anatomists were much
exercised in their minds as to the meaning of the name, but on the whole
were inclined to believe that it referred to the action of the labia
minora in directing the urinary stream. The term nymphæ was first applied
in the modern sense, according to Bergh, in 1599, by Pinæus, mainly from
the influence of these structures on the urinary stream, and he dilated in
his _De Virginitate_ on the suitability of the term to designate so poetic
a spot.[93] In more modern times Luschka and Sir Charles Bell considered
that it is one of the uses of the nymphæ to direct the stream of urine,
and Lamb from his own observation thinks the same conclusion probable. In
reality there cannot be the slightest doubt about the function of the
nymphæ, as, in Hyrtl's phrase, "the naiads of the urinary source," and it
can be demonstrated by the simplest experiment.[94]
The nymphæ form the intermediate portal of the vagina, as the canal which
conducts to the womb was in anatomy first termed (according to Hyrtl) by
De Graaf.[95] It is a secreting, erectile, more or less sensitive canal
lined by what is usually considered mucous membrane, though some have
regarded it as integument of the same character as that of the external
genitals; it certainly resembles such integument more than, for instance,
the mucous membrane of the rectum. In the woman who has never had sexual
intercourse and has been subjected to no manipulations or accidents
affecting this region, the vagina is closed by a last and final gat