The irritation of the uterus in this lady might have had more or less influence in producing these distressing symptoms. Venereal desires, and nymphomania may in fact also depend upon the state of this organ. The excitement preceding and attending the period of menstruation, renders females much more lascivious. This phenomenon is much more marked in the small number of animals who menstruate: it always coexists in them with the period of rutting. This remarkable fact, which has long been known, of asses and monkeys, has lately been ascertained to exist in the roussettes by Carnot and Lesson, and in the genette by Cuvier. Farther inflammations and diseases of the uterus have often been observed in those affected with nymphomania. Helwiel relates the history of a lady, who, after being for a long time indifferent to conjugal pleasures, became extremely salacious. She died some time afterward, and on opening the dead body, fibrous tumours were found in the tissue of the uterus, and hydaleds in the ovaries. Calmeil found in a monomaniac, who was most furiously addicted to onanism, and who had a perfect hymen, that the os tincæ and a part of the neck of the uterus were of a violet colour, and were softened and ulcerated. This author observes that generally, when deranged females imagine themselves pregnant, or that they have been violated, are finally known to think of their genital organs, there is commonly some lesion of the uterus. (_Dict. des Sc. Med._, _art. Alienes_.) In the cases which have been mentioned, the affection of the uterus was not so much the cause as the result of the excesses which had been committed, but this cannot be said of those cases where Lisfranc has seen cauterization of the neck of the uterus to be followed in the genital organs with a kind of erethism which is attended with void desires. Is not this an experimental proof, that an irritation of the uterus may produce an exaltation of the venereal sense.