The relative disposition in regard to the irritability of the external sexual organs as existing in the female, when contrasted with the male, is, for some reason, not sufficiently considered or understood. The idea of masturbation or of irritation from the genitals ending in reflex neuroses is always, as a rule, associated with the male, and that it has not been more associated with the female has deprived her of the same benefit that the prosecution of the study in this regard has been to the male sex. Masturbation among the feeble-minded, which is so common, must, of necessity, have for its determining cause a foundation of morbid irritability of the sexual organs. This is well known to be so among the males, whose hands seem instinctively to be drawn to those parts. Dr. C. F. Taylor, of New York, in an article on the "Effect of Imperfect Hygiene of the Sexual Function," published in the _American Journal of Obstetrics_ for January, 1882, gives us an account of his investigations in this regard, with the following results: "In an asylum for the feeble-minded of both sexes, it was found that the habit was about equal in the two sexes, there being only this difference: that the females began to masturbate one or two years earlier than the males, and that the habit, once established, was found to be more persistent than in the males. It was, further, ascertained that the habit came naturally, without the aid of precept or example to either sex." It may well be a question as to whether the feeble-mindedness be not a reflex condition from this excessive morbid irritability of the sexual organs. There is not much doubt but that, if one of the cases reported by Dr. Price had not been circumcised, the expressionless, listless infant would have grown, in time, into a masturbating, feeble-minded, idiotic creature, as many others, so situated, have done before it. Now, would it have been logical to have laid the morbid irritability of its generative organs to its feeble-mindedness, when its feeble-mindedness was fully demonstrated to have been wholly dependent on the sexual irritation? From these premises we might take another step forward, and ask whether, under a proper hygienic prophylaxis,--which would involve a thorough inspection of the genitals of _all_ children reported to be either physically or mentally deficient,--such a course would not greatly diminish the number of paralytics, feeble-minded, and generally deficient of both sexes? If the results in private practice are any criterion, it is safe to assert that a strict adherence to the Mosaic law for the males and to some of the African customs for the females would most assuredly relieve all these cases that might come under the caption of results of reflex neuroses. Twenty years ago this subject was, to the body of the profession, a _terra incognita_ in regard to the male, and, as the female is similarly subject to the same morbid