_Masturbation._—The anomaly of masturbation is the most common sexual aberration, and if found in the very young it assumes the dignity of a perversity. In the adult, masturbation, if practised with moderation, can not be considered pathological. According to Paget masturbation causes no more nor less harm than normal coitus, if practised with the same frequency and under the same conditions with regard to health, age and circumstances. Prof. Oscar Berger (Archiv f. Psychiatrie, Vol. VI, 1876) says masturbation is such a frequent manipulation that out of a hundred boys and girls ninety-nine have temporarily been addicted to it, and the hundredth, the so-called pure individual, is concealing the truth. Moll quotes a physician as saying: “Whoever denies having masturbated, has often only forgotten it; whoever claims of never having masturbated is still doing it.” Now, giving due allowance to the exaggeration of these authors in the heat of the discussion, the truth remains that the greater part of humanity has one time or another practised autoeroticism. If what the quacks and ignoramuses tell us about its dangers be true, humanity ought to have passed into oblivion long ago, or at least ought to have entirely degenerated. But we are all still alive, hale and healthy, hence moderate masturbation can not have the disastrous effects which some authors are pleased to describe. Erb (Handbuch für Rückenmarkkrankheiten, p. 163) says, the effects upon the nervous system in a man must be essentially the same, whether the frictions of the glans take place in the vagina or are carried out in any other way. The nervous shock of ejaculation remains the same, and the nervous excitement ought to be greater where the female is used. Hence masturbation, moderately practised, exercises no direct destroying effects upon a good constitution. Moderate masturbation seems to be almost a natural phenomenon. Even among animals various forms of spontaneous solitary sexual excitement are observed. Dogs masturbate by rubbing the organ with their hind-feet, or by crossing the hind-legs or lambendo fascinum lingua. The stag, when in heat, rubs his penis against trees until he effects ejaculation. Porocz saw in a zoological garden an elephant, who was in the habit of masturbating himself so often that he undermined his health and had to be sold. Prange (Revue vétér. 1856) describes a stallion that with his mentulato fascino could reach his forelegs and thus rub the organ against them. In this way he induced three to four ejaculations daily. The author observed a baboon in the zoological park se constuprantem by quickly and repeatedly pulling with his fore-foot or hand the prepuce until ejaculation took place.