In Loiman’s case the patient was induced by her friends in the convent to practise autoeroticism. When fourteen years of age she began to indulge in stupro manibus mutuo cum pueris of her own age. She married when nineteen years old and gave birth to her first child a year later. But she never found gratification in the conjugal embrace. The second case of Loiman was a widow of thirty-eight who had always been normal in her sexual functions and gave birth to a child at the age of twenty-seven. Two years later she lost her husband by death, and from that time she began “faute de mieux” to stuprare manu. Her voluptas increased to the point of becoming insatiable. When she has now normal congressus cum multis amatis she cannot find the desired gratification unless masturbatur in congressione. This last case shows that Freud’s explanation of frigidity of intercourse by the refusal of the clitoris to transfer its sexuality at the time of puberty does not always hold good. This woman passed through her normal puberty. The cause of the impotence of libido inter coitum in these masturbators is rather the increase of the excitability of the clitoris at the expense of the vaginal mucous membrane and of the cervix uteri, through the long-continued manual irritation of this organ. The stimulation from these sources to induce libido is thus decreased, and the excitation of the glans of the clitoris by the penis alone during coition is insufficient to induce orgasm. The immediate causes of the masturbatic practices are generally bad examples. The practice is first learned from friends in boarding schools, convents, factories or prisons. Sometimes it is also prurient curiosity which prudish educators and parents neglect to satisfy which leads young girls to self-abuse. In congenital hyperaesthesia the pleasurable titillation may accidentally be induced in complete ignorance of sexual relations. The following case is quite instructive in this respect. A young lady, twenty-four years of age, consulted the author on account of her extremely enlarged breasts. She stated that eight years ago she discovered that by a certain manipulation muliebrium she was able to experience the highest degree of pleasure. For the last eight years until very recently she continued to enjoy the fruits of her discovery. She often wished to tell her physician about her wonderful discovery for the benefit of other young women. One day the author’s book, “Woman,” fell into her hands, and she learned for the first time to her great amazement and chagrin that what she was doing was nothing else but autoeroticism. This simple story shows that ignorance is not always innocence, as some misled parents seem to think. Sometimes ignorance is just the cause of the early practice of sex activity.