Love: A Treatise on the Science of Sex-attraction: for the use of Physicians and Students of Medical JurisprudenceTalmey, Bernard Simon
Science
Love: A Treatise on the Science of Sex-attraction: for the use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence
Talmey, Bernard Simon
Sex
[BD] Some of our hyperaesthetic sexologists, who see sex everywhere,
try to construe the friendship between David and Jonathan as homosexual
love. They find their inspiration in David’s lament over Jonathan: “Thy
love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” (II Samuel i,
26.) Whoever can see in this poetical expression homosexuality has very
little sense for poetry and a good deal for sex. The Vulgata translates
the verse: “Decore nimis et amabilis super amorem mulierum,” and then
adds: “Sicut mater unicum amat filium suum ita ego te diligebam.” This
word “diligebam” surely does not sound like homosexuality. Nor does the
word ἀγαπή used by the Septuaginta, denote sex.
[BE] This infatuation of a normal woman with a woman, disguised as
a man, shows that sexual attraction is not always based upon erotic
chemotropismus between the ova and the spermatozoa.
[BF] The cases were first published by the author in the New York
Medical Journal, Feb. 21, 1914.
[BG] The wail and cry of the patient that the common herd does not
understand him are well known. It is the old feminine protest that
men do not understand women. It is the familiar catch-phrase which a
flattering yellow journalism and mediocre literature are continually
dishing out to their women readers. Men will never understand women,
is preached in and out of season, insinuating a certain depth in and
mystery about her psyche. Most certainly, the man does not understand
woman’s psyche. He does not understand his own, neither does she
understand her own. The experiments in psychological laboratories are
dealing only with the relations between the sensations and perceptions,
not with the “whence,” “how” and the “why” of the mechanism of the
mind. The mechanism by which a material fluid, cell, or electron
turns into a thought, whether in the male or the female brain, is yet
unknown, neither is there any prospect that it ever will be. Still the
workings of the human mind are subject to observation, and we know by
experience that woman’s psyche changes with the change of her dress.
The mind of a man born in poverty and brought up in humble surroundings
will always remain humble, even when he becomes a millionaire. He
adapts himself with great difficulty to changed conditions. Woman’s
adaptation to new surroundings is phenomenal. Dress her as a queen
and she is a queen, clad in rags, she acts the beggar. Normal men do
not understand the nature of such a mind that can be so influenced by
outward appearance. Neither does man understand the wonderful instinct
of the hymenopter. Yet the insect seems to be less proud of its mystery
than our patient of his or the female of the species of hers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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