Blood has sinister and calamitous implications: yet it is also associated with erotic deviations. Blood, the mere visual presentation of it, may produce strong amatory symptoms. The public brothels in ancient Rome, for instance, were established over the Circus in which gladiatorial contests were on view. The sight of the violent scenes enacted in these conflicts manifestly bestirred the blood lust, and equally the sexual urge of the masses of spectators, who subsequently thronged the lupanaria. Similarly, in Spain, brothels were built in close proximity to the bull-rings. There was, here too, a manifest association between the frenzy of the tauromachia and the resultant lustful esurgence among the spectators. Again, the perversion of flagellation involves blood. The resultant flow of blood, after whippings and lashings had been inflicted upon more or less willing victims by perverts and sadists, produced extraordinary erotic excitations. Scenes of this type are the stock in trade of the novelists the Marquis de Sade and Sacher-Masoch. * * * * * Describing an amorous intrigue with the maid Fotis, Lucius, the protagonist of the _Metamorphoses_, Apuleius’ Roman novel, adds, in respect of the effect of wine; We would eftsoones refresh our wearinesse and provoke our pleasure, and renew our venery by drinking of wine. * * * * * The primary, uncomplicated fact of life is its continuity through physiological relationships. But on this basis man has erected and developed ponderous and multiple ramifications of such functional associations, involving more than the primary purpose and activity of procreation. He has, in addition, an instinctual urge toward affection, love, desire, and lust. And these emotional manifestations have, in the course of time, become refined or coarsened or diverted into abnormal channels. In his efforts to achieve love or desire or lust and its consummations, he has exposed himself to the natural progressive degradation and impairment of his physiological capacities: and he has no less abused, weakened, or destroyed this force or energy. Hence his febrile search for some undefined amelioration of his condition or some method or contrivance, however insecure, unwarranted, or barbaric, for recovering his instinctual erotic sensuality.