Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct: A medico-legal studyKrafft-Ebing, R. von (Richard)
Science
Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct: A medico-legal study
Krafft-Ebing, R. von (Richard)
Paraphilias
Among animals the influence of olfactory perceptions on the sexual sense
is unmistakable. Althaus (“Beiträge zur Physiol. und Pathol. des
Olfactorius.” _Archiv für Psych._, xii, H 1) declares that the sense of
smell is important with reference to the reproduction of the species. He
shows that animals of opposite sexes are drawn to each other by means of
olfactory perceptions, and that almost all animals, at the time of
rutting, emit a very strong odor from their genitals. An experiment by
Schiff is confirmatory of this. He extirpated the olfactory nerves in
puppies, and found that, as the animals grew, the male was unable to
distinguish the female. On the other hand, an experiment by Mantegazza
(“Hygiene of Love”), who removed the eyes of rabbits and found that the
defect constituted no obstacle to procreation, shows how important in
animals the olfactory sense is for the vita sexualis.
It is also remarkable that many animals (musk-ox, civet-cat, beaver)
possess glands on their sexual organs, which secrete materials having a
very strong odor.
Althaus also shows that in man there are certain relations existing
between the olfactory and sexual senses. He mentions Cloquet
(“Osphrésiologie,” Paris, 1826), who calls attention to the sensual
pleasure excited by the odors of flowers, and tells how Richelieu lived
in an atmosphere loaded with the heaviest perfumes, in order to excite
his sexual functions.
Zippe (_Wien. Med. Wochenschrift_, 1879, Nr. 24), in connection with a
case of kleptomania in an onanist, likewise establishes such relations,
and cites Hildebrand as authority, who in his popular physiology says:
“It cannot be doubted that the olfactory sense stands in remote
connection with the sexual apparatus. Odors of flowers often occasion
pleasurable sensual feelings, and when one remembers the passage in the
‘Song of Solomon,’ ‘And my hands dropped with myrrh and my fingers with
sweet-smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock,’ one finds that it
did not escape Solomon’s observation. In the Orient the pleasant
perfumes are esteemed for their relation to the sexual organs, and the
women’s apartments of the Sultan are filled with the perfumes of
flowers.”
Most, professor in Rostock (comp. Zippe), relates: “I learned from a
sensual young peasant that he had excited many a chaste girl sexually,
and easily gained his end, by carrying his handkerchief in his axilla
for a time, while dancing, and then wiping his partner’s perspiring face
with it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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