greatly predisposed constitutionally, they frequently sink into dementia, or become subjects of severe degenerative neuroses or psychoses. Lombroso (_Archiv di Psichiatria_, iv, p. 22) has collected a number of cases of children affected with very decided hereditary taint, which belong in this category. One was that of a girl who masturbated shamelessly and almost constantly at the age of three. Another girl began at the age of eight, and continued to practice masturbation when married, and even during pregnancy. She was pregnant twelve times. Five of the children died early, four were hydrocephalic, and two boys began to masturbate,—one at the age of seven, the other at the age of four. Zambaco (_L’Encéphale_, 1882, Nr. 1, 2) tells the disgusting story of two sisters affected with premature and perverse sexual desire. The elder, R., masturbated at the age of seven, practiced lewdness with boys, stole wherever she could, seduced her four-year-old sister into masturbation, and at the age of ten was given up to the practice of the most revolting vices. Even _ferrum candens ad clitoridem_ had no effect in overcoming the practice, and she masturbated with the cassock of a priest while he was exhorting her to reformation. _2. Re-awakening of Sexual Instinct in Old Age._[32] There are infrequent cases in which the sexual instinct persists until a great age. “Senectus non quidem annis sed viribus magis æstimatur” (Zittmann). Oesterlen (Maschka, Handb., iii, p. 18) mentions the case of a man aged 83, who was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment by a Wurtemberg court on account of sexual misdemeanors. Unfortunately nothing is said of the nature of the crime or of the mental condition of the criminal.[33] The manifestation of sexual instinct in old age is not in itself pathological; but presumption of pathological conditions must necessarily be entertained when the individual is decrepit and his sexual life has already long become extinct; and when the impulse, in a man whose sexual needs were in his early life, perhaps, not very marked, manifests itself with greater strength, and strives for even perverse satisfaction in a shameless and impulsive manner. In such cases there is at once suggested a presumption of pathological conditions. Medical science recognizes the fact that such an impulse depends upon the morbid alterations of the brain which lead to senile dementia. This abnormal manifestation of sexual life may be the precursor of senile dementia, and make its appearance even long before there are any well-defined manifestations of intellectual weakness. The attentive and experienced observer will always be able to detect in this prodromal stage an alteration of character _in pejus_, and a deterioration of the moral sense accompanying the peculiar sexual manifestation.