Of much more importance in the history of the theory of sexual inversion was the work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (born at Mannheim in 1840 and died at Graz in 1902), for many years professor of psychiatry at Vienna University and one of the most distinguished alienists of his time. While active in all departments of psychiatry and author of a famous textbook, from 1877 onward he took special interest in the pathology of the sexual impulse. His _Psychopathia Sexualis_ contained over two hundred histories, not only of sexual inversion but of all other forms of sexual perversion. For many years it was the only book on the subject and it long remained the chief storehouse of facts. It passed through many editions and was translated into many languages (there are two translations in English), enjoying an immense and not altogether enviable vogue. Krafft-Ebing's methods were open to some objection. His mind was not of a severely critical order. He poured out the new and ever-enlarged editions of his book with extraordinary rapidity, sometimes remodelling them. He introduced new subdivisions from time to time into his classification of sexual perversions, and, although this rather fine-spun classification has doubtless contributed to give precision to the subject and to advance its scientific study, it was at no time generally accepted. Krafft-Ebing's great service lay in the clinical enthusiasm with which he approached the study of sexual perversions. With the firm conviction that he was conquering a great neglected field of morbid psychology which rightly belongs to the physician, he accumulated without any false shame a vast mass of detailed histories, and his reputation induced sexually abnormal individuals in all directions to send him their autobiographies, in the desire to benefit their fellow-sufferers.