Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5: Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in PregnancyEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5: Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in Pregnancy
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
When we have realized how profound is the organic convulsion involved by
the process of detumescence, and how great the general motor excitement
involved, we can understand how it is that very serious effects may follow
coitus. Even in animals this is sometimes the case. Young bulls and
stallions have fallen in a faint after the first congress; boars may be
seriously affected in a similar way; mares have been known even to fall
dead.[125] In the human species, and especially in men--probably, as Bryan
Robinson remarks, because women are protected by the greater slowness with
which detumescence occurs in them--not only death itself, but innumerable
disorders and accidents have been known to follow immediately after
coitus, these results being mainly due to the vascular and muscular
excitement involved by the processes of detumescence. Fainting, vomiting,
urination, defæcation have been noted as occurring in young men after a
first coitus. Epilepsy has been not infrequently recorded. Lesions of
various organs, even rupture of the spleen, have sometimes taken place. In
men of mature age the arteries have at times been unable to resist the
high blood-pressure, and cerebral hæmorrhage with paralysis has occurred.
In elderly men the excitement of intercourse with strange women has
sometimes caused death, and various cases are known of eminent persons who
have thus died in the arms of young wives or of prostitutes.[126]
These morbid results, are, however, very exceptional. They usually occur
in persons who are abnormally sensitive, or who have imprudently
transgressed the obvious rules of sexual hygiene. Detumescence is so
profoundly natural a process; it is so deeply and intimately a function of
the organism, that it is frequently harmless even when the bodily
condition is far from absolutely sound. Its usual results, under favorable
circumstances, are entirely beneficial. In men there normally supervenes,
together with the relief from the prolonged tension of tumescence, with
the muscular repose and falling blood-pressure,[127] a sense of profound
satisfaction, a glow of diffused well-being,[128] perhaps an agreeable
lassitude, occasionally also a sense of mental liberation from an
overmastering obsession. Under reasonably happy circumstances there is no
pain, or exhaustion, or sadness, or emotional revulsion. The happy lover's
attitude toward his partner is not expressed by the well-known Sonnet
(CXXIX) of Shakespeare:--
"Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated."
He feels rather with Boccaccio that the kissed mouth loses not its charm,
"Bocca baciata non perde ventura."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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