“Between these two extremes we meet with innumerable states of transition. In cases of intense exaltation various pathological symptoms make themselves manifest, such as quickening of the general circulation and violent pulsation of the arteries; the venous blood, being retained in the larger vessels by general muscular contractions, leads to an increased warmth of the body; and, further, this venous stagnation, which is still more marked in the brain in consequence of the contraction of the cervical muscles and the backward flexion of the neck, may cause cerebral congestion, during which consciousness and all mental manifestations are momentarily in abeyance. The eyes, reddened by injection of the conjunctiva, become fixed, and the expression becomes vacant; the lids close convulsively, to exclude the light. In some the breathing becomes panting and labouring; but in others it is temporarily suspended, in consequence of laryngeal spasm, and the air, after being pent up for a time in the lungs, is finally forcibly expelled, accompanied by the utterance of incoherent and incomprehensible words. “The impulses proceeding from the congested nerve centres are confused. There is an indescribable disorder both of motion and of sensation; the extremities are affected with convulsive twitchings, and may be either moved in various directions or extended straight and stiff; the jaws are pressed together so that the teeth grind against each other; and certain individuals are affected by erotic delirium to such an extent that they will seize the unguarded shoulder, for instance, of their partner in the sexual act, and bite it till the blood flows. “This delirious frenzy is usually of short duration, but sufficiently long to exhaust the forces of the organism, especially in the male, in whom the condition of hyperexcitability is terminated by a more or less abundant loss of semen. “A period of exhaustion follows, which is the more intense in proportion to the intensity of the preceding excitement. The sudden fatigue, the general sense of weakness, and the inclination to sleep, which habitually affect the male after the act of intercourse, are in part to be ascribed to the loss of semen; for in the female, however energetic the part she may have played in the sexual act, a mere transient fatigue is observed, much less in degree than that which affects the male, and permitting far sooner of a repetition of the act. ‘_Triste est omne animal post coitum, præter mulierem gallumque_,’ wrote Galen, and the axiom is essentially true--at any rate, so far as the human species is concerned.”