CASE 7.--The girl X., six years of age, stated by the mother to be free from all morbid inheritance, produces the general impression of being a nervous subject. She is affected with facial muscular spasms, especially affecting the corners of the mouth, the eyelids, and the neck. Her mental development, as far as can be judged from my own observations and from the account given by the parents, is perfectly normal; but attention is at once attracted by the appearance of premature development. The mother states that in the second year of life, owing to the carelessness of a nursemaid, the child fell out of her cradle, without, however, sustaining any manifest injury. The mother does not think there is any reason to suppose that the child has ever been led astray in sexual matters. For the past two years or more, the mother has noticed that the child likes to press up against articles of furniture in such a way that her genital organs come into contact with narrow edges or corners; for example, the back of a chair, and especially a small portfolio-stand in the room. At first the child did this very often. Then the mother forbade it, and the father whipped her several times for doing it; since then it has been done more furtively, but the mother has none the less often seen it done. When the child is in bed she plays with the genital organs with her fingers. A definite orgasm occurs: there are spastic twitchings of the whole body, the eyes brighten, the respiratory rhythm changes; all these changes, occurring as they do in association with the artificial stimulation of the genital organs, combine to prove that we have not to do here with a simple spasmodic neurosis, but with the artificial induction of the sexual orgasm. The process is, moreover, confined to peripheral manifestations. The most careful observation failed to show the existence, in association with the sexual excitement, of any especially tender sentiments towards other individuals.