time when much less was known about venereal diseases, had a different aim. This was rather to prevent masturbation and other sexual excesses, on account of their direct effect upon the organism; an aim not neglected by the modern movement for sexual enlightenment, though subsidiary to the object of the prevention of the venereal diseases. Teachers of that day touched, of course, upon the subject of the sexual life of the child. But this was done cursorily, for when instruction was given on the sexual life, not the actual experience of children, but the sexual life of mature persons, was the subject of discourse. This must be said also of the works of those physicians who, like Hufeland in his _Makrobiotik_ (written as a sequel to the work of Tissot), spoke of the dangers of masturbation. A few of the numerous medical books dealing with the puberal development deserve mention in this place; for instance, Marro, _La Puberta_ (first edition, published in 1897), and Bacque, _La Puberte_ (Argenteuil, 1876). A number of recent works on masturbation have also touched on the topic of the sexual life of the child. Apart from these recent special investigations, the older and the more recent medical and anthropological literature contains numerous observations which concern the subject of this book. More especially do we find reports of cases in which the external manifestations of sexual maturity appeared in very early childhood. Now we find an account of a girl menstruating at four years of age, now an account of a three-year-old boy who exhibited many of the external signs of sexual maturity. Even in the older, purely psychological works we find occasional references to the sexual life of the child--a fact that will surprise no one who is acquainted with the high development of the empirical psychology (_Erfahrungspsychologie_) of that day (1800). The _Venus Urania_ of Ramdohr, for instance, a work on the psychology of love, emphasises the frequency of amatory sentiments in children.