An experienced physician, _Gutceit_, is of opinion that in young girls of 10 to 16 years of age masturbation is on the whole less common than in boys of the same age, but that on the other hand from the ages of 18, 19, and 20 onward, “sexual self-gratification is almost universally practiced by women, even if it be not always practiced to excess,” an opinion which cannot, however, be regarded as conclusive. As consequences of masturbation in the female sex, this author has observed: Fluor albus, menorrhagia, enlargement and prolapse of the uterus, pains in one or other ovary, hysterical paroxysms, great pallor. _L. Löwenfeld_ remarks that the manifestations of the sexual impulse are not normally present in the days of childhood. In consequence of pathological conditions, especially of such as effect the genital organs, in consequence of chance impressions, or in consequence of a bad example, sexual passion may indeed be awakened in children in its fullest intensity. Normally, however, the distinct manifestation of the sexual impulse is associated with a certain degree of development, of ripeness, of the reproductive organs. Physiologically, sexual passion is entirely wanting in young girls before the age of puberty. As regards the act of sexual self-gratification, this author distinguishes two forms of masturbation: (a) Peripheral-mechanical; (b) mental (psychical onanism). In the former class of cases, the sexual orgasm is produced solely or chiefly by mechanical stimulation of the skin or mucous membrane of the genital organs. In the female sex, in addition to manual stimulation, an extraordinary variety of hard and soft articles are introduced into the vagina for this purpose. Many females effect sexual self-gratification by rubbing and pressing movements of the thighs one against the other, in which the clitoris is implicated. In psychical onanism, on the contrary, as _Löwenfeld_ points out, the orgasm is produced solely by central stimulatory representations, without the assistance of any manipulation of the genital organs. The ideas that have this effect are for the most part lascivious trains of thought or the recollection of previous sexual experiences, on which the attention is concentrated. If we wish to estimate the harmfulness of the different forms of masturbation as regards the mind and the nervous system, psychical onanism must incontestably be regarded as the most deleterious.