Even before sexual development begins, before the physical ripening of the reproductive organs to functional activity, the imagination of young girls is often prematurely occupied with sexual ideas in consequence of unsuitable literature, owing to visits to theatres and exhibitions, or on account of social intercourse with young men who are not overscrupulous in the selection of topics for conversation. From the time of puberty up to the time of marriage the growing woman is under the influence of the now awakened sexual impulse, which experiences ever-renewed stimulation. A sedentary mode of life, unsuitable nutriment, and the early enjoyment of alcoholic beverages, exhibit their inevitable result in the frequency with which, in this epoch of the sexual life, chlorotic blood-changes, neurasthenic conditions, and diverse symptoms of irritation of the genital organs, make their appearance. Thus, when marriage, so often unduly postponed in consequence of the condition of modern society, does at length take place, it is apt to find the woman not only fully enlightened as regards sexual matters, but often in a state of nervous weakness from sexual stimulation, one of the type whose characteristics have been happily summed up by the French writer _Prévost_ in the expression _demi-vierge_.[15] The conjunction of this state of affairs in the bride with the frequent partial impotence of the bridegroom, who has already dissipated the greater part of his virile power before entering upon marriage, leads often to the appearance of vaginismus and other sexual neuroses in young married women. Even more disastrous in its consequences as regards the future sexual life of the wife is the ever-increasing frequency of gonorrhœal infection in the first days of marital intercourse, with all the evil results of that infection. On the other hand, an ever-larger proportion of girls belonging to the “middle and upper classes,” abstaining alike from the good and the evil results of marriage, falls under the yoke of sexual impulses denied satisfaction or gratified by abnormal means, and suffers in consequence both physically and mentally. Further sources of injury arising from the conditions of modern social life are to be found in the neglect by women of the well-to-do classes of the duty of suckling their children, and in the ever-increasing frequency with which the women of these classes, after giving birth to one or two children, resort to the use of measures for the prevention of pregnancy, which result in serious consequences as regards both the nervous system and the genital organs of the women concerned. Thus there comes an accelerated ebb in the sexual life, leading to a premature appearance of the general phenomena of senility, with a cessation of the menstrual flow. The modern wife, who claims the right to lead the life that best pleases her, will be more rapidly overtaken by sexual death.