Psychopathically increased sexual impulse in woman is known as nymphomania or uteromania. In such women there is a dominant state of psychical hyperæthesia, principally in the genital sphere. The most indifferent perceptions give rise to erotic sensations and to lascivious impulses. All sensory perceptions obtain a sexual content, and induce stimulation of the cerebral cortex. All sensation and all activity in such unhappy beings ultimately concentrates itself in the act of copulation, or in some other form of sexual gratification, the greatest perversities of sexual practice frequently arising, masturbation, tribadism, and, for the most part, prostitution, even in the case of married women. The nymphomaniacal woman, says _von Krafft-Ebing_, endeavors to allure men by means of exposure of the genital organs or indecent gestures; the sight of man produces intense sexual excitement, which is gratified by masturbation or by stimulatory movements of the pelvis. According to this author, nymphomania is not very infrequent at the climacteric period; it may even occur in old age. Abstinence in association with simultaneous excitement of the sexual sphere by mental or by peripheral stimuli (pruritus pudendi, oxyuris, etc.), may induce these states, probably, however, only in those hereditarily predisposed. The history of antiquity contains records of the corrupt practices of nymphomaniacal empresses. Thus, Messalina furnishes a well-known historical example of the abnormal violence of a pathologically intensified sexual impulse in woman. She was given the agnomen of _invicta_, having received the embraces of fourteen athletes. _Pliny_ says of her, _die ac nocte superavit quinto et vicessimo concubitu_; and _Juvenal_ writes of her the verses, ... tamen ultima cellam Clausit, adhuc ardens rigidæ tintigine vulvæ Et resupina jacens multorum absorbuit ictus Et lassata viris, necdum satiata, recessit. In corrupt Rome, Messalina was not the only woman _necdum satiata_, ever insatiable; we need only refer to the orgies of an Aggripina, a Livia, a Mallonia, or a Poppæa; and _Seneca_ hurls against the women of his day the reproach, _adeo perversum commentæ genus impudicitiæ viros ineunt_. And of Cleopatra, the beautiful Egyptian queen, Marcus Antonius writes in a letter to his physician, Soranus, that she had such violent sexual desire as to lead to her having connection in a brothel with 106 men. Through the report of _Herodotus_ it is well known that the pyramid of Cheops was built by the numerous lovers of the daughter of this king, who raised this enormous monument in recognition of the innumerable times she had yielded herself to their desires. On record also are the sexual excesses of the Roman ladies at the festival of Saturn, the festival of the Bona Dea, and the festival of Priapus; indeed, many of these women allowed themselves to be debauched in the temples (_Ploss_ and _Bartels_).