But returning to the present day, both gynecologists and alienists record numerous cases of great pathological increase in the intensity of the sexual impulse in women. According to _Lombroso_, such continued ardency of sexual desire occurs chiefly in women with an inherited tendency to crime and to prostitution, whose natures exhibit a commingling of lasciviousness with barbarism. He gives examples of such women, one of whom surrendered herself to her husband’s laborers; another had as her lovers all the desperadoes of Texas; a third had intercourse with all the herdsmen of her village; a fourth, though her husband occupied a good social position, led the life of a prostitute; a fifth, a cultured and intelligent woman, entertained a common bricklayer, and wrote to him letters full of shameless declarations of her sexual passion; further he writes of a series of criminals, in whom, indeed, increased sexual desire is a common phenomenon; one of these, a thief, experienced sexual excitement at a mere glance at a good-looking man; a murderess, in whom lascivious feeling induced masturbation whenever she saw a man, and who made experiments in sexual intercourse with dogs; another, who often took to bed with her, in addition to her son, three or four men selected at random from the streets; and many others. _Jolly_ reports the case of a widow, a celebrated _lionne_ of the _demi-monde_, who kept in her desk, side by side with devotional literature, a number of lascivious books and preparations of cantharides, and entertained quite a number of powerfully-built lovers drawn from the lowest _canaille_. In hysterical women the sexual impulse is frequently excessive, and may increase to such a degree as to produce hallucinations of coitus; sometimes, on the other hand, the impulse is extinguished, or psychopathically metamorphosed, passing in a most paradoxical manner from sexual frigidity to lascivious reflections and continuous occupation with sexual affairs; not uncommon in such women are false accusations of indecent assaults of which they assert themselves the victims. _Lombroso_ gives several examples of the increase of the sexual impulse in hysterical women: “A hysterical girl visited a physician, and said to him: ‘I am still a virgin, take me;’ she submitted him to the utmost extremity of provocation, and asserted afterward that she had been violated. Another hysterical subject, a rich young lady, met a workman in the street, offered herself to him, was accepted, and when she returned home related the affair with laughter. A third sought men from the street in order to find one suffering from syphilis, her object being to infect her own husband with the disease.”