To this cause, perhaps, and possibly, also, to the
fear of causing disgust, may be ascribed the objection of men to undress
before women artists and women doctors. I am told there is often
difficulty in getting men to pose nude to women artists. Sir Jonathan
Hutchinson was compelled, some years ago, to exclude lady members of the
medical profession from the instructive demonstrations at his museum, "on
account of the unwillingness of male patients to undress before them." A
similar unwillingness is not found among women patients, but it must be
remembered that, while women are accustomed to men as doctors, men (in
England) are not yet accustomed to women as doctors.
[67] "I am acquainted with the case of a shy man," writes Dr. Harry
Campbell, in his interesting study of "Morbid Shyness" (_British Medical
Journal_, September 26, 1896), "who will make himself quite at home in the
house of a blind person, and help himself to wine with the utmost
confidence, whereas if a member of the family, who can see, comes into the
room, all his old shyness returns, and he wishes himself far away."
[68] Stanley Hall ("Showing Off and Bashfulness," _Pedagogical Seminary_,
June, 1903), quotes Dr. Anagnos, of the Perkins Institute for the Blind,
to this effect.
[69] Thus, Sonnini, in the eighteenth century, noted that the country
women in Egypt only wore a single garment, open from the armpits to the
knees on each side, so that it revealed the body at every movement; "but
this troubles the women little, provided the face is not exposed.
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