Not only
are these involuntary orgasms more frequent among such women, but they
cause more disturbance of the general health in them than in other women."
[241] I may remark here that a Russian correspondent considers that I have
greatly underestimated the frequency of erotic manifestations during sleep
in young girls. "All the women I have interrogated on this point," he
informs me, "say that they have had such pollutions from the time of
puberty, or even earlier, accompanied by erotic dreams. I have put the
question to some twenty or thirty women. It is true that they were of
southern race (Italian, Spanish, and French), and I believe that
Southerners are, in this matter, franker than northern women, who consider
the activity of the flesh as shameful, and seek to conceal it." My
correspondent makes no reference to the chief point of sexual difference,
so far as my observation goes, which is that erotic dreams are
comparatively rare in those women "_who have yet had no sort of sexual
experience in waking life_." Whether or not this is correct, I do not
question the frequency of erotic dreams in girls who have had such
experience.
[242] C.C. Hersman, "Medico-legal Aspects of Eroto-Choreic Insanities,"
_Alienist and Neurologist_, July, 1897. I may mention that Pitres (_Lecons
cliniques sur l'Hysterie_, vol. ii, p. 34) records the almost identical
case of a hysterical girl in one of his wards, who was at first grateful
to the clinical clerk to whom her case was intrusted, but afterward
changed her behavior, accused him of coming nightly through the window,
lying beside her, caressing her, and then exerting violent coitus three or
four times in succession, until she was utterly exhausted.
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