Foville in 1833 and Landouzy in 1846
advocated somewhat similar views. The acute Laycock in 1840 quoted as
"almost a medical proverb" the saying, "_Salacitas major, major ad
hysteriam proclivitas_," fully indorsing it. More recently still Clouston
has defined hysteria as "the loss of the inhibitory influence exercised on
the reproductive and sexual instincts of women by the higher mental and
moral functions" (a position evidently requiring some modification in view
of the fact that hysteria is by no means confined to women), while the
same authority remarks that more or less concealed sexual phenomena are
the chief symptoms of "hysterical insanity."[259] Two gynaecologists of
high position in different parts of the world, Hegar in Germany and
Balls-Headley in Australia, attribute hysteria, as well as anaemia, largely
to unsatisfied sexual desire, including the non-satisfaction of the "ideal
feelings."[260] Lombroso and Ferrero, again, while admitting that the
sexual feelings might be either heightened or depressed in hysteria,
referred to the frequency of what they termed "a paradoxical sexual
instinct" in the hysterical, by which, for instance, sexual frigidity is
combined with intense sexual pre-occupations; and they also pointed out
the significant fact that the crimes of the hysterical nearly always
revolve around the sexual sphere.[261] Thus, even up to the time when the
conception of hysteria which absolutely ignored and excluded any sexual
relationship whatever had reached its height, independent views favoring
such a relationship still found expression.
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