een ovulation and menstruation. I shall,
however, take this opportunity of stating that, as careful
investigations have shown, the periodic processes in question are not
limited to the uterus and the ovaries, but affect also the external
genital organs, which become congested simultaneously with menstruation;
and further, that the entire feminine organism is affected by an
undulatory rhythm of nutrition, the rise and fall of which correspond to
menstruation and to the intermenstrual interval, respectively.

I must now give some account of the peripheral processes occurring in
the female genital organs in connexion with the sexual act. In part,
they are completely analogous to those which take place in the male. I
have already pointed out that in many respects the clitoris in the
female corresponds to the penis in the male, In the clitoris, also,
erection occurs, conditioned partly by psychical and partly by physical
stimuli. The psychical stimuli consist of ideas relating to the male.
The physical stimuli may, just as in the case of the other sex, vary in
their nature. Thus, the condition of the reproductive glands may act as
a physical stimulus to erection; also the touching of certain regions of
the body, especially the clitoris, the labia minora, or other erogenic
zones. Under the influence of such stimuli, the venus plexuses making up
the vaginal bulbs also become distended with blood. In fact, speaking
generally, sexual excitement is characterised by a vigorous flow of
blood to the genital organs. During coitus, in woman, as in man, a
process of ejaculation normally occurs, taking the form of rhythmical
muscular contractions, affecting not only the perineal muscles, but also
the muscular investment of the vagina, and occasionally, perhaps, the
uterus itself. These muscular contractions also favour the expulsion of
a secretion, but this secretion does not contain the reproductive cells
of the female, and consists merely of a mixture of indifferent
secretions--the secretion of Bartholin's glands, that of the uterine
mucous membrane, and that of the mucous glands of the vagina and vulva.
In the woman also, even at the outset of the sexual act, a secretion
from the local glands takes place, whereby the genital region is
moistened prior to the actual orgasm. We have as yet no precise
knowledge as to which glands are concerned in the production of this
phenomenon, which is homologous to the _urethrorrhaea ex libidine_ of