art of the sexual apparatus which can
enter into the formation of either normal or abnormal erotic conceptions;
they are the organs most prominently concerned with detumescence; they
alone enter normally into the conscious process of sex at any time. It
seems desirable, therefore, to discuss them briefly at this point.

Our knowledge of the individual and racial variations of the
external sexual organs is still extremely imperfect. A few
monographs and collections of data on isolated points may be
found in more or less inaccessible publications. As regards
women, Ploss and Bartels have devoted a chapter to the sexual
organs of women which extends to a hundred pages, but remains
scanty and fragmentary. (_Das Weib_, vol. i, Chapter VI.) The
most systematic series of observations have been made in the case
of the various kinds of degenerates--idiots, the insane,
criminals, etc.--but it would be obviously unsafe to rely too
absolutely on such investigations for our knowledge of the sexual
organs of the ordinary population.

There can be no doubt, however, that the external sexual organs
in normal men and women exhibit a peculiarly wide range of
variation. This is indicated not only by the unsystematic results
attained by experienced observers, but also by more systematic
studies. Thus Herman has shown by detailed measurements that
there are great normal variations in the conformation of the
parts that form the floor of the female pelvis. He found that the
projection of the pelvic floor varied from nothing to as much as
two inches, and that in healthy women who had borne no children
the distance between the coccyx and anus, the length of the
perineum, the distance between the fourchette and the symphysis
pubis, and the length of the vagina are subject to wide
variations. (_Lancet_, October 12, 1889.) Even the female
urethral opening varies very greatly, as has been shown by Bergh,
who investigated it in nearly 700 women and reproduces the
various shapes found; while most usually (in about a third of the
cases observed), a longitudinal slit, it may be cross-shaped,
star-shaped, crescentic, etc.; and while sometimes very small, in
about 6 per cent. of the cases it admitted the tip of the little
finger. (Bergh, _Monatsheft fuer Praktische Dermatologie_, 15
Sept., 1897.)

As regards both sex