distinct from semen and an indication that the
mind was dwelling on voluptuous images; it was also known in classic
times[113]; more recently it has often been confused with semen and has
thus sometimes caused needless anxiety to nervous persons. There is also
an increased secretion of urine, and it is probable that if the viscera
were more accessible to observation we might be able to demonstrate that
the glands throughout the body share in this increased activity.

The phenomena of detumescence culminate, however, and have their most
obvious manifestation in motor activity. The genital act, as Vaschide and
Vurpas remark, consists essentially in "a more and more marked tension of
the motor state which, reaching its maximum, presents a short tonic phase,
followed by a clonic phase, and terminates in a period of adynamia and
repose." This motor activity is of the essence of the impulse of
detumescence, because without it the sperm cells could not be brought into
the neighborhood of the germ cell and be propelled into the organic nest
which is assigned for their conjunction and incubation.

The motor activity is general as well as specifically sexual. There is a
general tendency to more or less involuntary movement, without any
increase of voluntary muscular power, which is, indeed, decreased, and
Vaschide and Vurpas state that dynamometric results are somewhat lower
than normal during sexual excitement, and the variations greater.[114] The
tendency to diffused activity of involuntary muscle is well illustrated by
the contraction of the bladder associated with detumescence. While this
occurs in both sexes, in men erection produces a mechanical impediment to
any evacuation of the bladder. In women there is not only a desire to
urinate but, occasionally, actual urination. Many quite healthy and normal
women have, as a rare accident supervening on the coincidence of an
unusually full bladder with an unusual degree of sexual excitement,
experienced a powerful and quite involuntary evacuation of the bladder at
the moment of orgasm. In women with less normal nervous systems this has,
more rarely, been almost habitual. Brantome has perhaps recorded the
earliest case of this kind in referring to a lady he knew who "quand on
lui faisait cela elle se compissait a bon escient."[115] The tendency to
trembling, constriction of throat, sneezing, emission of internal gas, and
the other similar phenomena occasionally associated with detum