le of abnormal
inclinations than among their normal brethren, will not bear the test of
common observation and of facts communicated in the autobiographies of
professed onanists and confessed Urnings.

The problem is too delicate, too complicated, also too natural and
simple, to be solved by hereditary disease and self-abuse. When we shift
the ground of argument from acquired to inborn sexual inversion, its
puzzling character will become still more apparent. We shall hardly be
able to resist the conclusion that theories of disease are incompetent
to explain the phenomenon in modern Europe. Medical writers abandon the
phenomenon in savage races, in classical antiquity, and in the sotadic
zone. They strive to isolate it as an abnormal and specifically morbid
exception in our civilisation. But facts tend to show that it is a
recurring impulse of humanity, natural to some people, adopted by
others, and in the majority of cases compatible with an otherwise normal
and healthy temperament.

Krafft-Ebing calls attention to the phenomenon of permanent
_effeminatio_, in males unsexed by constant riding and the exhaustion of
their virility by friction of the genitals--a phenomenon observed by
Herodotus among Scythians, and prevalent among some nomadic races of the
Caucasus at the present day.[27] He claims this in support of his theory
of masturbation; and within due limits, he has the right to do so. The
destruction of the male apparatus for reproduction, whether it be by
castration after puberty, or by an accident to the parts, or by a lesion
of the spine, or by excessive equitation, as appears proved from the
history of nomad tribes, causes men to approximate physically to the
female type, and to affect feminine occupations and habits. In
proportion as the masculine functions are interfered with, masculine
characteristics tend to disappear; and it is curious to notice that the
same result is reached upon so many divers ways.

Next he discusses a few cases in which it seems that sexual inversion
displays itself episodically under the conditions of a psychopathical
disturbance.[28] That is to say, three persons, two women and one man,
have been observed by him, under conditions approaching mental
alienation, to exchange their normal sexual inclination for abnormal
appetite. In the analysis of the problem these cases cannot be regarded
as wholly insignificant. The details show that the subjects were clearly
morbid. Therefore th