elf an immoral
belief; such disturbance of the nervous system might or might not be
caused, but in any case the alleged "degradation" could only be the
fiction of a distorted imagination. Again, confusion had been caused by
the ancient error of making the physical sexual organs responsible for
hysteria, first the womb, more recently the ovaries; the outcome of this
belief was the extirpation of the sexual organs for the cure of hysteria.
Charcot condemned absolutely all such operations as unscientific and
dangerous, declaring that there is no such thing as hysteria of menstrual
origin.[265] Subsequently, Angelucci and Pierracini carried out an
international inquiry into the results of the surgical treatment of
hysteria, and condemned it in the most unqualified manner.[266] It is
clearly demonstrated that the physical sexual organs are not the seat of
hysteria. It does not, however, follow that even physical sexual desire,
when repressed, is not a cause of hysteria. The opinion that it was so
formed an essential part of the early doctrine of hysteria, and was
embodied in the ancient maxim: "_Nubat illa et morbus effugiet_." The
womb, it seemed to the ancients, was crying out for satisfaction, and when
that was received the disease vanished.[267] But when it became clear that
sexual desire, though ultimately founded on the sexual apparatus, is a
nervous and psychic fact, to put the sexual organs out of count was not
sufficient; for the sexual emotions may exist before puberty, and persist
after complete removal of the sexual organs. Thus it has been the object
of many writers to repel the idea that unsatisfied sexual desire can be a
cause of hysteria. Briquet pointed out that hysteria is rare among nuns
and frequent among prostitutes. Krafft-Ebing believed that most
hysterical women are not anxious for sexual satisfaction, and declared
that "hysteria caused through the non-satisfaction of the coarse sensual
sexual impulse I have never seen,"[268] while Pitres and others refer to
the frequently painful nature of sexual hallucinations in the hysterical.
But it soon becomes obvious that the psychic sexual sphere is not confined
to the gratification of conscious physical sexual desire. It is not true
that hysteria is rare among nuns, some of the most tremendous epidemics of
hysteria, and the most carefully studied, having occurred in
convents,[269] while the hysterical phenomena sometimes associated with
revivals are well known