ensations in early
childhood, remarks, concerning an early memory of touching a
velvet button, that "the rapture of the sensation was really
monstrous." And a lady tells me that one of her earliest memories
at the age of 3 is of the exquisite sensation of the casual
contact of a cool stone with the vulva in the act of urinating.
Such sensations, of course, cannot be termed specifically sexual,
though they help to furnish the tactile basis on which the
specifically sexual sensations develop.

The elementary sensitiveness of the skin is shown by the fact
that moderate excitation suffices to raise the temperature, while
Heidenhain and others have shown that in animals cutaneous
stimuli modify the sensibility of the brain cortex, slight
stimulus increasing excitability and strong stimulus diminishing
it. Fere has shown that the slight stimulus to the skin furnished
by placing a piece of metal on the arm or elsewhere suffices to
increase the output of work with the ergograph. (Fere, _Comptes
Rendus Societe de Biologie_, July 12, 1902; id., _Pathologic des
Emotions_, pp. 40 et seq.)

Fere found that the application of a mustard plaster to the skin,
or an icebag, or a hot-water bottle, or even a light touch with a
painter's brush, all exerted a powerful effect in increasing
muscular work with the ergograph. "The tonic effect of cutaneous
excitation," he remarks, "throws light on the psychology of the
caress. It is always the most sensitive parts of the body which
seek to give or to receive caresses. Many animals rub or lick
each other. The mucous surfaces share in this irritability of the
skin. The kiss is not only an expression of feeling; it is a
means of provoking it. Cataglottism is by no means confined to
pigeons. The tonic value of cutaneous stimulation is indeed a
commonly accepted idea. Wrestlers rub their hands or limbs, and
the hand-shake also is not without its physiological basis.

"Cutaneous excitations may cause painful sensations to cease. Many
massage practices which favor work act chiefly as sensorial
stimulants; on this account many nervous persons cannot abandon
them, and the Greeks and Romans found in massage not only health,
but pleasure. Lauder Brunton regards many common manoeuvres, like
scratching the head and pulling the mustache, as methods of
dila