importance in alcoholic narcosis, which
plays the principal part in civilized countries. The initial
excitation is here very accentuated. If we make a closer examination,
however, we find from the first a relaxation of sexual activity and a
weakening of all sensory irritations. In coitus, erections are
produced more slowly; the voluptuous sensations, it is true, are of
great subjective intensity, but they are developed more slowly and
there is more difficulty in producing ejaculation. The subsequent
relaxation is very great, and a man who is even only slightly
intoxicated cannot perform coitus as rapidly, nor repeat it so often,
as when he has taken no alcoholic liquor. When the narcosis increases
the impotence becomes complete. Owing to the illusion produced by the
narcosis, however, a drunken man generally imagines himself to be very
capable.

The gross and clumsy form which flirtation assumes under the action of
alcohol is only too well known. The gross and persistent obscenity of
drunken persons in railway carriages and other places toward women is
an example of alcoholic flirtation. (_Vide_ Chapter IV.)

Another peculiarity of the sexual appetite in alcoholic narcosis is
its bestiality. The higher irradiations of love are completely
paralyzed and sensuality becomes unrestrained, even in men who, when
sober, are full of refined sentiments.

The depraving effect of alcohol on the sexual appetite is therefore
unlimited. Alcohol does not limit itself to giving free play to a
bestial appetite, by paralyzing reason and sentiments of sympathy and
duty; it also has a strong tendency to pervert the appetite itself. In
a considerable proportion of cases of exhibitionism, inversion,
pederosis, sodomy, etc., the development of the perversion is greatly
favored, or even directly produced, by the action of alcohol,
especially when there is a latent predisposition. I have observed a
whole series of perversions in persons whose sexual appetite was
normal when they were sober, but became perverted on the slightest
intoxication. I am convinced that if more attention was paid to the
subject the number of cases in which alcohol increases the perversion,
or is even necessary for its development, would be increased.

But what is of much greater importance is the fact that acute and
chronic alcoholic intoxication deteriorates the germinal protoplasm of
the procreators. I refer the reader to what I have said at the end of
Chapter I