ir first sexual intercourse exceeds by far the
number of those who venture to consult a doctor." As regards
England, the following experience is instructive: A lady asked
six married women in succession, privately, on the same day
concerning their bridal experiences. To all, sexual intercourse
had come as a shock; two had been absolutely ignorant about
sexual matters; the others had thought they knew what coitus was,
but were none the less shocked. These women were of the middle
class, perhaps above the average in intelligence; one was a
doctor.

Breuer and Freud, in their _Studien ueber Hysterie_ (p. 216),
pointed out that the bridal night is practically often a rape,
and that it sometimes leads to hysteria, which is not cured until
satisfying sexual relationships are established. Even when there
is no violence, Kisch (_Sexual Life of Woman_, Part II) regards
awkward and inexperienced coitus, leading to incomplete
excitement of the wife, as the chief cause of dyspareunia, or
absence of sexual gratification, although gross disproportion in
the size of the male and female organs, or disease in either
party, may lead to the same result. Dyspareunia, Kisch adds, is
astonishingly frequent, though sometimes women complain of it
without justification in order to arouse sympathy for themselves
as sacrifices on the altar of marriage; the constant sign is
absence of ejaculation on the woman's part. Kisch also observes
that wedding night deflorations are often really rapes. One young
bride, known to him, was so ignorant of the physical side of
love, and so overwhelmed by her husband's first attempt at
intercourse, that she fled from the house in the night, and
nothing would ever persuade her to return to her husband. (It is
worth noting that by Canon law, under such circumstances, the
Church might hold the marriage invalid. See Thomas Slater's
_Moral Theology_, vol. ii, p. 318, and a case in point, both
quoted by Rev. C.J. Shebbeare, "Marriage Law in the Church of
England," _Nineteenth Century_, Aug., 1909, p. 263.) Kisch
considers, also, that wedding tours are a mistake; since the
fatigue, the excitement, the long journeys, sight-seeing, false
modesty, bad hotel arrangements, often combine to affect the
bride unfavorably and produce the germs of serious illness. This
is undoubt