wife. It is
not enough to ascertain the needs of the husband; it is also necessary to
ascertain the needs of the wife. The resultant must be a harmonious
adjustment of these two groups of needs. That consideration alone, in
conjunction with the wide variations of individual needs, suffices to
render any definite rules of very trifling value.

It is important to remember the wide limits of variation in
sexual capacity, as well as the fact that such variations in
either direction may be healthy and normal, though undoubtedly
when they become extreme variations may have a pathological
significance. In one case, for instance, a man has intercourse
once a month and finds this sufficient; he has no nocturnal
emissions nor any strong desires in the interval; yet he leads an
idle and luxurious life and is not restrained by any moral or
religious scruples; if he much exceeds the frequency which suits
him he suffers from ill-health, though otherwise quite healthy
except for a weak digestion. At the other extreme, a happily
married couple, between forty-five and fifty, much attached to
each other, had engaged in sexual intercourse every night for
twenty years, except during the menstrual period and advanced
pregnancy, which had only occurred once; they are hearty,
full-blooded, intellectual people, fond of good living, and they
attribute their affection and constancy to this frequent
indulgence in coitus; the only child, a girl, is not strong,
though fairly healthy.

The cases are numerous in which, on special occasions, it is
possible for people who are passionately attached to each other
to repeat the act of coitus, or at all events the orgasm, an
inordinate number of times within a few hours. This usually
occurs at the beginning of an intimacy or after a long
separation. Thus in one case a newly-married woman experienced
the orgasm fourteen times in one night, her husband in the same
period experiencing it seven times. In another case a woman who
had lived a chaste life, when sexual relationships finally began,
once experienced orgasm fourteen or fifteen times to her
partner's three times. In a case which, I have been assured may
be accepted as authentic, a young wife of highly erotic, very
erethic, slightly abnormal temperament, after a month's absence
from her husband, was excited twenty-six