e on
woman, or have these affections almost necessarily ensued from
the circumstances of her unnatural environment?" It may be added
that Kisch (_Sexual Life of Woman_), while protesting against any
exaggerated estimate of the effects of sexual abstinence,
considers that in women it may result, not only in numerous local
disorders, but also in nervous disturbance, hysteria, and even
insanity, while in neurasthenic women "regulated sexual
intercourse has an actively beneficial effect which is often
striking."

It is important to remark that the evil results of sexual
abstinence in women, in the opinion of many of those who insist
upon their importance, are by no means merely due to unsatisfied
sexual desire. They may be pronounced even when the woman herself
has not the slightest consciousness of sexual needs. This was
clearly pointed out forty years ago by the sagacious Anstie (_op.
cit._) In women, especially, he remarks, "a certain restless
hyperactivity of mind, and perhaps of body also, seems to be the
expression of Nature's unconscious resentment of the _neglect of
sexual functions_." Such women, he adds, have kept themselves
free from masturbation "at the expense of a perpetual and almost
fierce activity of mind and muscle." Anstie had found that some
of the worst cases of the form of nervosity and neurasthenia
which he termed "spinal irritation," often accompanied by
irritable stomach and anaemia, get well on marriage. "There can be
no question," he continues, "that a very large proportion of
these cases in single women (who form by far the greater number
of subjects of spinal irritation) are due to this conscious or
unconscious irritation kept up by an unsatisfied sexual want. It
is certain that very many young persons (women more especially)
are tormented by the irritability of the sexual organs without
having the least consciousness of sexual desire, and present the
sad spectacle of a _vie manquee_ without ever knowing the true
source of the misery which incapacitates them for all the active
duties of life. It is a singular fact that in occasional
instances one may even see two sisters, inheriting the same kind
of nervous organization, both tormented with the symptoms of
spinal irritation and both probably suffering from repressed
sexual functions, but of who