nd
slight occasional pain she noticed nothing wrong until the
husband found that penetration was impossible (_British Medical
Journal_, January 11, 1902, p. 78). The insensitiveness of the
vagina and its contrast, in this respect, with the penis--though
we are justified in regarding the penis as being, like organs of
special sense, relatively deficient in general sensibility--are
vividly presented in such an incident as the following, reported
a few years ago in America by Dr. G.W. Allen in the _Boston
Medical and Surgical Journal_: A man came under observation with
an edematous, inflamed penis. The wife, the night previous, on
advice of friends, had injected pure carbolic acid into the
vagina just previous to coitus. The husband, ignorant of the
fact, experienced untoward burning and smarting during and after
coitus, but thought little of it, and soon fell asleep. The next
morning there were large blisters on the penis, but it was no
longer painful. When seen by Dr. Allen the prepuce was retracted
and edematous, the whole penis was much swollen, and there were
large, perfectly raw surfaces on either side of the glans.

In this connection we may well bring into line a remarkable group of
phenomena concerning which much evidence has now accumulated. I refer to
the use of various appliances, fixed in or around the penis, whether
permanently or temporarily during coitus, such appliance being employed at
the woman's instigation and solely in order to heighten her excitement in
congress. These appliances have their great center among the Indonesian
peoples (in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, the Malay peninsula, the Philippines,
etc.), thence extending in a modified form through China, to become, it
appears, considerably prevalent in Russia; I have also a note of their
appearance in India. They have another widely diffused center, through
which, however, they are more sparsely scattered, among the American
Indians of the northern and more especially of the southern continents.
Amerigo Vespucci and other early travelers noted the existence of some of
these appliances, and since Miklucho-Macleay carefully described them as
used in Borneo[82] their existence has been generally recognized. They are
usually regarded merely as ethnological curiosities. As such they would
not concern us here. Their real significance for us is that they
illustrate the comparative insensi