simorum, _Epistolarum
Centuria_, Rostochi et Lipsiae, 1714.)

In England we find that toward the end of the sixteenth century
one of Marlowe's epigrams deals with a certain Francus who before
intercourse with his mistress "sends for rods and strips himself
stark naked," and by the middle of the seventeenth century the
existence of an association between flagellation and sexual
pleasure seems to have been popularly recognized. In 1661, in a
vulgar "tragicomedy" entitled _The Presbyterian Lash_, we find:
"I warrant he thought that the tickling of the wench's buttocks
with the rod would provoke her to lechery." That whipping was
well known as a sexual stimulant in England in the eighteenth
century is sufficiently indicated by the fact that in one of
Hogarth's series representing the "Harlot's Progress" a birch rod
hangs over the bed. The prevalence of sexual flagellation in
England at the end of that century and the beginning of the
nineteenth is discussed by Duehren (Iwan Bloch) in his
_Geschlechtsleben in England_ (1901-3), especially vol. ii, ch.
vi.

While, however, the evidence regarding sexual flagellation is
rare, until recent times whipping as a punishment was extremely
common. It is even possible that its very prevalence, and the
consequent familiarity with which it was regarded, were
unfavorable to the development of any mysterious emotional state
likely to act on the sexual sphere, except in markedly neurotic
subjects. Thus, the corporal chastisement of wives by husbands
was common and permitted. Not only was this so to a proverbial
extent in eastern Europe, but also in the extreme west and among
a people whose women enjoyed much freedom and honor. Cymric law
allowed a husband to chastise his wife for angry speaking, such
as calling him a cur; for giving away property she was not
entitled to give away; or for being found in hiding with another
man. For the first two offenses she had the option of paying him
three kine. When she accepted the chastisement she was to receive
"three strokes with a rod of the length of her husband's forearm
and the thickness of his long finger, and that wheresoever he
might will, excepting on the head"; so that she was to suffer
pain only, and not injury. (R.B. Holt, "Marriage Laws and Customs
of the Cymri," _Journal of the Anthrop