Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/447

developed which could scarcely be surpassed between persons of opposite sex. When the friend of one prisoner is merely smiled at by another, there are often the most violent scenes of jealousy, and even beatings.

"When the violent prisoner has been put in irons, in accordance with the prison-regulations, she says 'she has had a child by her friend.'"

We are indebted to Parent-Duchatelet ("De la prostitution," 1857, vol. i, p. 159) for interesting communications concerning Lesbian love.

According to this experienced author, repugnance for the most disgusting and perverse acts (coitus in axilla, inter mammas, etc.) which men perform on prostitutes is not infrequently responsible for driving these unfortunate creatures to Lesbian love. From his statements it is seen that it is essentially prostitutes of great sensuality who, unsatisfied with intercourse with impotent or perverse men, and impelled by their disgusting practices, come to indulge in it.

Besides these, there are prostitutes who let themselves be known as given to tribadism; persons who have been in prisons for years, and in these hot beds of Lesbian love, ex abstinentia, acquired this vice.

It is interesting to know that prostitutes hate those who practice tribadism,—just as men abhor pederasts; but female prisoners do not regard the vice as indecent.

Parent mentions the case of a prostitute who, while intoxicated, tried to force another to Lesbian love. The latter became so enraged that she denounced the indecent woman to the police. Taxil (op. cit. p. 166, 170) reports similar instances.

Mantegazza ("Anthropol. culturhistorische Studien," p. 97) also finds that sexual intercourse between women has especially the significance of a vice which arises on the basis of unsatisfied hyperæsthesia sexualis.

In many cases of this kind, however, aside from congenital contrary sexual instinct, one gains the impression that, just as in men (vide supra), the cultivated vice gradually leads to acquired contrary sexual instinct, with repugnance for sexual intercourse with the opposite sex.

At least Parent's, cases were probably of this nature. The correspondence with the lover was quite as sentimental and exaggerated in tone as it is between lovers of the opposite sex; unfaithfulness and separation broke the heart of the one abandoned; jealousy was unbridled, and led to bloody revenge. The following cases of Lesbian love, by Mantegazza, are certainly pathological, and possibly examples of congenital contrary sexual instinct:—

1. On July 5, 1777, a woman was brought before a court in London, who, dressed as a man, had been married to three different women. She