Coitus interruptus

“ Thus Kisch, of Prague, refers to the case of a couple practising coitus interruptus—the husband withdrawing before ejaculation—in which the wife, a vigorous woman, became liable after some years to attacks termed by Kisch neurasthenia cordis vasomotoria, in which there was at daily or longer intervals palpitation, with feelings of anxiety, headache, dizziness, muscular weakness and tendency to faint. He regards coitus as a cause of various heart troubles in women: (1) Attacks of tachycardia in very excitable and sexually inclined women ”

“ The evil effects of coitus interruptus for a woman are dependent on the fact that the woman fails to obtain complete sexual gratification, and that this has an important influence on her entire organism. If this ungratifying coitus interruptus is frequently repeated in a voluptuous woman disorders of the reproductive organs ensue, and even more frequently nervous disorders in the form of neurasthenia sexualis. ”

“ Personal experience with thousands of men and hundreds of women who have been the victims of coitus interruptus, coitus incompletus or coitus prolongatus entitles the editor to speak with authority on the subject. It is hard to determine who, the man or the woman, is more seriously, more extensively injured by the practice; but my own impression is that it is the man. ”

“ It still remains, however, for scientific experiments to be devised which will enable us to study the effects of the absorption of substances from the semen. On the other hand, coitus interruptus is not always harmful for the man, for he has the complete sex-act, though a good many men think its effects on them are undesirable, and it may lead to lack of desire or even impotence toward his wife in a man who practises it with her, or, on the other hand, to a too swift fresh desire from the lack of complete resolution of nervous tension. ”

“ Lier reports a case in which, after three years’ continued practice of coitus interruptus, the menopause set in, with atrophy of the uterus; Ascher, in a similar case, saw chronic metritis ensue. According to Kleinwächter, coitus interruptus is 407harmful to the woman to an extent by no means trifling, whereas the man, in whom ejaculation occurs, suffers comparatively little. Fehling believes that when coitus interruptus is practised only a small proportion of women experience sexual excitement. ”

“ It is undoubtedly true that coitus interruptus, since it involves sudden withdrawal on the part of the man without reference to the stage of sexual excitation which his partner may have reached, cannot fail to produce frequently an injurious nervous effect on the woman, though the injurious effect on the man, who obtains ejaculation, is little or none. ”

“ As injurious may be considered coition in the bath or immediately after leaving the bath; after having been bled or purged or such like. The coitus after a heavy bout of drinking is likewise to be avoided. To exercise the coitus with a woman during her courses is detrimental to the man as to the woman herself, as at that time her blood is vitiated and her womb cold, and if the least drop of blood should get in the man's urinary canal numerous maladies may supervene. As to the woman, she feels no pleasure during her courses, and holds the coitus in aversion. ”

“ Where irritability of the sexual organs exists to such a degree as to occasion insufferable pain at the moment of coition, it must be regarded as a source of impotence. [321] It may depend upon various causes; Dr. Cockburn [322] relates a case of this kind which depended upon internal piles, and which was cured by their removal. Mr. Anthony White [323] has published three very interesting cases, in which the pain which accompanied the attempt at coitus was so acute, that the women rarely escaped fainting ”

“ A momentary psychic impotence is not necessarily pathological. While voluptuous sensations alternate during coitus with desire and corresponding erotic representations, a sudden idea of the ridiculousness of the situation, signs of pain or of bad temper in the woman, the idea of impotence or of the real object of coitus; finally, anything which acts as a contrast to the sensations and impulses of coitus, may interrupt it, so that the voluptuous sensations and sexual appetite disappear and erection subsides. Voluntary efforts are often incapable of putting things right again. ”

“ Among the peculiar effects of coitus is its deteriorating effect on the healing process of wounds. Boerhaave, Pare, and Fabricius Hildanus all speak of this untoward effect of venery, and in modern times Poncet has made observations at a hospital in Lyons which prove that during the process of healing wounds are unduly and harmfully influenced by coitus, and cites confirmatory instances. ”

“ Sexual excitation and desire may sometimes attain such a degree that they are repeated a few minutes after ejaculation. It is not rare for a man to perform coitus ten or fifteen times in a single night, in brothels and elsewhere, although such excess borders on the domain of pathology. I know a case in which coitus was performed thirty times. I was once consulted by an old woman of 65 who complained of the insatiable sexual appetite of her husband, aged 73! ”

“ At the same moment there was (but only after she had had experience of coitus) an involuntary elevation of the pelvis, together with emission of mucus, making the hand wet, this mucus having an odor, and being quite distinct from the ordinary odorless mucus of the vagina; at the same time, the finger in the vagina felt slight contractions of the whole vaginal wall. ”

“ In coitus, erections are produced more slowly; the voluptuous sensations, it is true, are of great subjective intensity, but they are developed more slowly and there is more difficulty in producing ejaculation. The subsequent relaxation is very great, and a man who is even only slightly intoxicated cannot perform coitus as rapidly, nor repeat it so often, as when he has taken no alcoholic liquor. When the narcosis increases the impotence becomes complete. Owing to the illusion produced by the narcosis, however, a drunken man generally imagines himself to be very capable. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the presence of the ovum in the womb of a normally made woman makes little, and, in many cases, no difference whatever as regards her status concerning the act of coitus! That is, [pg 53] women are never "in heat," in the same sense in which other female animals are. To be sure, in some cases, though they are rare, some women are conscious of a greater desire for coitus just after the ceasing of the menstrual flow; that is, when the ovum is in the womb. ”

“ The portions discharged are preserved in the Milan Hospital.
The injuries received during coitus have been classified by Spaeth as follows: Deep tears of the hymen with profuse hemorrhage; tears of the clitoris and of the urethra (in cases of atresia hymenis) ; vesicovaginal fistula; laceration of the vaginal fornices, posteriorly or laterally; laceration of the septum of a duplex vagina; injuries following coitus after perineorrhaphy. In the last century Plazzoni reports a case of vaginal rupture occurring during coitus. Green of Boston ”

“ Just as in adult life in the female sex sexual anaesthesia is very frequently observed, so that in coitus the specific voluptuous sensation is wanting, and indeed often enough the impulse to coitus itself is actually in abeyance (whereas in men the sexual impulse and sexual pleasure are very rarely absent) , so also in the case of children a similar difference between the sexes is conspicuous. ”

“ The old notions, however, as to the sexual licentiousness of peoples living in natural conditions have scarcely yet disappeared. See Appendix A; "The Sexual Instinct in Savages."↑ In men a certain degree of tumescence is essential before coitus can be effected at all; in women, though tumescence is not essential to coitus, it is essential to orgasm and the accompanying physical and psychic relief. The preference which women often experience for prolonged coitus is not, as might possibly be imagined, due to sensuality, but has a profound physiological basis.↑ Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. ”

“ To the truth of this statement attests the mental imbecility, the pallid and attenuated forms, of the children who are the earlier products of marriage. The effect of excessive coitus in women is seen by the confirmed ill health of so many women after marriage and repeated child-bearing. ”

“ Some authorities have, indeed, stated that the prolongation of the act of coitus is injurious in its effect on the male. Thus R. W. Taylor (Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders, third ed., p. 121) states that it tends to cause atonic impotence, and Löwenfeld (Sexualleben und Nervenleiden, p. 74) thinks that the swift and unimpeded culmination of the sexual act is necessary in order to preserve the vigor of the reflex reactions. ”

“ Impotence may occur at the first coitus, or may come on gradually. It is often produced suddenly at the time of [220] marriage in persons who have hitherto been very capable, even in Don Juans. Men may have normal erections and pollutions, but these may be stopped by counter-suggestions at each attempt at coitus. Habitual masturbation may in some cases contribute to produce impotence, but we must not generalize from such cases, nor construct a dogma from them, for continence may also be a cause of impotence. ”

“ Coitus reservatus,—in which intercourse is maintained even for very long periods, during which the woman may have orgasm several times while the man succeeds in holding back orgasm,—so far from being injurious to the woman, is probably the form of coitus which gives her the maximum of gratification and relief. For most men, however, it seems probable that this self-control over the processes leading to the involuntary act of detumescence is difficult to acquire, while in weak, nervous, and erethic persons it is impossible. ”

“ In women who had practised coitus reservatus for a prolonged period, in fact for several years, in such a manner that, notwithstanding the occurrence of intense voluptuous excitement, complete sexual gratification rarely, if ever, occurred—in such women, in whom these marital malpractices seemed to have profoundly influenced 346their psychical life, I have frequently witnessed a form of reflex cardiac disorder which I must regard as a variety of the multiform neurasthenia cordis vasomotoria. ”

“ When such conditions are found in the children of perfectly healthy, vigorous, and generally temperate parents who have indulged recklessly in coitus during the early stages of pregnancy it is possible that such coitus has acted on the embryo in the same way as shocks and intoxications are known to act on the embryo of lower organisms. ”

“ Excessive coitus is a well-known cause of chronic inflammation of the uterus; that is, a habitual congestion of the uterus is induced by excessive sexual intercourse. This has been frequently mentioned by authors as leading to enlargement of the uterus in the non-pregnant condition; and it is a still more potent factor in the recently impregnated organ, whose tissues are succulent and the vessels enlarged, a condition inviting congestion and enhancing the susceptibility to engorgement. ”

“ Nothing which concerns the coitus is strange to it; it has a profound knowledge of the state of humidity, freshness, dryness, tightness or warmth of vulvas, which it explores assiduously. There are, in fact, certain vulvas of an exquisite exterior, plump and fine outside, while their inside leaves much to wish for, and they give no pleasure, owing to their being not warm, but very humid, and having other similar faults. It is for this reason that the mokcheuf tries to find out about things concerning the coitus, and has received this name. ”

“ We have seen, when speaking of diurnal pollution, that chronic inflammations of this canal may be followed by losses of semen. The presence of a stone in the bladder usually causes an itching and tickling at the end of the penis, which has sometimes been the beginning of bad habits. If, after excesses of the table, coition is indulged in to excess, it is because the abuse of wine and liquors stimulates the mucous membranes, and particularly those of which we are speaking—excites their action, and new desires arise. ”

“ Next when under these conditions the man’s glans, possessing as it does an equally great liability in its cutaneous glands to be attacked by ulceration, enters in coition a vagina in this state, it cannot occasion much surprise if blennorhoea of the urethra or ulceration of the glans penis supervene156, especially if we consider the fact that127 the act of coition sets the organs concerned in enhanced activity, making them more susceptible than ever to external injurious irritations. ”

“ We cough at will, because it is the diaphragm and intercostals by which this function is performed; we do not seek in medicine for any means to excite it. But as we cannot vomit at will, and as the presence of mucous juices often by fatiguing the stomach, does not irritate it sufficiently to produce a contraction, art has recourse to various emetics. We know what a painful sensation of weight the continuance of mucus accumulated in the frontal, maxillary, sinuses, &c. occasions, when there is a catarrh of a portion of the pituitary membrane. ”

“ Violent coughs, with soreness or rawness about the fauces are often attended with erection of the penis; which is also said to happen to male animals, that are hanged; which last circumstance has generally been ascribed to the obstruction of the circulation of the blood, but is more probably occasioned by the stimulus of the cord in compressing the throat ”