Volume 5 — THE MECHANISM OF DETUMESCENCE. (continued 3)

Ammon's observations were made on nearly 4000 conscripts of the age of 20. From the point of view of the hairy system he divided them, into four classes:—

I. To which 6.1 per cent, of the men belonged, with smooth bodies.

II. Including 25.3 per cent., only slight hairiness.

III. 53.8 per cent., more developed hairy system, but belly, breast and back smooth.

IV. 14.7 per cent., hair all over body.

V. 0.1 per cent., extreme cases of hairiness.

The beardless were 12.1 per cent., those with no axillary hair 9 per cent., those with no hair on pubis 0.4 per cent. This corresponds with the fact that hair appears first on the pubis and last on the chin.

In the first class 69 per cent, were beardless, 54 per cent, without any axillary hair and 6 per cent, without pubic hair. In the second class 24 per cent, were beardless, 17 per cent, without axillary hair. In the third class 3 per cent, were beardless and 3 per cent without axillary hair.

Below puberty the diameter of testicles is below 14 millimeters. There were 13 conscripts having a testicular diameter of less than 14 millimeters. These infantile individuals all belonged to the first three classes and mostly to the first. The average testicular diameter in the first class was nearly 24 millimeters, and progressively rose in the succeeding classes to over 26 millimeters in the fourth.

While there was not much difference in height, the first class was the shortest, the fourth the tallest. The fourth class also showed the greatest chest perimeter. The cephalic index of all classes was 84. (O. Ammon, "L'Infantilisme et le Feminisme au Conseil de Révision," L'Anthropologie, May-June, 1896.)

We thus see that it is quite justifiable to admit a type of person who possesses a more than average aptitude for detumescence. Such persons are more likely to be short than tall; they will show a full development of the secondary sexual characters; the voice will tend to be deep and the eyes bright; the glandular activity of the skin will probably be marked, the lips everted; there is a tendency to a more than average degree of pigmentation, and there is frequently an abnormal prevalence of hair on some parts of the body. While none of these signs, taken separately, can be said to have any necessary connection with the sexual impulse, taken altogether they indicate an organism that responds to the instinct of detumescence with special aptitude or with marked energy. In these respects observation, both scientific and popular, concords with the probabilities suggested by the three standards in this matter which have already been set forth.

No generalization, however, can here be set down in an absolute and unqualified manner. There are definite reasons why this should be so. There is, for instance, the highly important consideration that the sexual impulse of the individual may be conspicuous in two quite distinct ways. It may assume prominence because the individual possesses a highly vigorous and well-nourished organism, or its prominence may be due to mental irritation in a very morbid individual. In the latter case—although occasionally the two sets of conditions are combined—most of the signs we might expect in the former case may be absent. Indeed, the sexual impulses which proceed from a morbid psychic irritability do not in most cases indicate any special aptitude for detumescence at all; in that largely lies their morbid character.

Again, just in the same way that the exaggerated impulse itself may either be healthy or morbid, so the various characters which we have found to possess some value as signs of the impulse may themselves either be healthy or morbid. This is notably the case as regards an abnormal growth of hair on the body, more especially when it appears on regions where normally there is little or no hair. Such hypertrichosis is frequently degenerative in character, though still often associated with the sexual system. When, however, it is thus a degenerative character of sexual nature, having its origin in some abnormal fœtal condition or later atrophy of the ovaries, it is no necessary indication of any aptitude for detumescence.

Idiots, more especially it would seem idiot girls, tend to show a highly developed hairy system. Thus Voisin, when investigating 150 idiot and imbecile girls, found the hair long and thick and tending to occupy a large surface; one girl had hair on the areolæ of the mamma. (J. Voisin, "Conformation des organes génitaux chez les Idiots," Annales d'Hygiène Publique, June, 1894.) It should be said that in idiot boys puberty is late, and the sexual organs as well as the sexual instinct frequently undeveloped, while in idiot girls there is no delay in puberty, and the sexual organs and instinct are frequently fully and even abnormally developed.

Hegar has described an interesting case showing an association, of fœtal origin, between sexual anomaly and abnormal hairness. In this case a girl of 16 had a uterus duplex, an infantile pelvis, very slight menstruation and undeveloped breasts. She was very hairy on the face, the anterior aspects of the chest and abdomen, the sexual regions, and the thighs, but not specially so on the rest of the body. The hairs were of lanugo-like character, but dark in color. (A. Hegar, Beiträge zur Geburtshülfe und Gynäkologie, vol. i, p. III, 1898.) Sometimes hiruties of the face and abdomen begin to appear during pregnancy, apparently from disease or degeneration of the ovaries. (A case is noted in British Medical Journal, August 2 and 16, pp. 375 and 436, 1902.) Laycock many years ago referred to the popular belief that women who have hair on the upper lip seldom bear children, and regarded this opinion as "questionless founded on fact." (Laycock, Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 22.) When this is so, we may suppose that the abnormal hairy growth is associated with degeneration of the ovaries.

There is another factor which enters into this question and renders the definition of a physical sexual type less precise than it would otherwise be. The sexual instinct is common to all persons, and while it seems probable that there is a type of person in whom sexual energies are predominant, it would also appear that the people who otherwise show a very high level of energy in life usually exhibit a more than average degree of energy in matters of love. The predominantly sexual type, as we have seen, tends to be associated with a high degree of pigmentation; the person specially apt for detumescence inclines to belong to the dark rather than to the purely fair group of the population. On the other hand, the active, energetic, practical man, the man who is most apt for the achievement of success in life, tends to belong to the fair rather than to the dark type.^[168] Thus we have a certain conflict of tendencies, and it becomes possible to assert that while persons with pronounced aptitude for sexual detumescence tend to be dark, persons whose pronounced energy in sexual matters tends to ensure success are most likely to be fair.

The tendency of the fair energetic type, the type of the northern European man, to sexuality may be connected with the fact that the violent and criminal man who commits sexual crimes tends to be fair even amid a dark population. Criminals on the whole would appear to tend to be dark rather than fair; but Marro found in Italy that the group of sexual offenders differed from all other groups of criminals in that their hair was predominantly fair. (Caratteri del Delinquenti, p. 374.) Ottolenghi, in the same way, in examining 100 sexual offenders, found that they showed 17 per cent., of fair hair, though criminals generally (on a basis of nearly 2000) showed only 6 per cent., and normal persons (nearly 1000) 9 per cent. Similarly while the normal persons showed only 20 per cent. of blue eyes and criminals generally 36 per cent., the sexual offenders showed 50 per cent. of blue eyes. (Ottolenghi, Archivio di Psichiatria, fasc. vi, 1888, p. 573.) Burton remarked (Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Section II, Mem. II, Subs. II) that in all ages most amorous young men have been yellow-haired, adding, "Synesius holds every effeminate fellow or adulterer is fair-haired." In folk-lore, it has been noted (Κρυπτάδια, vol. ii, p. 258), red or yellow hair is sometimes regarded as a mark of sexuality.

In harmony with this fairness, sexual offenders would appear to be more dolichocephalic than other criminals. In Italy Marro found the foreheads of sexual offenders to be narrow, and in California Drähms found that while murderers had an average cephalic index of 83.5, and thieves of 80.5, that of sexual offenders was 79.

On the other hand, high cheek-bones and broad faces—a condition most usually found associated with brachycephaly—have sometimes been noted as associated with undue or violent sexuality. Marro noted the excess of prominent cheek-bones in sexual offenders, and in America it has been found that unchaste girls tend to have broad faces. (Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1896, pp. 231, 235.)

It will be seen that, when we take a comprehensive view of the facts and considerations involved, it is possible to obtain a more definite and coherent picture of the physical signs of a marked aptitude for detumescence than has hitherto been usually supposed possible. But we also see that while the ensemble of these signs is probably fairly reliable as an index of marked sexuality, the separate signs have no such definite significance, and under some circumstances their significance may even be reversed.

[144]

See Biérent, La Puberté; Marro, La Pubertà (and enlarged French translation, La Puberté), and portions of G. S. Hall's Adolescence; also Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman (fourth edition, revised and enlarged).

[145]

Adler, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, p. 174; Moll, "Perverse Sexualempfindung, Psychische Impotenz und Ehe" (Section II), in Senator and Kaminer, Krankheiten und Ehe.

[146]

Roubaud, Traité de l'Impuissance, p. 524.

[147]

Marro, Caratteri del Delinquenti, p. 374.

[148]

Κρυπτάδια, vol. ii, p. 258.

[149]

Marro, La Pubertà, p. 196. In Italy, the sensuality of the lame is the subject of proverbs.

[150]

Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, p. 515; Κρυπτάδια, vol. vi, p. 212.

[151]

Blumenbach, Anthropological Treatises, p. 248.

[152]

Biérent, La Puberté, p. 148.

[153]

Venturi, Degenerazioni Psico-sessuali, pp. 408-410.

[154]

Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Section II, Mem. II, Sub. II.

[155]

British Gynæcological Journal, February, 1887, p. 505.

[156]

Power, Lancet, November 26, 1887.

[157]

With regard to the sexual relationships of personal odor, see the previous volume of these Studies, "Sexual Selection in Man," section on Smell.

[158]

In European folk-lore thick lips in a woman are sometimes regarded as a sign of sensuality, Κρυπτάδια, vol. ii, p, 258.

[159]

The direct dependence of sexual pigmentation on the primary sexual glands is well illustrated by a true hermaphroditic adult finch exhibited at the Academy of Sciences of Amsterdam (May 31, 1890); this bird had a testis on the right side and an ovary on the left, and on the right side its plumage was of the male's colors, on the left of the female's color.

[160]

See. e.g., Papillault, Bulletin Société d'Anthropologie, 1899, p. 446.

[161]

Guinard, Art. "Castration," Richet's Dictionnaire de Physiologie.

[162]

J. Whitridge Williams, Obstetrics, 1903, p. 132.

[163]

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1878, p. 19.

[164]

C. Pitre, Medicina Populare Siciliana, p. 47. In England, from notes sent to me by one correspondent, it would appear that the proportion of dark and sexually apt women to fair and sexually apt women is as 3 to 1. The experience of others would doubtless give varying results, and in any case the fallacies are numerous. See, in the previous volume of these Studies, "Sexual Selection in Man," Section IV.

[165]

In Japan the same belief would appear to be held. In a nude figure representing the typical voluptuous woman by the Japanese painter Marugama Okio (reproduced in Ploss's Das Weib) the pubic and axillary hair is profuse, though usually sparse in Japan.

[166]

Centralblatt für Gynäkologie, No. 9, 1896.

[167]

It is important to remember that there is little correlation in this matter between the hair of the head and the sexual hair, if not a certain opposition. (See ante, p. 127.) According to one of the aphorisms of Hippocrates, repeated by Buffon, eunuchs do not become bald, and Aristotle seems to have believed that sexual intercourse is a cause of baldness in men. (Laycock, Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 23.)

[168]

For some of the evidence on this point, see Havelock Ellis, "The Comparative Abilities of the Fair and the Dark," Monthly Review, August, 1901; cf. id., A Study of British Genius, Chapter X.