Note 25 — Chapter IV

Although in various other parts of this book I draw attention to the fact that the sexual processes of childhood described by me are not to be witnessed in every child, but that on the contrary there are many children in whom such sexual phenomena are by no means to be observed, I take this additional opportunity of stating categorically that erections naturally occur in children less frequently than in adults; they are in fact notably less common in the former, but nevertheless erection is not, in my opinion, a pathological manifestation even in very early childhood. The comparatively slight capacity for erection possessed by children, as compared with adults, is, for example, shown by the fact to which Jullien draws attention, in his work Seltenere und weniger bekannte Tripperformen (Rare and Little Known Forms of Gonorrhoea), Vienna and Leipzig, 1907, that the painful erections (chordee) which so commonly accompany gonorrhoea in adults, are very rare indeed in the case of gonorrhoea in children, and even in the case of older children are hardly ever observed.