able of experiencing complete sexual satisfaction, and peculiarly liable to sexual anaesthesia. This idea appears to have been almost unknown to the eighteenth century.……"
Thus we have two schools of thought, one attributing to woman an intense sexual impulse, even greater than in man, the other holding her sexually frigid by nature and erotic only by pretence or accident. We may helpfully quote again from our Havelock Ellis, who has summarised in masterly fashion? the various authorities on both sides:—
"In the treatise On Generation, (chap. 5), which until recent times was commonly ascribed to Hippocrates," he says, "it is stated that men have greater pleasure in coitus than women, though the pleasure of women lasts longer, and this opinion, though, not usually accepted, was treated with great respect by medical authors down to the end of the 17th century.……Gall had stated decisively that the sexual desires of men are stronger and more imperious than those of women. (Fonctions du Cerveau, 1825),……
Raciborski declared that three-fourths of women merely endure the approaches of men. (De la Puberté chez la Femme).
"When the question is carefully inquired into and without prejudice,' said Lawson Tait, 'it is found that women have their sexual appetites far less developed than men.' (Lawson Tait, Provincial Medical Journal, 1891). 'The sexual instinct is very powerful in man and comparatively weak in women,' he stated elsewhere. (Disease of Women, 1889). Hammond stated that……'it is doubtful
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