of temperature, but sense of locality, tactile sense, and 

judgment of size were often widely erroneous. It is significant 

that virgins were just as insensitive as married women or those 

who had had children. Calmann's experiments appear to be 

confirmed by the experiments of Marco Treves, of Turin, on the 

thermoesthesiometry of mucous membranes, as reported to the Turin 

International Congress of Physiology (and briefly noted in 

_Nature_, November 21, 1901). Treves found that the sensitivity 

of mucous membranes is always less than that of the skin. The 

mucosa of the urethra and of the cervix uteri was quite incapable 

of heat and cold sensations, and even the cautery excited only 

slight, and that painful, sensation. 

In further illustration of this point reference may be made to 

the not infrequent cases in which the whole process of 

parturition and the enormous distention of tissues which it 

involves proceed throughout in an almost or quite painless 

manner. It is sufficient to refer to two cases reported in Paris 

by Mace and briefly summarized in the _British Medical Journal_, 

May 25, 1901. In the first the patient was a primipara 20 years 

of age, and, until the dilatation of the cervix was complete and 

efforts at expulsion had commenced, the uterine contractions were 

quite painless. In the second case, the mother, aged 25, a 

tripara, had previously had very rapid labors; she awoke in the 

middle of the night without pains, but during micturition the 

fetal head appeared at the vulva, and was soon born. 

Further illustration may be found in those cases in which severe 

inflammatory processes may take place in the genital canal 

without being noticed. Thus, Maxwell reports the case of a young 

Chinese woman, certainly quite normal, in whom after the birth of 

her first child the vagina became almost obliterated, yet beyond 

slight occasional pain she noticed nothing wrong until the 

husband found that penetration was impossible (_British Medical 

Journal_, January 11, 1902, p. 78). The insensitiveness of the 

vagina and its contrast, in this respect, with the penis--though 

we are justified in regarding the penis as being, like organs of 

special sense, relatively deficient in general sensibility--are 

vividly presented in such an incident as the following, reported 

a few years ago in America by Dr. G.W. Allen in the _Boston 

Medical and Surgical Journal_: A man came under observation with 

an edematous, inflamed penis. The wife, the night previous, on 

advice of friends, had injected pure carbolic acid into the 

vagina just previous to coitus. The husband, ignorant of the 

fact, experienced untoward burning and smarting during and after 

coitus, but thought little of it, and soon fell asleep. The next 

morning there were large blisters on the penis, but it was no 

longer painful. When seen by Dr. Allen the prepuce was retracted 

and edematous, the whole penis was much swollen, and there were 

large, perfectly raw surfaces on either side of the glans. 

In this connection we may well bring into line a remarkable group of 

phenomena concerning which much evidence has now accumulated. I refer to 

the use of various appliances, fixed in or around the penis, whether 

permanently or temporarily during coitus, such appliance being employed at 

the woman's instigation and solely in order to heighten her excitement in 

congress. These appliances have their great center among the Indonesian 

peoples (in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, the Malay peninsula, the Philippines, 

etc.), thence extending in a modified form through China, to become, it 

appears, considerably prevalent in Russia; I have also a note of their 

appearance in India. They have another widely diffused center, through 

which, however, they are more sparsely scattered, among the American