Animals as Sources of Erotic Symbolism--Mixoscopic Zoophilia--The
Stuff-fetichisms--Hair-fetichism--The Stuff-fetichisms Mainly on a Tactile
Base--Erotic Zoophilia--Zooerastia--Bestiality--The Conditions that Favor
Bestiality--Its Wide Prevalence Among Primitive Peoples and Among
Peasants--The Primitive Conception of Animals--The Goat--The Influence of
Familiarity with Animals--Congress Between Women and Animals--The Social
Reaction Against Bestiality.
The erotic symbols with which we have so far been concerned have in every
case been portions of the body, or its physiological processes, or at
least the garments which it has endowed with life. The association on
which the symbol has arisen has in every case been in large measure,
although not entirely, an association of contiguity. It is now necessary
to touch on a group of sexual symbols in which the association of
contiguity with the human body is absent: the various methods by which
animals or animal products or the sight of animal copulation may arouse
sexual desire in human persons. Here we encounter a symbolism mainly
founded on association by resemblance; the animal sexual act recalls the
human sexual act; the animal becomes the symbol of the human being.
The group of phenomena we are here concerned with includes several
subdivisions. There is first the more or less sexual pleasure sometimes
experienced, especially by young persons, in the sight of copulating
animals. This I would propose to call Mixoscopic Zoophilia; it falls
within the range of normal variation. Then we have the cases in which the
contact of animals, stroking, etc., produces sexual excitement or
gratification; this is a sexual fetichism in the narrow sense, and is by
Krafft-Ebing termed _Zoophilia Erotica_. We have, further, the class of
cases in which a real or simulated sexual intercourse with animals is
desired. Such cases are not regarded as fetichism by Krafft-Ebing,[33]
but they come within the phenomena of erotic symbolism as here understood.
This class falls into two divisions: one in which the individual is fairly
normal, but belongs to a low grade of culture; the other in which he may
belong to a more refined social class, but is affected by a deep degree of
degeneration. In the first case we may properly apply the term bestiality;
in the second case it may perhaps be better to use the term _zooerastia_,
proposed by Krafft-Ebing.[34]
Among children, both boys and girls, it is common to find that the
copulation of animals is a mysteriously fascinating spectacle. It is
inevitable that this should be so, for the spectacle is more or less
clearly felt to be the revelation of a secret which has been concealed
from them. It is, moreover, a secret of which they feel intimate
reverberations within themselves, and even in perfectly innocent and
ignorant children the sight may produce an obscure sexual excitement.[35]
It would seem that this occurs more frequently in girls than in boys. Even
in adult age, it may be added, women are liable to experience the same
kind of emotion in the presence of such spectacles. One lady recalls, as a
girl, that on several occasions an element of physical excitement entered
into the feelings with which she watched the coquetry of cats. Another
lady mentions that at the age of about 25, and when still quite ignorant
of sexual matters, she saw from a window some boys tickling a dog and
inducing sexual excitement in the animal; she vaguely divined what they
were doing, and though feeling disgust at their conduct she at the same
time experienced in a strong degree what she now knows was sexual
excitement. The coupling of the larger animals is often an impressive and
splendid spectacle which is far, indeed, from being obscene, and has
commended itself to persons of intellectual distinction;[36] but in young
or ill-balanced minds such sights tend to become both prurient and morbid.
I have already referred to the curious case of a sexually hyperæsthetic
nun who was always powerfully excited by the sight or even the
recollection of flies in sexual connection, so that she was compelled to
masturbate; this dated from childhood. After becoming a nun she recorded
having had this experience, followed by masturbation, more than four
hundred times.[37] Animal spectacles sometimes produce a sexual effect on
children even when not specifically sexual; thus a correspondent, a
clergyman, informs me that when a young and impressionable boy, he was
much affected by seeing a veterinary surgeon insert his hand and arm into
a horse's rectum, and dreamed of this several times afterward with
emissions.
While the contemplation of animal coitus is an easily intelligible and in
early life, perhaps, an almost normal symbol of sexual emotion, there is
another subdivision of this group of animal fetichisms which forms a more
natural transition from the fetichisms which have their center in the
human body: the stuff-fetichisms, or the sexual attraction exerted by
various tissues, perhaps always of animal origin. Here we are in the
presence of a somewhat complicated phenomenon. In part we have, in a
considerable number of such cases, the sexual attraction of feminine
garments, for all such tissues are liable to enter into the dress. In
part, also, we have a sexual perversion of tactile sensibility, for in a
considerable proportion of these cases it is the touch sensations which
are potent in arousing the erotic sensations. But in part, also, it would
seem, we have here the conscious or subconscious presence of an animal
fetich, and it is notable that perhaps all these stuffs, and especially
fur, which is by far the commonest of the groups, are distinctively animal
products. We may perhaps regard the fetich of feminine hair--a much more
important and common fetich, indeed, than any of the stuff fetichisms--as
a link of transition. Hair is at once an animal and a human product, while
it may be separated from the body and possesses the qualities of a stuff.
Krafft-Ebing remarks that the senses of touch, smell, and hearing, as well
as sight, seem to enter into the attraction exerted by hair.
The natural fascination of hair, on which hair-fetichism is
founded, begins at a very early age. "The hair is a special
object of interest with infants," Stanley Hall concludes, "which
begins often in the latter part of the first year.... The hair,
no doubt, gives quite unique tactile sensations, both in its own
roots and to hands, and is plastic and yielding to the motor
sense, so that the earliest interest may be akin to that in fur,
which is a marked object in infant experience. Some children
develop an almost fetichistic propensity to pull or later to
stroke the hair or beard of every one with whom they come in
contact." (G. Stanley Hall, "The Early Sense of Self," _American
Journal of Psychology_, April, 1898, p. 359.)
It should be added that the fascination of hair for the infantile
and childish mind is not necessarily one of attraction, but may
be of repulsion. It happens here, as in the case of so many
characteristics which are of sexual significance, that we are in
the presence of an object which may exert a dynamic emotional
force, a force which is capable of repelling with the same energy
that it attracts. Féré records the instructive case of a child of
3, of psychopathic heredity, who when he could not sleep was
sometimes taken by his mother into her bed. One night his hand
came in contact with a hairy portion of his mother's body, and
this, arousing the idea of an animal, caused him to leap out of
the bed in terror. He became curious as to the cause of his
terror and in time was able to observe "the animal," but the
train of feelings which had been set up led to a life-long
indifference to women and a tendency to homosexuality. It is
noteworthy that he was attracted to men in whom the hair and
other secondary sexual characters were well developed. (Féré,
_L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, pp. 262-267.)
As a sexual fetich hair strictly belongs to the group of parts of
the body; but since it can be removed from the body and is
sexually effective as a fetich in the absence of the person to
whom it belongs, it is on a level with the garments which may
serve in a similar way, with shoes or handkerchiefs or gloves.
Psychologically, hair-fetichism presents no special problem, but
the wide attraction of hair--it is sexually the most generally
noted part of the feminine body after the eyes--and the peculiar
facility with which when plaited it may be removed, render
hair-fetichism a sexual perversion of specially great
medico-legal interest.
The frequency of hair-fetichism, as well as of the natural
admiration on which it rests, is indicated by a case recorded by
Laurent. "A few years ago," he states, "one constantly saw at the
Bal Bullier, in Paris, a tall girl whose face was lean and bony,
but whose black hair was of truly remarkable length. She wore it
flowing down her shoulders and loins. Men often followed her in
the street to touch or kiss the hair. Others would accompany her
home and pay her for the mere pleasure of touching and kissing
the long black tresses. One, in consideration of a relatively
considerable sum, desired to pollute the silky hair. She was
obliged to be always on her guard, and to take all sorts of
precautions to prevent any one cutting off this ornament, which
constituted her only beauty as well as her livelihood." (E.
Laurent, _L'Amour Morbide_, 1891, p. 164; also the same author's
_Fétichistes et Erotomanes_, p. 23.)
The hair despoiler (_Coupeur des Nattes_ or _Zopfabschneider_)
may be found in any civilized country, though the most carefully
studied cases have occurred in Paris. (Several medico-legal
histories of hair-despoilers are summarized by Krafft-Ebing, _Op.
cit._, pp. 329-334). Such persons are usually of nervous
temperament and bad heredity; the attraction to hair occasionally
develops in early life; sometimes the morbid impulse only appears
in later life after fever. The fetich may be either flowing hair
or braided hair, but is usually one or the other, and not both.
Sexual excitement and ejaculation may be produced in the act of
touching or cutting off the hair, which is subsequently, in many
cases, used for masturbation. As a rule the hair-despoiler is a
pure fetichist, no element of sadistic pleasure entering into his
feelings. In the case of a "capillary kleptomaniac" in Chicago--a
highly intelligent and athletic married young man of good
family--the impulse to cut off girls' braids appeared after
recovery from a severe fever. He would gaze admiringly at the
long tresses and then clip them off with great rapidity; he did
this in some fifty cases before he was caught and imprisoned. He
usually threw the braids away before he reached home. (_Alienist
and Neurologist_, April, 1889, p. 325.) In this case there is no
history of sexual excitement, probably because no proper
medico-legal examination was made. (It may be added that
hair-despoilers have been specially studied by Motet, "Les
Coupeurs de Nattes," _Annales d'Hygiène_, 1890.)
The stuff-fetiches are most usually fur and velvet; feathers, silk, and
leathers also sometimes exert this influence; they are all, it will be
noted, animal substances.[38] The most interesting is probably fur, the
attraction of which is not uncommon in association with passive
algolagnia. As Stanley Hall has shown, the fear of fur, as well as the
love of it, is by no means uncommon in childhood; it may appear even in
infancy and in children who have never come in contact with animals.[39]
It is noteworthy that in most cases of uncomplicated stuff-fetichism the
attraction apparently arises on a congenital basis, as it appears in
persons of nervous or sensitive temperament at an early age and without
being attached to any definite causative incident. The sexual excitation
is nearly always produced by the touch rather than by the sight. As we
found, when dealing with the sense of touch in the previous volume, the
specific sexual sensations may be regarded as a special modification of
ticklishness. The erotic symbolism in the case of these stuff-fetichisms
would seem to be a more or less congenital perversion of ticklishness in
relation to specific animal contacts.
A further degree of perversion in this direction is reached in a case of
erotic _zoophilia_, recorded by Krafft-Ebing.[40] In this case a
congenital neuropath, of good intelligence but delicate and anæmic, with
feeble sexual powers, had a great love of domestic animals, especially
dogs and cats, from an early age; when petting them he experienced sexual
emotions, although he was innocent in sexual matters. At puberty he
realized the nature of his feelings and tried to break himself of his
habits. He succeeded, but then began erotic dreams accompanied by images
of animals, and these led to masturbation associated with ideas of a
similar kind. At the same time he had no wish for any sort of sexual
intercourse with animals, and was indifferent as to the sex of the animals
which attracted him; his sexual ideals were normal. Such a case seems to
be fundamentally one of fetichism on a tactile basis, and thus forms a
transition between the stuff-fetichisms and the complete perversions of
sexual attraction toward animals.
In some cases sexually hyperæsthetic women have informed me that
sexual feeling has been produced by casual contact with pet dogs
and cats. In such cases there is usually no real perversion, but
it seems probable that we may here have an occasional foundation
for the somewhat morbid but scarcely vicious excesses of
affection which women are apt to display towards their pet dogs
or cats. In most cases of this affection there is certainly no
sexual element; in the case of childless women, it may rather be
regarded as a maternal than as an erotic symbolism. (The excesses
of this non-erotic zoophilia have been discussed by Féré,
_L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, pp. 166-171.)
Krafft-Ebing considers that complete perversion of sexual attraction
toward animals is radically distinct from erotic _zoophilia_. This view
cannot be accepted. Bestiality and _zooerastia_ merely present in a more
marked and profoundly perverted form a further degree of the same
phenomenon which we meet with in erotic _zoophilia_; the difference is
that they occur either in more insensitive or in more markedly degenerate
persons.
A fairly typical case of _zooerastia_ has been recorded in America by
Howard, of Baltimore. This was the case of a boy of 16, precociously
mature and fairly bright. He was, however, indifferent to the opposite
sex, though he had ample opportunity for gratifying normal passions. His
parents lived in the city, but the youth had an inordinate desire for the
country and was therefore sent to school in a village. On the second day
after his arrival at school a farmer missed a sow which was found secreted
in an outhouse on the school grounds. This was the first of many similar
incidents in which a sow always took part. So strong was his passion that
on one occasion force had to be used to take him away from the sow he was
caressing. He did not masturbate, and even when restrained from
approaching sows he had no sexual inclination for other animals. His
nocturnal pollutions, which were frequent, were always accompanied by
images of wallowing swine. Notwithstanding careful treatment no cure was
effected; mental and physical vigor failed, and he died at the age of
23.[41]
It is, however, somewhat doubtful whether we can always or even usually
distinguish between zooerastia and bestiality. Dr. G.F. Lydston, of
Chicago, has communicated to me a case (in which he was consulted) which
seems fairly typical and is instructive in this respect. The subject was a
young man of 21, a farmer's son, not very bright intellectually, but very
healthy and strong, of great assistance on the farm, very capable and
industrious, such a good farm hand that his father was unwilling to send
him away and to lose his services. There was no history of insanity or
neurosis in the family, and no injury or illness in his own history. He
had spells of moroseness and irritability, however, and had also been a
masturbator. Women had no attraction for him, but he would copulate with
the mares upon his father's farm, and this without regard to time, place,
or spectators. Such a case would seem to stand midway between ordinary
bestiality and pathological zooerastia as defined by Krafft-Ebing, yet it
seems probable that in most cases of ordinary bestiality some slight
traces of mental anomaly might be found, if such cases always were, as
they should be, properly investigated.[42]
We have here reached the grossest and most frequent perversion in this
group; bestiality, or the impulse to attain sexual gratification by
intercourse, or other close contact, with animals. In seeking to
comprehend this perversion it is necessary to divest ourselves of the
attitude toward animals which is the inevitable outcome of refined
civilization and urban life. Most sexual perversions, if not in large
measure the actual outcome of civilized life, easily adjust themselves to
it. Bestiality (except in one form to be noted later) is, on the other
hand, the sexual perversion of dull, insensitive and unfastidious persons.
It flourishes among primitive peoples and among peasants. It is the vice
of the clodhopper, unattractive to women or inapt to court them.
Three conditions have favored the extreme prevalence of bestiality: (1)
primitive conceptions of life which built up no great barrier between man
and the other animals; (2) the extreme familiarity which necessarily
exists between the peasant and his beasts, often combined with separation
from women; (3) various folk-lore beliefs such as the efficacy of
intercourse with animals as a cure for venereal disease, etc.[43]
The beliefs and customs of primitive peoples, as well as their mythology
and legends, bring before us a community of man and animals altogether
unlike anything we know in civilization. Men may become animals and
animals may become men; animals and men may communicate with each other
and live on terms of equality; animals may be the ancestors of human
tribes; the sacred totems of savages are most usually animals. There is no
shame or degradation in the notion of a sexual relationship between men
and animals, because in primitive conceptions animals are not inferior
beings separated from man by a great gulf. They are much more like men in
disguise, and in some respects possess powers which make them superior to
men. This is recognized in those plays, festivals, and religious dances,
so common among primitive peoples, in which animal disguises are worn.[44]
When men admire and emulate the qualities of animals and are proud to
believe that they descend from them, it is not surprising that they should
sometimes see nothing derogatory in sexual intercourse with them.[45]
A significant relic of primitive conceptions in this matter may perhaps be
found in the religious rites connected with the sacred goat of Mendes
described by Herodotus. After telling how the Mendesians reverence the
goat, especially the he-goat, out of their veneration for Pan, whom they
represent as a goat ("the real motive which they assign for this custom I
do not choose to relate"), he adds: "It happened in this country, and
within my remembrance, and was indeed universally notorious, that a goat
had indecent and public communication with a woman."[46] The meaning of
the passage evidently is that in the ordinary intercourse of women with
the sacred goat, connection was only simulated or incomplete on account of
the natural indifference of the goat to the human female, but that in rare
cases the goat proved sexually excitable with the woman and capable of
connection.[47] The goat has always been a kind of sacred emblem of lust.
In the middle ages it became associated with the Devil as one of the
favorite forms he assumed. It is significant of a primitively religious
sexual association between men and animals, that witches constantly
confessed, or were made to confess, that they had had intercourse with the
Devil in the shape of an animal, very frequently a dog. The figures of
human beings and animals in conjunction carved on temples in India, also
seem to indicate the religious significance which this phenomenon
sometimes presents. There is, indeed, no need to go beyond Europe even in
her moments of highest culture to find a religious sanction for sexual
union between human beings, or gods in human shape, and animals. The
legends of Io and the bull, of Leda and the swan, are among the most
familiar in Greek mythology, and in a later pictorial form they constitute
some of the most cherished works of the painters of the Renaissance.
As regards the prevalence of occasional sexual intercourse between men or
women and animals among primitive peoples at the present time, it is
possible to find many scattered references by travelers in all parts of
the world. Such references by no means indicate that such practices are,
as a rule, common, but they usually show that they are accepted with a
good-humored indifference.[48]
Bestiality is very rarely found in towns. In the country this vice of the
clodhopper is far from infrequent. For the peasant, whose sensibilities
are uncultivated and who makes but the most elementary demands from a
woman, the difference between an animal and a human being in this respect
scarcely seems to be very great. "My wife was away too long," a German
peasant explained to the magistrate, "and so I went with my sow." It is
certainly an explanation that to the uncultivated peasant, ignorant of
theological and juridical conceptions, must often seem natural and
sufficient.
Bestiality thus resembles masturbation and other abnormal
manifestations of the sexual impulse which may be practiced
merely _faute de mieux_ and not as, in the strict sense,
perversions of the impulse. Even necrophily may be thus
practiced. A young man who when assisting the grave-digger
conceived and carried out the idea of digging up the bodies of
young girls to satisfy his passions with, and whose case has
been recorded by Belletrud and Mercier, said: "I could find no
young girl who would agree to yield to my desires; that is why I
have done this. I should have preferred to have relations with
living persons. I found it quite natural to do what I did: I saw
no harm in it, and I did not think that any one else could. As
living women felt nothing but repulsion for me, it was quite
natural I should turn to the dead, who have never repulsed me. I
used to say tender things to them like 'my beautiful, my love, I
love you.'" (Belletrud and Mercier "Perversion de l'Instinct
Genésique," _Annales d'Hygiène Publique_, June, 1903.) But when
so highly abnormal an act is felt as natural we are dealing with
a person who is congenitally defective so far as the finer
developments of intelligence are concerned. It was so in this
case of necrophily; he was the son of a weak-minded woman of
unrestrainable sexual inclinations, and was himself somewhat
feeble-minded; he was also, it is instructive to observe,
anosmic.
But it is by no means only their dulled sensibility or the absence of
women, which accounts for the frequency of bestiality among peasants. A
highly important factor is their constant familiarity with animals. The
peasant lives with animals, tends them, learns to know all their
individual characters; he understands them far better than he understands
men and women; they are his constant companions, his friends. He knows,
moreover, the details of their sexual lives, he witnesses the often highly
impressive spectacle of their coupling. It is scarcely surprising that
peasants should sometimes regard animals as being not only as near to them
as their fellow human beings, but even nearer.
The significance of the factor of familiarity is indicated by the great
frequency of bestiality among shepherds, goatherds, and others whose
occupation is exclusively the care of animals. Mirabeau, in the eighteenth
century, stated, on the evidence of Basque priests, that all the shepherds
in the Pyrenees practice bestiality. It is apparently much the same in
Italy.[49] In South Italy and Sicily, especially, bestiality among
goatherds and peasants is said to be almost a national custom.[50] In the
extreme north of Europe, it is reported, the reindeer, in this respect,
takes the place of the goat.
The importance of the same factor is also shown by the fact that when
among women in civilization animal perversions appear, the animal is
nearly always a pet dog. Usually in these cases the animal is taught to
give gratification by _cunnilinctus_. In some cases, however, there is
really sexual intercourse between the animal and the woman.
Moll mentions that in a case of _cunnilinctus_ by a dog in
Germany there was a difficulty as to whether the matter should be
considered an unnatural offence or simply an offence against
decency; the lower court considered it in the former light, while
the higher court took the more merciful view. (Moll,
_Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis_, bd. i, p. 697.) In a
case reported by Pfaff and mentioned by Moll, a country girl was
accused of having sexual intercourse with a large dog. On
examination Pfaff found in the girl's thick pubic hair a loose
hair which under the microscope proved to belong to the dog.
(_Loc. cit._, p. 698.) In such a case it must be noted that while
this evidence may be held to show sexual contact with the dog, it
scarcely suffices to show sexual intercourse. This has, however,
undoubtedly occurred from time to time, even more or less openly.
Bloch (_Op. cit._, pp. 277 and 282) remarks that this is not an
infrequent exhibition given by prostitutes in certain brothels.
Maschka has referred to such an exhibition between a woman and a
bull-dog, which was given to select circles in Paris. Rosse
refers to a case in which a young unmarried woman in Washington
was surprised during intercourse with a large English mastiff,
who in his efforts to get loose caused such severe injuries that
the woman died from hæmorrhage in about an hour. Rosse also
mentions that some years ago a performance of this kind between a
prostitute and a Newfoundland dog could be witnessed in San
Francisco by paying a small sum; the woman declared that a woman
who had once copulated with a dog would ever afterwards prefer
this animal to a man. Rosse adds that he was acquainted with a
similar performance between a woman and a donkey, which used to
take place in Europe (Irving Rosse, "Sexual Hypochondriasis and
Perversion of the Genesic Instinct," _Virginia Medical Monthly_,
October, 1892, p. 379). Juvenal mentions such relations between
the donkey and woman (vi, 332). Krauss (quoted by Bloch,
_Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil II, p.
276) states that in Bosnia women sometimes carry on these
practices with dogs and also--as he would not have believed had
he not on one occasion observed it--with cats. "It seems to me,"
writes Dr. Kiernan, of Chicago, (private letter) "that what Rosse
says of the animal exhibitions in San Francisco is true of all
great cities. The animal employed in such exhibitions here has
usually been a donkey, and in one instance death occurred from
the animal trampling the girl partner. The practice described
occurs in country regions quite frequently. Thus in a case
reported in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska, a sixteen-year-old
boy engaged in rectal coitus with a large dog. In attempting to
extricate his swollen penis from the boy's rectum the dog tore
through the _sphincter ani_ an inch into the gluteus muscles.
(_Omaha Clinic_, March, 1893.) In a Missouri case, which I
verified, a smart, pretty, well-educated country girl was found
with a profuse offensive vaginal discharge which had been present
for about a week, coming on suddenly. After washing the external
genitals and opening the labia three rents were discovered, one
through the fourchette and two through the left nymphæ. The
vagina was excessively congested and covered with points bleeding
on the slightest irritation. The patient confessed that one day
while playing with the genitals of a large dog she became excited
and thought she would have slight coitus. After the dog had made
an entrance she was unable to free herself from him, as he
clasped her so firmly with his fore legs. The penis became so
swollen that the dog could not free himself, although for more
than an hour she made persistent efforts to do so. (_Medical
Standard_, June, 1903, p. 184). In an Indiana case, concerning
which I was consulted, the girl was a hebephreniac who had
resorted to this procedure with a Newfoundland dog at the
instance of another girl, seemingly normal as regards mentality,
and had been badly injured; a discharge resulted which resembled
gonorrhoea, but contained no gonococci. These cases are probably
more frequent than is usually assumed."
Women are known to have had intercourse with various other
animals, occasionally or habitually, in various parts of the
world. Monkeys have been mentioned in this connection. Moll
remarks that it seems to be an indication of an abnormal interest
in monkeys that some women are observed by the attendants in the
monkey-house of zoölogical gardens to be very frequent visitors.
Near the Amazon the traveler Castelnau saw an enormous Coati
monkey belonging to an Indian woman and tried to purchase it;
though he offered a large sum, the woman only laughed. "Your
efforts are useless," remarked an Indian in the same cabin, "he
is her husband." (So far as the early literature of this subject
is concerned, a number of facts and fables regarding the congress
of women with dogs, goats and other animals was brought together
at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Schurig in his
_Gynæcologia_, Section II, cap. VII; I have not drawn on this
collection.)
In some cases women, and also men, find gratification in the
sexual manipulation of animals without any kind of congress. This
may be illustrated by an observation communicated to me by a
correspondent, a clergyman. "In Ireland, my father's house
adjoined the residence of an archdeacon of the established
church. I was then about 20 and was still kept in religious awe
of evil ways. The archdeacon had two daughters, both of whom he
brought up in great strictness, resolved that they should grow up
examples of virtue and piety. Our stables adjoined, and were
separated only by a thin wall in which was a doorway closed up by
some boards, as the two stables had formerly been one. One night
I had occasion to go to our stable to search for a garden tool I
had missed, and I heard a door open on the other side, and saw a
light glimmer through the cracks of the boards. I looked through
to ascertain who could be there at that late hour, and soon
recognized the stately figure of one of the daughters, F.F. was
tall, dark and handsome, but had never made any advances to me,
nor had I to her. She was making love to her father's mare after
a singular fashion. Stripping her right arm, she formed her
fingers into a cone, and pressed on the mare's vulva. I was
astonished to see the beast stretching her hind legs as if to
accommodate the hand of her mistress, which she pushed in
gradually and with seeming ease to the elbow. At the same time
she seemed to experience the most voluptuous sensation, crisis
after crisis arriving." My correspondent adds that, being
exceedingly curious in the matter, he tried a somewhat similar
experiment himself with one of his father's mares and experienced
what he describes as "a most powerful sexual battery" which
produced very exciting and exhausting effects. Näcke
(_Psychiatrische en Neurologische Bladen_, 1899, No. 2) refers to
an idiot who thus manipulated the vulva of mares in his charge.
The case has been recorded by Guillereau (_Journal de Médicine
Véterinaire et de Zootechnie_, January, 1899) of a youth who was
accustomed to introduce his hand into the vulva of cows in order
to obtain sexual excitement.
The possibility of sexual excitement between women and animals
involves a certain degree of sexual excitability in animals from
contact with women. Darwin stated that there could be no doubt
that various quadrumanous animals could distinguish women from
men--in the first place probably by smell and secondarily by
sight--and be thus liable to sexual excitement. He quotes the
opinions on this point of Youatt, Brehm, Sir Andrew Smith and
Cuvier (_Descent of Man_, second edition, p. 8). Moll quotes the
opinion of an experienced observer to the same effect
(_Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis_, Bd. i, p. 429).
Hufeland reported the case of a little girl of three who was
playing, seated on a stool, with a dog placed between her thighs
and locked against her. Seemingly excited by this contact the
animal attempted a sort of copulation, causing the genital parts
of the child to become inflamed. Bloch (_Op. cit._, p. 280, _et
seq._) discusses the same point; he does not consider that
animals will of their own motion sexually cohabit with women, but
that they may be easily trained to it. There can be no doubt that
dogs at all events are sometimes sexually excited by the presence
of women, perhaps especially during menstruation, and many women
are able to bear testimony to the embarrassing attentions they
have sometimes received from strange dogs. There can be no
difficulty in believing that, so far as _cunnilinctus_ is
concerned dogs would require no training. In a case recorded by
Moll (_Konträre Sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. 560) a lady
states that this was done to her when a child, as also to other
children, by dogs who, she said, showed signs of sexual
excitement. In this case there was also sexual excitement thus
produced in the child, and after puberty mutual _cunnilinctus_
was practiced with girl friends. Guttceit (_Dreissig Jahre
Praxis_, Theil I, p. 310) remarks that some Russian officers who
were in the Turkish campaign of 1828 told him that from fear of
veneral infection in Wallachia they refrained from women and
often used female asses which appeared to show signs of sexual
pleasure.
A very large number of animals have been recorded as having been employed
in the gratification of sexual desire at some period or in some country,
by men and sometimes by women. Domestic animals are naturally those which
most frequently come into question, and there are few if any of these
which can altogether be excepted. The sow is one of the animals most
frequently abused in this manner.[51] Cases in which mares, cows, and
donkeys figure constantly occur, as well as goats and sheep. Dogs, cats,
and rabbits are heard of from time to time. Hens, ducks, and, especially
in China, geese, are not uncommonly employed. The Roman ladies were said
to have had an abnormal affection for snakes. The bear and even the
crocodile are also mentioned.[52]
The social and legal attitude toward bestiality has reflected in part the
frequency with which it has been practiced, and in part the disgust mixed
with mystical and sacrilegious horror which it has aroused. It has
sometimes been met merely by a fine, and sometimes the offender and his
innocent partner have been burnt together. In the middle ages and later
its frequency is attested by the fact that it formed a favorite topic with
preachers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is significant that
in the Penitentials,--which were criminal codes, half secular and half
spiritual, in use before the thirteenth century, when penance was
relegated to the judgment of the confessor,--it was thought necessary to
fix the periods of penance which should be undergone respectively by
bishops, priests and deacons who should be guilty of bestiality.
In Egbert's Penitential, a document of the ninth and tenth
centuries, we read (V. 22): "Item Episcopus cum quadrupede
fornicans VII annos, consuetudinem X, presbyter V, diaconus III,
clerus II." There was a great range in the penances for
bestiality, from ten years to (in the case of boys) one hundred
days. The mare is specially mentioned (Haddon and Stubbs,
_Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents_, vol. iii, p. 422). In
Theodore's Penitential, another Anglo-Saxon document of about the
same age, those who habitually fornicate with animals are
adjudged ten years of penance. It would appear from the
_Penitentiale Pseudo-Romanum_ (which is earlier than the eleventh
century) that one year's penance was adequate for fornication
with a mare when committed by a layman (exactly the same as for
simple fornication with a widow or virgin), and this was
mercifully reduced to half a year if he had no wife.
(Wasserschleben, _Die Bussordnungen der Abendländlichen Kirche_,
p. 366). The _Penitentiale Hubertense_ (emanating from the
monastery of St. Hubert in the Ardennes) fixes ten years' penance
for sodomy, while Fulbert's Penitential (about the eleventh
century) fixes seven years for either sodomy or bestiality.
Burchard's Penitential, which is always detailed and precise,
specially mentions the mare, the cow and the ass, and assigns
forty days bread and water and seven years penance, raised to ten
years in the case of married men. A woman having intercourse with
a horse is assigned seven years penance in Burchard's
Penitential. (Wasserschleben, ib. pp. 651, 659.)
The extreme severity which was frequently exercised toward those guilty of
this offense, was doubtless in large measure due to the fact that
bestiality was regarded as a kind of sodomy, an offense which was
frequently viewed with a mystical horror apart altogether from any actual
social or personal injury it caused. The Jews seem to have felt this
horror; it was ordered that the sinner and his victim should both be put
to death (Exodus, Ch. 22, v. 19; Leviticus, Ch. 20, v. 15). In the middle
ages, especially in France, the same rule often prevailed. Men and sows,
men and cows, men and donkeys were burnt together. At Toulouse a woman was
burnt for having intercourse with a dog. Even in the seventeenth century a
learned French lawyer, Claude Lebrun de la Rochette, justified such
sentences.[53] It seems probable that even to-day, in the social and legal
attitude toward bestiality, sufficient regard is not paid to the fact that
this offense is usually committed either by persons who are morbidly
abnormal or who are of so low a degree of intelligence that they border on
feeble-mindedness. To what extent, and on what grounds, it ought to be
punished is a question calling for serious reconsideration.