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 foetal 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 foetal 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 (Kryptadia, 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.