For the Use of Physicians and Students of Medical
Jurisprudence
BY
BERNARD S. TALMEY, M. D.
With forty-seven cuts, eighty-four drawings, in the text
THIRD REVISED EDITION
Practitioners’ Publishing Company
New York City
Copyrighted, 1919, by
Cecilia Talmey
Not only among laymen but also among serious thinkersand writers on medical topics the opinion is generally prevalent,that there is a vast difference in the degree of intensity of thesex-impulse in men and women. Upon this supposition reststhe justification of the double standard of sexual morality ofthe two sexes. If the intensity of the amatory emotions is thesame in both sexes, then there is no justification for a doublestandard of sexual morality.
Now, an emotion is, in its nature, subjective. Its intensitycan never be objectively determined. Men and women maydispute the question of the different degree of intensity of theamatory emotions till the end of time, still they will neverreach a definite conclusion. The only way to determine thenature of an emotion is to study its pathology. If it can beshown that the same pathological entities of the sex-instinctare found in men and women, the inference is justified thatthe normal emotions are also the same or similar in both sexes.
To prove the similarity or identity of the intensity of thesex-impulse in both sexes, the author published in the winter of1906-1907 his book “Woman, A Treatise on the Normal andPathological Emotions of Feminine Love.” Since the publicationof “Woman” he received numerous letters with requests to writea similar treatise on the amatory emotions of men. In 1910the author published “Genesis, A Manual for the Instruction ofChildren in Matters Sexual.” He thought that the Descriptionof the evolution of sex in plant and animal in “Genesis” mightsupply the demand. Still the requests continued to arrive.He then published, in 1912, “Neurasthenia Sexualis, A Treatiseon Sexual Impotence in Men and Women.” In this treatise theivanatomy and physiology of the male organs of generation werethoroughly discussed. Still it did not fill the demand. Thechapter on pathology dealt only with impotence.
When the author finally decided to write the counterpartof “Woman”, it occurred to him that if the amatory emotionsare the same in men and women, they ought to be treated togetherin one volume. Hence the present work “Love, A Treatiseon the Science of Sex-Attraction.” Naturally the present volumerecapitulates all that the author has previously written in histhree books, “Woman,” “Genesis,” and “Neurasthenia Sexualis.”The three previous works are mere chapters of the presenttreatise. Still every author grows with his work. After yearsof study of the subject of sex, he was able to expand the sphereof his previous lessons, so that even those readers who have readhis three previous books will still find some new po