ous to avoid pregnancy availed
themselves of it. In Elizabethan England, at the same time, it appears to
have been of similar character and Marston in his satires tells how Lucea
prefers "a glassy instrument" to "her husband's lukewarm bed." In
sixteenth century France, also, such instruments were sometimes made of
glass, and Brantome refers to the godemiche; in eighteenth century Germany
they were called _Samthanse_, and their use, according to Heinse, as
quoted by Duehren, was common among aristocratic women. In England by that
time the dildo appears to have become common. Archemholtz states that
while in Paris they are only sold secretly, in London a certain Mrs.
Philips sold them openly on a large scale in her shop in Leicester Square.
John Bee in 1835, stating that the name was originally dil-dol, remarks
that their use was formerly commoner than it was in his day. In France,
Madame Gourdan, the most notorious brothel-keeper of the eighteenth
century, carried on a wholesale trade in _consolateurs_, as they were
called, and "at her death numberless letters from abbesses and simple nuns
were found among her papers, asking for a 'consolateur' to be sent."[192]
The modern French instrument is described by Gamier as of hardened red
rubber, exactly imitating the penis and capable of holding warm milk or
other fluid for injection at the moment of orgasm; the compressible
scrotum is said to have been first added in the eighteenth century.[193]

In Islam the artificial penis has reached nearly as high a development as
in Christendom. Turkish women use it and it is said to be openly sold in
Smyrna. In the harems of Zanzibar, according to Baumann, it is of
considerable size, carved out of ebony or ivory, and commonly bored
through so that warm water may be injected. It is here regarded as an Arab
invention.[194]

Somewhat similar appliances may be traced in all centres of civilization.
But throughout they appear to be frequently confined to the world of
prostitutes and to those women who live on the fashionable or
semi-artistic verge of that world. Ignorance and delicacy combine with a
less versatile and perverted concentration on the sexual impulse to
prevent any general recourse to such highly specialized methods of
solitary gratification.

On the other hand, the use, or rather abuse, of the ordinary objects and
implements of daily life in obtaining auto-erotic gratification, among the
ordinary population in civilized mod