fix her pelvis, and moving
her trunk and limbs. The muscles were rigid, the face took on a
passionate expression; the features were contorted, the eyes
rolled, the teeth were set, and the lips compressed, while the
cheeks were purple. The condition bore a striking resemblance to
the passional stage of grand hysteria. The reveling took only a
moment to commence, but lasted a long time. Swaying induced a
pleasurable sensation, accompanied with a feeling of suction upon
the clitoris. Almost immediately after, a sensation of bursting,
caused by discharge from the vulvo-vaginal glands, occurs,
followed by a rapture prolonged for an indefinite time." The
accompanying sexual imagery is so vivid as almost to become
hallucinatory. (J.G. Kiernan, "Sex Transformation and Psychic
Impotence," _American Journal of Dermatology_, vol. ix, No. 2.)

Somewhat similarly sensations of sexual character are sometimes
experienced by boys when climbing up a pole. It is not even necessary that
there should be direct external contact with the sexual organs, and Howe
states that gymnastic swinging poles around which boys swing while
supporting the whole weight on the hands, may suffice to produce sexual
excitement.

Several writers have pointed out that riding, especially in women, may
produce sexual excitement and orgasm.[205] It is well-known, also, that
both in men and women the vibratory motion of a railway-train frequently
produces a certain degree of sexual excitement, especially when sitting
forward. Such excitement may remain latent and not become specifically
sexual.[206] I am not aware that this quality of railway traveling has
ever been fostered as a sexual perversion, but the sewing-machine has
attracted considerable attention on account of its influence in exciting
auto-erotic manifestations. The early type of sewing-machine, especially,
was of very heavy character and involved much up and down movement of the
legs; Langdon Down pointed out many years ago that this frequently
produced great sexual erethism which led to masturbation.[207] According
to one French authority, it is a well-recognized fact that to work a
sewing-machine with the body in a certain position produces sexual
excitement leading to the orgasm. The occurrence of the orgasm is
indicated to the observer by the machine being worked for a few seconds
with uncontrollable rapidity. This sound is said to be frequently