o what
extent sexual power varies in man. Sexual excitation and desire may
sometimes attain such a degree that they are repeated a few minutes
after ejaculation. It is not rare for a man to perform coitus ten or
fifteen times in a single night, in brothels and elsewhere, although
such excess borders on the domain of pathology. I know a case in which
coitus was performed thirty times. I was once consulted by an old
woman of 65 who complained of the insatiable sexual appetite of her
husband, aged 73! He awakened her every morning at three o'clock to
have connection, before going to work. Not content with this, he
repeated the performance every evening and often also after the
mid-day meal. Inversely, I have seen healthy looking husbands, at the
age of greatest sexual power, accuse themselves of excess for having
cohabited with their wives once a month or less. The reformer,
_Luther_, who was a practical man, laid down the average rule of two
or three connections a week in marriage, at the time of highest sexual
power. I may say that my numerous observations as a physician have
generally confirmed this rule, which seems to me to conform very well
to the normal state to which man has become gradually adapted during
thousands of years.

Husbands who would consider this average as an imprescriptible right
would, however, make wrong pretensions, for it is quite possible for a
normal man to contain himself much longer, and it is his duty to do
so, not only when his wife is ill, but also during menstruation and
pregnancy.

The question of sexual relations during pregnancy is more difficult,
on account of its long duration. In this case caution is necessary,
but total abstinence from sexual connection is, in my opinion,
superfluous.

=The Desire of Change in Man.=--A peculiarity of the sexual appetite
in man, which is fatal for society, is his desire for change. This
desire is not only one of the principal causes of polygamy, but also
of prostitution and other analogous organizations. It arises from the
want of sexual attraction in what one is accustomed to and from the
stronger excitation produced by all that is new; a phenomenon of which
we have spoken above. On the average, woman has a hereditary
disposition which is much more monogamous than man. The sexual
appetite thus loses its intensity from the prolonged habit of
connection with the same woman, but, becomes much more intense with
other women, if not in all men at an