Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/296

 of feminine psychology. He turns reactively to the richer s nature, the masculine. Usually, such a physician must wear his 'mask', like the rest of the uranistic fraternity. Sometimes when he finds that he cannot do this, he quits his profession, or even quits the world.

A distinguished French surgeon writes thus: "Always homosexual, my marriage did not alter this, nor do any of the intellectual and professional currents of my life. I have a large practice, and I am much in social demand. I have intimate friendships with women, and I have never had reason to think them indifferent to me … But I have always found in the homosexual embrace infinitely more satisfaction than in intercourse of the normal sort … When I find my homosexual desires overpowering, I go to B— where I have a colleague, a former student with me in the B— University, who is "like myself", and I pass some time with him. I have also a similar relation with a student here. My wife seems to have never suspected the nature of my sexual coldness, she herself being rather frigid … My colleague, Doctor X— is another homosexual member of the profession. I know of his intimacy with a certain patient (a member of the Chamber of Deputies) and with others. They, however, are fortunate in being unmarried. My marriage was absolutely a necessity, for family-reasons. I am aware of numerous such instances as mine … You probably know that the eminent German surgeon Z… is homosexual; and that his intimacy with the young son of a noble patron menaced him with scandal a few years ago, the matter being hushed up by the intervention of—I might write—one of the royal family." …

A minute autobiographical study of a German physician, typically Uranian, occurs in Dr von Krafft-Ebing's treatise "Psychopathia Sexualis" in the eleventh (German) edition of that work, under the reference, "Observation No. 148."