Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/237

Rh August, 1872, however, the signs of effemination become more and more frequent. He acts somewhat affected, declaring that he can no longer live among men that drink and smoke. He thinks and feels like a woman. He must thenceforth be treated like a woman and transferred to a female ward. He asks for confections and delicate desserts. Occasionally, on account of tenesmus and cystospasm, he asks to be transferred to a lying-in hospital and treated as a woman very ill in pregnancy. The abnormal magnetism of masculine attendants has an unfavorable effect on him. At times he still feels himself to be a man, but in a way which indicates his abnormally altered sexual feeling. He pleads only for satisfaction by means of masturbation, or for marriage without coitus. Marriage is a sensual institution. The girl that he would take for a wife must be a masturbator. About the end of December, 1872, his personality became completely feminine. From that time he remained a woman. He had always been a woman, but in his babyhood a French Quaker, an artist, had put masculine genitals on him, and by rubbing and distorting his thorax had prevented the development of his breasts. After this he demanded to be transferred to the female department, protection from men that wished to violate him, and asked for female clothing. Eventually he also desired to be given employment in a toy-shop, with crocheting and embroidery work to do, or a place in a dress-making establishment with female work. From the time of the transformatio sexus, the patient begins a new reckoning of time. He conceives his previous personality in memory as that of a cousin.

He always speaks of himself in the third person, and calls himself the Countess V., the dearest friend of the Empress Eugenie; asks for perfumes, corsets, etc. He takes the other men of the ward for girls, tries to raise a head of hair, and demands “Oriental Hair-Remover,” in order that no one may doubt his gender. He takes delight in praising onanism, for “she had been an onanist from fifteen, and had never desired any other kind of sexual satisfaction.” Occasionally neurasthenic symptoms, olfactory hallucinations, and persecutory delusions are observed. All the events up to the time of December, 1872, belong to the personality of the cousin.

The patient’s delusion that he is the Countess V. can no longer be corrected. She proves her identity by the fact that the nurse has examined her, and finds her to be a lady. The countess will not marry, because she hates men. Since he is not provided with female clothing and shoes, he spends the greatest part of the day in bed, acts like an invalid lady of position, affectedly and modestly, and asks for bon-bons and the like. His hair is done up in a knot as well as it allows, and the beard is pulled out. Breasts are made out of biscuits.

In 1874 caries began in the left knee-joint, to which pulmonary tuberculosis was soon added. Death on December 2, 1874. Skull normal, Frontal lobes atrophic. Brain anemic. Microscopical (Dr.