Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/450

432 mother laid her son of five and a half years on herself, and practiced abuse with him; and in that given by Lafarque (Journ. Méd. de Bordeaux, 1814), where a girl, aged 17, laid her brother, aged 13, upon herself, brought about membrorum conjunctionem, and performed masturbation on him.

The following cases are those of tainted individuals: Magnan (Ann. méd.-psych., 1885) mentions an unmarried woman, aged 29, who, though indifferent toward other children or even men, suffered frightfully in the presence of her nephew, and could scarcely control her impulse to cohabit with him. This sexual peculiarity continued only as long as the nephew was quite young.

Legrand (Ann. méd.-psych., May, 1876) mentions a girl, aged 15, who seduced her brother into all manner of sexual excesses on her person; and when, after two years of this incestuous practice, her brother died, she attempted to murder a relative. In the same article there is the case of a married woman, aged 36, who hung her open breast out of a window, and indulged in abuse with her brother, aged 18; and also the case of a mother, aged 39, who practiced incest with her son, with whom she was madly in love, became pregnant by him, and induced abortion.

Through Casper we know that depraved mothers in large cities sometimes treat their little daughters in a most horrible fashion, in order to prepare them for the sexual use of debauchees. This crime belongs elsewhere.

Allied to incest, but still less repugnant to moral sensibility, are those cases in which persons seduce those entrusted to them for care or education, and who are more or less dependent upon them, to commit or suffer vicious practices. Such acts, which especially deserve legal punishment, seem only exceptionally to have psychopathic significance.