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correspondent tells me, he once treated the widow of a wealthy Mohammedan,
who informed him that she began masturbation at an early age, "just like
all other women." The same informant tells me that on the _façade_ of a
large temple in Orissa are bas-reliefs, representing both men and women,
alone, masturbating, and also women masturbating men. Among the Tamils of
Ceylon masturbation is said to be common. In Cochin China, Lorion remarks,
it is practiced by both sexes, but especially by the married women.[188]
Japanese women have probably carried the mechanical arts of auto-erotism
to the highest degree of perfection. They use two hollow balls about the
size of a pigeon's egg (sometimes one alone is used), which, as described
by Joest, Christian, and others,[189] are made of very thin leaf of brass;
one is empty, the other (called the little man) contains a small heavy
metal ball, or else some quicksilver, and sometimes metal tongues which
vibrate when set in movement; so that if the balls are held in the hand
side by side there is a continuous movement. The empty one is first
introduced into the vagina in contact with the uterus, then the other; the
slightest movement of the pelvis or thighs, or even spontaneous movement
of the organs, causes the metal ball (or the quicksilver) to roll, and the
resulting vibration produces a prolonged voluptuous titillation, a gentle
shock as from a weak electric inductive apparatus; the balls are called
_rin-no-tama_, and are held in the vagina by a paper tampon. The women who
use these balls delight to swing themselves in a hammock or rocking-chair,
the delicate vibration of the balls slowly producing the highest degree of
sexual excitement. Joest mentions that this apparatus, though well known
by name to ordinary girls, is chiefly used by the more fashionable
_geishas_, as well as by prostitutes. Its use has now spread to China,
Annam, and India. Japanese women also, it is said, frequently use an
artificial penis of paper or clay, called e.g.. Among the Atjeh, again,
according to Jacobs (as quoted by Ploss), the young of both sexes
masturbate and the elder girls use an artificial penis of wax. In China,
also, the artificial penis--made of rosin, supple and (like the classical
instrument described by Herondas) rose-colored--is publicly sold and
widely used by women.[190]
It may be noticed that among non-European races it is among women, and
especially among those who are subjected to the excitement of a life
professionally devoted to some form of pleasure, that the use of the
artificial instruments of auto-erotism is chiefly practiced. The same is
markedly true in Europe. The use of an artificial penis in solitary sexual
gratification may be traced down from classic times, and doubtless
prevailed in the very earliest human civilization, for such an instrument
is said to be represented in old Babylonian sculptures, and it is referred
to by Ezekiel (Ch. XVI. v. 17). The Lesbian women are said to have used
such instruments, made of ivory or gold with silken stuffs and linen.
Aristophanes (_Lysistrata_, v. 109) speaks of the manufacture by the
Milesian women of a leather artificial penis, or olisbos. In the British
Museum is a vase representing a _hetaira_ holding such instruments, which,
as found at Pompeii, may be seen in the museum at Naples. One of the best
of Herondas's mimes, "The Private Conversation," presents a dialogue
between two ladies concerning a certain olisbos (or nbôn), which one of
them vaunts as a dream of delight. Through the Middle Ages (when from time
to time the clergy reprobated the use of such instruments[191]) they
continued to be known, and after the fifteenth century the references to
them became more precise. Thus Fortini, the Siennese novelist of the
sixteenth century, refers in his _Novelle dei Novizi_ (7th Day, Novella
XXXIX) to "the glass object filled with warm water which nuns use to calm
the sting of the flesh and to satisfy themselves as well as they can"; he
adds that widows and other women anxious to avoid pregnancy availed
themselves of it. In Elizabethan England, at the same time, it appears to
have been of similar character and Marston in his satires tells how Lucea
prefers "a glassy instrument" to "her husband's lukewarm bed." In
sixteenth century France, also, such instruments were sometimes made of
glass, and Brantôme refers to the godemiche; in eighteenth century Germany
they were called _Samthanse_, and their use, according to Heinse, as
quoted by Dühren, was common among aristocratic women. In England by that
time the dildo appears to have become common. Archemholtz states that
while in Paris they are only sold secretly, in London a certain Mrs.
Philips sold them openly on a large scale in her shop in Leicester Square.
John Bee in 1835, stating that the name was originally dil-dol, remarks
that their use was formerly commoner than it was in his day. In France,
Madame Gourdan, the most notorious brothel-keeper of the eighteenth
century, carried on a wholesale trade in _consolateurs_, as they were
called, and "at her death numberless letters from abbesses and simple nuns
were found among her papers, asking for a 'consolateur' to be sent."[192]
The modern French instrument is described by Gamier as of hardened red
rubber, exactly imitating the penis and capable of holding warm milk or
other fluid for injection at the moment of orgasm; the compressible
scrotum is said to have been first added in the eighteenth century.[193]
In Islam the artificial penis has reached nearly as high a development as
in Christendom. Turkish women use it and it is said to be openly sold in
Smyrna. In the harems of Zanzibar, according to Baumann, it is of
considerable size, carved out of ebony or ivory, and commonly bored
through so that warm water may be injected. It is here regarded as an Arab
invention.[194]
Somewhat similar appliances may be traced in all centres of civilization.
But throughout they appear to be frequently confined to the world of
prostitutes and to those women who live on the fashionable or
semi-artistic verge of that world. Ignorance and delicacy combine with a
less versatile and perverted concentration on the sexual impulse to
prevent any general recourse to such highly specialized methods of
solitary gratification.
On the other hand, the use, or rather abuse, of the ordinary objects and
implements of daily life in obtaining auto-erotic gratification, among the
ordinary population in civilized modern lands, has reached an
extraordinary degree of extent and variety we can only feebly estimate by
the occasional resulting mischances which come under the surgeon's hands,
because only a certain proportion of such instruments are dangerous. Thus
the banana seems to be widely used for masturbation by women, and appears
to be marked out for the purpose by its size and shape[195]; it is,
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