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In this article the author traces the origin of the term 'Erogenous Zones'. He states that this phenomenon has been known in the general sense and without reference to sexual feelings from the earliest days when exact medical observation began to be made. It was termed 'sympathy'. Charcot recognised these 'erogenous zones' but called them hysterogenous zones, and did not bring them into relation with sexual phenomena.
Ernest Chambard in 1881 seems to have been the first to bring erogenous zones, or as he termed them centres-érogènes, into relation with sexual phenomena. Féré in 1883 pointed out the analogy of erogenous zones to hysterogenous zones, and also stated that the former could occur in the normal state. He evidently based his ideas on Chambard's centres-érogènes but altered the term to zones érogènes.
The first reference to zones érogènes in English was in the translation of Binet's and Féré's 'Animal Magnetism' in 1887 and appeared as erogenic zones. It then appeared in the Oxford Dictionary in 1891 with the meaning 'that gives rise to sexual desire'. It added that the word is from the French érogènique, which is a misstatement—the word used in French being always érogène.
The author considers that he was the next person to use it in English in the third volume of his Studies 1903, and he adopted the term erogenous zones.
Bloch supplied the next comprehensive account of the matter in his 'Beiträge zur Aetiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis', Part II, p. 192, and extended the term of erogenous zones to all the senses.
Freud in his 'Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie', 1905 was the first to adopt and make wide use of the doctrine of erogenous zones, and it is to him, says the author, that we must largely attribute the general current acceptance of the idea of the name of erogenous zones.