You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
… Things become more and more complicated as confirmation comes in. Yesterday, for instance, I saw four new cases whose aetiology, as shown by the chronological data, could only be coitus interruptus. It may perhaps amuse you if I give a short account of them. They are far from being uniform.
Woman, aged 41; children, 16, 14, 11 and 7. Nervous trouble for the last 12 years; well during pregnancy; recurrence afterwards; not made worse by the last pregnancy. Attacks of giddiness with feeling of weakness, agoraphobia, anxious expectation,
[Dated Vienna, October 6, 1893.]
no trace of neurasthenia, little hysteria. Aetiology confirmed: simple [anxiety neurosis].
Woman, aged 24; children, 4 and 2. Since the spring of ‘93 attacks of pain at night (from back to sternum) with insomnia; otherwise nothing; well during the day. Husband a commercial traveller; was at home for some time during the spring and just now. In the summer, while the husband was away, she was perfectly well. Coitus interruptus and great fear of having children. Hysteria, therefore.
Man, aged 42; children, 17, 16 and 13. Well till six years ago. Then, on his father's death, sudden attack of anxiety with heart-failure, hypochondriacal fears of cancer of the tongue; several months later a second attack, with cyanosis, intermittent pulse, fear of death, etc.; since then weakness, vertigo, agoraphobia, some dyspepsia. This is a case of pure anxiety neurosis accompanied by heart symptoms, after emotion; whereas coitus interruptus was apparently tolerated easily for ten years.1
Man, aged 34. Loss of appetite for the last three years; dyspepsia for the last year, with loss of 20 kilos [44 lbs.], constipation. When these ceased, violent intracranial pressure when a scirocco was blowing;2 attacks of weakness with associated sensations, hysteriform clonic spasms. In this case, therefore, neurasthenia predominates. One child, aged 5. Since then coitus interruptus owing to wife's illness. At about the same time as his