The Blood of the Vampire

by Florence Marryat

  Such is the character of pubescent mania at its worst. But it differs much in degree of severity of symptoms and in their distribution in different cases. When the excitement is subacute only, the symptoms, though of the same character, are less violent and there is more show of moral perversity and wanton wilfulness; features which, accentuating its histrionic complexion, are pretty sure to cause it to be described as hysterical insanity. …

  Such is the state of things at the outset. In further course morbid suspicions and fears ensue: fears and fancies of having done something wrong or of being suspected of wrong-doing, of not being loved by parents, of being disliked and spoken ill of by companions, of being watched and followed in the streets, of having been designedly put to an injurious or unsuitable occupation, of having been injured by a wrong diet or a wrong medical treatment; … Great as is the misery in which these patients profess to be, there is still no little self-conceit and self-indulgence in it, since notwithstanding their woe they are quick to feel and remember the least hurt to their self-love and bitterly resent any thwarting of their wishes or opposition to their selfish ways.

  The disorder goes still deeper, positive delusions are developed. One young woman, whose limited experience and capacity of wickedness belie the conceit she has of herself, declares that she is the wickedest person in the world, possessed by the devil and damned to all eternity in con-sequence; she spends hours on her knees in fancied prayer, refuses food or takes it most capriciously and irregularly, and perhaps makes abortive attempts at suicide. It would be a gross and grave error to treat her suicidal attempts as if they were mere empty pretences because they seem not very deep and genuine and have a histrionic look; they may be carried into full effect, either suddenly at the convulsive instigation of an overwhelming crisis of despair, or because a pretended or only half-intended attempt, once started, gets out of hand and accomplishes itself. Another young woman, translating desires into hopes and hopes into beliefs, maintains that some gentleman whom she has met in society but to whom she has hardly spoken or has not spoken at all is in love with her and would propose to her but for hindrances put in his way by others; accordingly she writes loving letters to him, takes and makes occasions to throw herself in his way, perhaps insists on leaving the house to go to him, persuading herself that there is a mysterious tie of secret spiritual sympathy, if not a spiritual marriage, between them. …

  Having described the features of (a) the mania and (b) the melancholia occurring in connection with adolescence, it remains now, in order to make a complete picture, to notice a third variety of disorder — namely (c) the strange moral perversion and intellectual obliquity displayed in some cases of hysteria. To this category belong the young women who, believing or pretending that they cannot stand or walk, lie in bed or on a couch all day, week after week and month after month, objects of attentive sympathy on the part of their anxious relatives, when all the while their only paralysis is a paralysis of will which an opportune lover or other salutary moral impression might cure straight off; those, again, who, having the notion that they cannot speak, continue mute for months or speak with labouring efforts in a feeble whisper; those who hold their water for a long time, thinking or protesting that they cannot pass it, or who, passing it in secret, maintain that they never pass water at all; others again who exhibit strange substances which they assert they have ejected by vomit, or dejected by bowel; others who, by means of an acid or other corrosive fluid, simulate strange skin diseases which puzzle and sometimes impose on medical practitioners; near akin to them, those who, professing to live without food, attract the curiosity and excite the gaping wonder of the whole countryside, and sometimes, if their disorder obtains the fit food of a foolish sympathy and congenial surroundings, fall into ecstasies of religious transport in which, seeing visions or displaying the sacred stigmata on forehead, hands or breast they are deemed to be the special channels of a divine influx. …

  The immoral vagaries of these hysterical persons sometimes show themselves in more mischievous guise. Indeed, whoever wanted to illustrate a systematic moral insanity could not find more striking pictures of moral degeneration than some of them present; nowhere more perfect example of the subtlest deceit, the most ingenious lying, the diabolic cunning, in the service of vicious impulses. Inventing stories that are pure fables, or large superstructures of falsehood founded on a tiny basis of fact, they make false charges of indecent assault or write anonymous letters, a defamatory or even grossly obscene kind; pilfer tradesmen's slops, play secretly the most mischievous pranks in a household with such a cunning and pert ingenuity that the inmates think the place haunted; set fire to the house for the impish joy of doing it; all the more active and pertinacious in their evil ways and doings the more commotion these excite. That their perverted moral state is somehow connected with the action of the reproductive organs on an unstable nervous system seems probable because it is mostly met with in unmarried women, is prone to exhibit erotic features, and is sometimes cured by marriage. (pp. 389-399)

  Extract from: A Physician, Satan in Society (New York: C F Vent, 1871).

  Chapter IV. FEMALE MASTURBATION.

  Alas, that such a term is possible! O! that it were as infrequent as it is monstrous, and that no stern necessity compelled us to make the startling disclosures which this chapter must contain! We beseech, in advance, that every young creature into whose hands this book may chance to fall, if she be yet pure and innocent, will at least pass over this chapter, that she may still believe in the general chastity of her sex; that she may not know the depths of degradation into which it is possible to fall. We concede that only a wide-spread existence of the crime could justify this public description of its consequences. We believe that a smaller proportion of girls than of boys are addicted to it, but the number is nevertheless enormous, and the dangers are all the greater, that their very existence is so generally ignored. Even tolerable physicians seem oblivious of its prevalence, and blindly go on in the vain endeavor to heal maladies of the origin of which they are ignorant, and of which the causes are in perpetual operation.

  Beyond all dispute the crime exists, and incontestably the female boarding-school is the arena wherein it is most widely acquired and practiced! We translate the following from an acknowledged high medical authority, the “Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales:”

  Naturally more timid and more secret than boys, the effects of their reunion, although very fatal, are less than in the latter. At the same time a culpable negligence in the boarding-schools of 'young ladies,' too frequently allows to be introduced there the disorders of masturbation. This practice is dissembled from the impenetrative or careless eyes of the teacher under the guise of friendship, which is carried, in a great number of cases, to a scandalous extent. The most intimate liaisons are formed under this specious pretext; the same bed often receives the two friends

  We have seen letters from these young persons to each other, scarcely eleven or twelve years of age, the burning and passionate expressions of which made us shudder. The clandestine reading of certain books, in which abject authors have traced, in the liveliest colours, the deplorable deviations of the senses, is another no less fatal circumstance which hastens the corruption of girls. One can affirm that this reading of romances, which so easily becomes the object of a veritable passion with young persons, is to-day one of the most active causes of their depravation.

  With girls, as with boys, the genital organs may be constitutionally endowed with excessive predominance of action, which masters all the affections, all the movements of the economy, and causes them to titillate incessantly that part of those organs which is the seat of the keenest sensibility. Very little girls are often thus borne along, by a kind of instinct, to commit masturbation. The famous Dr. Deslandes makes the astounding statement, which can only be true of the French nation, that “a great number of little girls, and the majority of adolescents, commit this crime!”

  Human nature, however, is m
uch the same the world over, and a habit so easily acquired and practiced, so little suspected, or entirely ignored, and which, for these and certain physical reasons, girls are even more liable to contract than boys, may well excite astonishment and alarm, and render the distinguished Frenchman's caution equally appropriate here: “There is no young girl who should not be considered as already addicted to or liable to become addicted to this habit.” It is often very difficult almost impossible, in fact for the physician to ascertain the origin of many of the diseases of unmarried women which he is called upon to treat, and, if the cause be perpetually in operation, he will prescribe with fruitless results. The broken health, the prostration, the great debility, the remarkable derangements of the gastric and uterine functions, for which the physician is consulted, too often have this origin, and when the cause is investigated the subject alleges great exertions, intense trouble, un-happiness, etc., but is silent as to the real cause, which, perhaps, after all, she does not herself associate with her maladies. The utmost penetration of the physician can only cause him to suspect the truth, but a question skillfully put will generally reveal all.

  One of the most celebrated surgeons in the world has related the following case: “A young girl of ten or twelve years, sole heiress of a considerable fortune, was unsuccessfully treated by the most skillful physicians of Paris. At length the physician who has furnished this narration was summoned. He was not more fortunate than his colleagues. Unable to explain this general failure to relieve, and the constantly increasing debility of the patient, he imparted to the mother his suspicions of the cause of all these accidents that nothing subdued. The mother, exceedingly astonished, and almost indignant at an assertion which appeared to her so rash, earnestly maintained that the thing was impossible, as the child had always been under her own eye, or confided to a governess incapable of teaching her evil. This governess was an old woman who had reared the mother, and who had never excited her suspicions in any respect. The physician, however, caused the child to be separated from both mother and governess. She was sent to her aunt in the country, in order the better to watch her in this intentional isolation. This aunt, taking advantage of the ascendency which she had obtained over the girl's mind, subjected her to a secret interrogation. She was moved, embarrassed, discountenanced, but confessed nothing. Her embarrassment had already betrayed her, and from that moment, in the estimation of the aunt, her fault was assured. Soon the doctor arrived, who directed against the poor child a last and vigorous attack. ‘Mademoiselle,’ said he, with a tone of authority, certainty, and conviction, ‘the solemn moment has arrived to tell us here the truth, and nothing but the truth. Your aunt and I now understand the whole matter. It only remains to inform us who taught you this detestable habit, which has totally ruined your health, and how long since this fatal secret was revealed to you, for it certainly did not originate with yourself.’ At this severe and unexpected language the young girl was much affected. Being urged, she hesitated, looked at her aunt, and avowed all. It was her old governess who had taught her masturbation. The aid of medicine proved powerless to restore the health which she had lost.”

  After this, trust women, trust nurses, trust governesses, believe mothers! Nolite confidere in nulieribus. The symptoms which enable us to recognize or suspect this crime are the following: A general condition of languor, weakness, and loss of flesh; the absence of freshness and beauty, of colour from the complexion, of the vermilion from the lips, and white-ness from the teeth, which are replaced by a pale, lean, puffy, flabby, livid physiognomy; a bluish circle around the eyes, which are sunken, dull, and spiritless; a sad expression, dry cough, oppression and panting on the least exertion, the appearance of incipient consumption. The menstrual periods often exist, at least, in the commencement, and so the alteration in health can not be attributed to their derangement or suppression. It is not uncommon to see the shape impaired, or even deformed.

  The moral symptoms are similar to those of the opposite sex. They are sadness or melancholy, solitude or indifference, an aversion to legitimate pleasures, and a host of other characteristics common to the two sexes. The condition called “nymphomania” sometimes ensues, in which the most timid girl is transformed into a termagant, and the most delicate modesty to a furious audacity which even the effrontery of prostitution does not approach.

  Let it not be supposed that the absence of the seminal secretion in woman, renders this vice less destructive than in man. Ubi irritatio ibi fluxus (where there is irritation there is increased secretion) is a medical maxim, and the increase of the proper secretions of the female organs under habitual irritation, is enormous and extremely debilitating. Witness the sad examples of leucorrhoeal discharge (called the ‘whites,’) now so common as to be well-nigh the rule rather than the exception.

  Deslandes says: “I have reason to believe, from a great number of facts presented to me in practice, that of every twenty cases of leucorrhoea (‘whites,’ or of inflammation of the vulva or vagina in children and young girls, there are at least fifteen or eighteen which result from masturbation!” And again: “Repeated admissions have also convinced me that leucorrhoea and chronic inflammation of the womb, so common with the women of our cities, most frequently owe their origin to former, and sometimes to recent, excesses of this nature!”

  We have termed onanism a solitary vice, and nothing is more just. It has also been termed a contagious vice, and nothing is more true. The example of a single masturbator never fails to bear its fruit. At first the novelty, and then the pleasure, explains this contagiousness. This furnishes the explanation for its frequency in establishments where a great number of young subjects are gathered together schools, boarding houses, colleges; in short, all places where education is common and great care, watchfulness, and supervision should be, and to a certain extent are exercised, in order that this horrible evil may not entirely depopulate these establishments.

  The conjugal couch itself is not always exempt “We have been consulted in a case of sterility,” says Dr. Rauland, “by a woman who made to us the most surprising avowal. Her husband, a confirmed masturbator, had not lost this practice on contracting marriage. She herself had not delayed to follow his example, and together, on each side, they indulged in the solitary pleasures which should have been enjoyed in common. The desire of having children sometimes brought them together, but these unfortunate beings did not suspect that it was precisely their shameful practice which was the most insurmountable obstacle to the realization of their wishes. Thanks to this desire, which, among other motives, had been excited by considerations of fortune, we were enabled to extirpate this double onanism from a couch where it should never have been able to penetrate, and to return two persons to the sole enjoyments which morality, medicine and religion could permit.”

  There is among children a sort of instinct, which leads them to hide and to dissimulate their maneuvers before even they have found them to be illicit and shameful. The art with which they elude watchfulness and evade questions is often inconceivable. They can not be too strongly suspected. The nature of the habits of a young person should awaken suspicion; for masturbation leads them to solitude. Have an eye, then, upon those who prefer darkness and solitude; who remain long alone without being able to give good reasons for this isolation. Let vigilance attach itself principally to the moments which follow the retirement to bed, and those which precede the rising. It is then especially that the masturbator may be surprised in the act. Her hands are never outside the bed, and generally she prefers to hide her head under the coverlet. She has scarcely gone to bed ere she appears plunged in a profound sleep. This circumstance, which to a practiced observer is always suspicious, is one of those which most frequently contributes to the cause, or to nourish the false security of parents. The affectation that the young person carries into her pretended sleep, the marked exaggeration with which she pretends to sleep, may often serve to betray her. Often, when suddenly approached, she may be seen to blush, and to
be covered with perspiration unaccounted for by the temperature of the room, the warmth of the covering, or any other observable cause. The breathing is at the same time more precipitate, the pulse more developed, harder, and quicker, the blood vessels fuller, and the heat greater than in the natural condition. There is, in short, that sort of fever which ordinarily accompanies the venereal act.