The Ethnology of the Sixth Sense. Studies and Researches into its Abuses, Perversions, Follies, Anomalies, and Crimes.
Paris: Charles Carrington, 1899. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. xx + 422 pp. Blue cloth with gilt titling to spine; bibliography. Subscriber's edition limited to 1,000 copies, this copy not numbered (as usual). A detailed and rather salacious survey of human sexual organs - and their abnormalities - written under the guise of science, but clearly with more prurient motives and produced by the famous Paris-based bookseller and publisher of erotica, Charles Carrington. The title is presumably deliberately obscure: the "sixth sense" apparently referred to was not the psychic, but very physical: the "Genital Sense." According to the Author's Foreword the subject of the book is "The Study of the Genital Sense in its active phase" which can be divided into two parts: "The Anatomy of the genital organs in the two sexes and an examination of the Anomalies which they may present" and "The Physiology of the Sixth Sense, or the Study of the Acts and physiological Laws of Procreation and Generation, and the examination of their Variation according to Race and Environment." Contents: Chapter I, The Genital Organs in the Two Sexes; Chapter II, The Human Sperm and Sermatozoides; Chapter III, Male Apparatus of Copulation; Chapter IV, Defects of Conformation in the Male Copulative Apparatus; Chapter V, Defects of Conformation in the Male Copulative Apparatus (continued); Chapter VI, Defects of Conformation in the Male Copulative Apparatus; Chapter VII, Abnormalities and Singularities of the Male Copulative Apparatus; Chapter VIII, Foreign Bodies in the Penis; Chapter IX, Surgical and other Operations Performed on the Male Copulative Organ; Chapter X, Mutilations and Amputations of the Genital Apparatus Wholly or In Part; Chapter XI, Apparatus of Generation in the Woman; Chapter XII, Defects of Conformation in the Genital Apparatus of the Woman; Chapter XIII, Foreign Bodies in the Urethra and Vagina of the Woman; Chapter XIV, Operations and Mutilations Performed on the Genital Organs of the Woman; Chapter XV, Anatomical Idylls; XVI Organs Annexed to the Genital Apparatus - the Anus in Man - the Mammae in Woman. Gilt on spine darkened, one small scratch and some light flecking to cloth on rear board; endpapers tanned, otherwise, a tight and clean VG copy. Item #36841
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