FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Taste must, I believe, be excluded, for if we abstract the parts of touch and smell, even in those abnormal sexual acts in which it may seem to be affected, taste could scarcely have any influence.  Most of our “tasting,” as Waller puts it, is done by the nose, which, in man, is in specially close relationship, posteriorly, with the mouth.  There are at most four taste sensations—­sweet, bitter, salt, and sour—­if even all of these are simple tastes.  What commonly pass for taste sensations, as shown by some experiments of G.T.W.  Patrick (Psychological Review, 1898, p. 160), are the composite results of the mingling of sensations of smell, touch, temperature, sight, and taste.

TOUCH.

I.

The Primitive Character of the Skin—­Its Qualities—­Touch the Earliest
Source of Sensory Pleasure—­The Characteristics of Touch—­As the Alpha and
Omega of Affection—­The Sexual Organs a Special Adaptation of
Touch—­Sexual Attraction as Originated by Touch—­Sexual Hyperaesthesia to
Touch—­The Sexual Associations of Acne.

We are accustomed to regard the skin as mainly owing its existence to the need for the protection of the delicate vessels, nerves, viscera, and muscles underneath.  Undoubtedly it performs, and by its tough and elastic texture is well fitted to perform, this extremely important service.  But the skin is not merely a method of protection against the external world; it is also a method of bringing us into sensitive contact with the external world.  It is thus, as the organ of touch, the seat of the most widely diffused sense we possess, and, moreover, the sense which is the most ancient and fundamental of all—­the mother of the other senses.

It is scarcely necessary to insist that the primitive nature of the sensory function of the skin with the derivative nature of the other senses, is a well ascertained and demonstrable fact.  The lower we descend in the animal scale, the more varied we find the functions of the skin to be, and if in the higher animals much of the complexity has disappeared, that is only because the specialization of the various skin regions into distinct organs has rendered this complexity unnecessary.  Even yet, however, in man himself the skin still retains, in a more or less latent condition, much of its varied and primary power, and the analysis of pathological and even normal phenomena serves to bring these old powers into clear light.