The powerful effect which stimulation of the nipple produces on the sexual sphere has led to the breasts playing a prominent part in the erotic art of those lands in which this art has been most carefully cultivated.  Thus in India, according to Vatsyayana, many authors are of the opinion that in approaching a woman a lover should begin by sucking the nipples of her breasts, and in the songs of the Bayaderes of Southern India sucking the nipple is mentioned as one of the natural preliminaries of coitus.

In some cases, and more especially in neurotic persons, the sexual pleasure derived from manipulation of the nipple passes normal limits and, being preferred even to coitus, becomes a perversion.  In girls’ schools, it is said, especially in France, sucking and titillation of the breasts are not uncommon; in men, also, titillation of the nipples occasionally produces sexual sensations (Fere, L’Instinct Sexuel, second edition, p. 132).  Hildebrandt recorded the case of a young woman whose nipples had been sucked by her lover; by constantly drawing her breasts she became able to suck them herself and thus attained extreme sexual pleasure.  A.J.  Bloch, of New Orleans, has noted the case of a woman who complained of swelling of the breasts; the gentlest manipulation produced an orgasm, and it was found that the swelling had been intentionally produced for the sake of this manipulation.  Moraglia in Italy knew a very beautiful woman who was perfectly cold in normal sexual relationships, but madly excited when her husband pressed or sucked her breasts.  Lombroso (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1885, fasc.  IV) has described the somewhat similar case of a woman who had no sexual sensitivity in the clitoris, vagina, or labia, and no pleasure in coitus except in very strange positions, but possessed intense sexual feelings in the right nipple as well as in the upper third of the thigh.

It is remarkable that not only is suckling apt to be accompanied by sexual pleasure in the mother, but that, in some cases, the infant also appears to have a somewhat similar experience.  This is, at all events, indicated in a remarkable case recorded by Fere (L’Instinct Sexuel, second edition, p. 257).  A female infant child of slightly neurotic heredity was weaned at the age of 14 months, but so great was her affection for her mother’s breasts, though she had already become accustomed to other food, that this was only accomplished with great difficulty and by allowing her still to caress the naked breasts several times a day.  This went on for many months, when the mother, becoming again pregnant, insisted on putting an end to it.  So jealous was the child, however, that it was necessary to conceal from her the fact that her younger sister was suckled at her mother’s breasts, and once at the age of 3, when she saw her father aiding her mother to undress, she became violently jealous of him.  This jealousy, as well as the passion