we can understand how it is that very serious effects may follow coitus.  Even in animals this is sometimes the case.  Young bulls and stallions have fallen in a faint after the first congress; boars may be seriously affected in a similar way; mares have been known even to fall dead.[125] In the human species, and especially in men—­probably, as Bryan Robinson remarks, because women are protected by the greater slowness with which detumescence occurs in them—­not only death itself, but innumerable disorders and accidents have been known to follow immediately after coitus, these results being mainly due to the vascular and muscular excitement involved by the processes of detumescence.  Fainting, vomiting, urination, defaecation have been noted as occurring in young men after a first coitus.  Epilepsy has been not infrequently recorded.  Lesions of various organs, even rupture of the spleen, have sometimes taken place.  In men of mature age the arteries have at times been unable to resist the high blood-pressure, and cerebral haemorrhage with paralysis has occurred.  In elderly men the excitement of intercourse with strange women has sometimes caused death, and various cases are known of eminent persons who have thus died in the arms of young wives or of prostitutes.[126]

These morbid results, are, however, very exceptional.  They usually occur in persons who are abnormally sensitive, or who have imprudently transgressed the obvious rules of sexual hygiene.  Detumescence is so profoundly natural a process; it is so deeply and intimately a function of the organism, that it is frequently harmless even when the bodily condition is far from absolutely sound.  Its usual results, under favorable circumstances, are entirely beneficial.  In men there normally supervenes, together with the relief from the prolonged tension of tumescence, with the muscular repose and falling blood-pressure,[127] a sense of profound satisfaction, a glow of diffused well-being,[128] perhaps an agreeable lassitude, occasionally also a sense of mental liberation from an overmastering obsession.  Under reasonably happy circumstances there is no pain, or exhaustion, or sadness, or emotional revulsion.  The happy lover’s attitude toward his partner is not expressed by the well-known Sonnet (CXXIX) of Shakespeare:—­

    “Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
    Past reason hated.”

He feels rather with Boccaccio that the kissed mouth loses not its charm,

    “Bocca baciata non perde ventura.”

In women the results of detumescence are the same, except that the tendency to lassitude is not marked unless the act has been several times repeated; there is a sensation of repose and self-assurance, and often an accession of free and joyous energy.  After completely satisfactory detumescence she may experience a feeling as of intoxication, lasting for several hours, an intoxication that is followed by no evil reaction.

Such, so far as our present vague and imperfect knowledge extends, are the main features in the process of detumescence.  In the future, without doubt, we shall learn to know more precisely a process which has been so supremely important in the life of man and of his ancestors.