seduced she should be given to eat of powdered, crocus flowers, and if she has been seduced she immediately urinates. We are here concerned with auto-suggstion, and it may well be believed that with nervous and credulous girls this test often revealed the truth.……
"……The ancient custom, known in classic times, of measuring the neck the day after marriage was frequently practised to ascertain if a girl was or was not a virgin. There were various ways of doing this. One was to measure with a thread the circumference of the bride's neck before she went to bed on the bridal night. If in the morning the same thread would not go around her neck it was a sure sign that she had lost her virginity during the night; if it would, she was still a virgin or had been deflowered at an earlier period. Catullus alluded to this custom,[1] which still exists, or existed until lately,[2] in the south of France. It is perfectly sound, for it rests on the intimate response by congestion of the thyroid gland to sexual exitement. (Parthenologia, p. 283.)"
- ↑ "Nor shall the nurse at orient light returning, with yester-e'en's thread succeed in circling her neck."—The Carmina of Catullus. Englished into verse and prose by Sir R. F. Burton and L. C. Smithers: London, 1894. Burton and Smithers, apparently, were unaware of the medical significance of the test, for they add in a note: "The ancients, says Pezay, had faith in another equally absurd test of virginity. They measured the circumference of the neck with a thread. Then the girl under trail took the two ends of the magic thread in her teeth, and if it was found to be so long that its bight could be passed over her head, it was clear she was not a maid. By this rule all the thin girls might pass for vestals, and all the plump ones for the reverse."
- ↑ Havelock Ellis is writting in 1914.
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