CHAPTER II.
THE STUDY OF SEXUAL INVERSION.
Westphal--Hoessli--Casper--Ulrichs--Krafft-Ebing--Moll--Fere--Kiernan-- Lydston--Raffalovich--Edward Carpenter--Hirschfeld.
Westphal, an eminent professor of psychiatry at Berlin, may be said to be the first to put the study of sexual inversion on an assured scientific basis.

In 1870 he published, in the _Archiv fuer Psychiatrie_, of which he was for many years editor, the detailed history of a young woman who, from her earliest years, differed from other girls: she liked to dress as a boy, only cared for boys' games, and as she grew up was sexually attracted only to women, with whom she formed a series of tender relationships, in which the friends obtained sexual gratification by mutual caresses; while she blushed and was shy in the presence of women, more especially the girl with whom she chanced to be in love, she was always absolutely indifferent in the presence of men.

Westphal--a pupil, it may be noted, of Griesinger, who had already called attention to the high character sometimes shown by subjects of this perversion--combined keen scientific insight with a rare degree of personal sympathy for those who came under his care, and it was this combination of qualities which enabled him to grasp the true nature of a case such as this, which by most medical men at that time would have been hastily dismissed as a vulgar instance of vice or insanity.

Westphal perceived that this abnormality was congenital, not acquired, so that it could not be termed vice; and, while he insisted on the presence of neurotic elements, his observations showed the absence of anything that could legitimately be termed insanity.

He gave to this condition the name of "contrary sexual feeling" (_Kontraere Sexualempfindung_), by which it was long usually known in Germany.