Edward C. Mann: "morbid sexual love...in a young ladies' seminary", July 1893

Doctor Edward C. Mann, M. D., Med. Superintendent, Sunnyside Sanitarium for Diseases of the Nervous System, New York, writing in a medical journal article about an insanity plea in a legal cases, describes an outbreak of sexual activity between young women in a seminary:

In one instance I have known of this morbid sexual love for a person of the same sex, starting, probably, with some one girl, of a faulty nervous organization, in a young ladies' seminary, — almost assumed the form of an epidemic (genesic erethism), — and several young ladies were brought up before the faculty, and were told that summary dismissal would follow if this were not at once dropped. The terrible mischief which was thus arrested, and doubtless originated with an insane girl, in this case evidently assumed an hysterical tendency in others not insane, but who might have easily become so if they were neuropathically endowed, as they doubtless were.