Thus, when bodily injury, injury to property, torture of animals, or of human beings, is dependent on well defined sadistic impulse, the case is not usually one for medical, but judicial care; although a contrary ruling has not infrequently been made. But if such bodily injury, robbery, theft, or other public despoilment be due to simple sexual fetich-ism—the desire to obtain some part of the human dress, or body, for purposes of sexual gratification—the degenerative significance of the act, on the contrary, should properly place the offender at once beyond the prima facie jurisdiction of the law, and make him a fit subject for medical treatment; and that this is by no means always the case, in practice, only lends additional emphasis to the statement.

1 "Every man has a wild beast within him; a few can keep it in subjection, but the majority let it loose whenever they are not restrained by law." (Letter to Voltaire, Oct. 31, 1760.)