<< Increased Peripheral Flow of Blood >>

Probably as a result of the direct neural stimulation of arterioles, blood is forced into the peripheral areas of the whole body during sexual response. For instance, the face of the sexually aroused individual usually becomes flushed. Such changes in coloration may be marked enough to be noticeable to other persons, even when the responses represent nothing more than the mildly erotic reactions which one may experience in meeting a friend. At maximum arousal, the faces of some individuals radically change color, the whole chest and throat may become brilliant or dark red or deep reddish purple, and the genital area may become deeply colored.

One may become conscious of an increase in temperature in his own or the sexual partner’s body surfaces, partly due to this peripheral circulation of blood, and perhaps in part due to the neuromuscular tensions which develop when there is any sexual response. Even very cold feet may become warm during sexual activity. The identification of sexual arousal as a fever, a glow, a fire, heat, or warmth, testifies to the widespread understanding that there is this rise in surface temperatures 6; but there seem to be no precise measurements of the extent of these temperature changes. There seem to be no data which indicate whether there is any rise in the temperature of the body as a whole, as a result of sexual arousal, even though there are these changes in surface temperatures.
Records of an increase in skin temperature during sexual arousal are also given, for instance, in: Roubaud 1876:16. Bloch 1908:49. Urbach 1921:133. Bauer 1927(1):157. Hirschfeld 1935:44. Havelock Ellis 1936(11,1):149, 167. Haire 1937:200.

The peripheral circulation of blood which occurs during sexual response is paralleled in other emotional situations. The face of the person who is embarrassed, angry, or excited in some other way (but not frightened) may become flushed and red. Since the parasympathetic nervous system is known to be the source of this vasodilation in the other emotional situations, it is probable that the same system is involved in sexual responses. Sexual flushing cannot be the outcome of adrenal or sympathetic nervous stimulation, for both of these agencies effect the sort of vasoconstriction which is responsible for the white and cold body surfaces of most frightened persons.

>>