When Krafft-Ebing invented the word ’sadism’ to describe those who took erotic pleasure in inflicting pain, he was implicitly associating the Marquis with inquisitors such as Conrad of Marburg. Even more shocking to devout sensibilities, however, was his analysis of what he termed – after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian nobleman with a taste for being whipped by aristocratic ladies dressed in furs – ’masochism’. ‘Masochists subject themselves to all kinds of maltreatment and suffering in which there can be no question of reflex excitation of lust.’ In consequence, Krafft-Ebing declared,
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