At this time any moral indignation or long-winded sermons or, what is still worse, punishment, will be of no avail and will have just the opposite effect. Long talks and repeated turnings to the same subject will be of great harm and will only call the child’s attention upon the evil. Here only a deeply implanted disgust of the child against children with nasty habits will prevent the child’s seduction by such masturbators. This feeling can not be implanted in a day. One lesson will not accomplish anything, if the parents have not interposed a remark at every opportune moment during all the years between infancy and school days.
The third period favorable for acquiring the habit of masturbation is the time of puberty. At this period systematic action is of great necessity. All causes of the material genital congestion, as remaining long in a sitting position, sitting with crossed legs, riding on chairs, the movements of the sewing machine, climbing with the legs on poles, retention of urine and stool, erotic literature, obscene pictures and vulgar plays, all of which often tend to evoke sexual desire or excite the genital organs, must be removed.
Means against the acquired habit.—When we observe a child becoming listless, absorbed in thoughts, startled when suddenly addressed, obstinate, peevish, irritable, morose, taciturn, when we find its emotions becoming slow and heavy, that it seeks solitude and shuns play, when we see it becoming pale, with eyes sunken and surrounded by dark rings, when the lips become faded and the muscles soft and flabby, we are justified in the diagnosis masturbation. Sometimes the children are masturbating themselves in the presence of their elders, and the latter are not able to interpret the suspicious movements. Any kind of movements, with the boy’s hands in his trousers, or with the girls legs crossed, are suspicious and must be interrupted. Near the orgasm such movements change their character and rhythm, the eyes become sparkling, the face shows an excited lascivious expression and respiration becomes rapid. Such phenomena must be recognized, and the child must be interrupted in its favorite exercise.
The child having already acquired the habit, we will have to see that no opportunity is left to him to exercise the same. Masturbation once learned, it is impossible to stop it before adult life is reached. In the meantime, the child must be kept busy and must be taught self-control. The child must never remain in bed when not asleep, never sleep lying on its back and never remain too long in the toilet or in the bathroom. Two children must never sleep in the same bed or enter together the same toilet. Stimulating foods and drinks, such as pork, gravies, pastry with lard, salt-meat, mustard, pepper, rich pies, spices, candies, pickles, tea, coffee, must be eliminated from the masturbating child’s diet. Exciting entertainments, lewd pictures, suggestive reading, all of which tend to increase the child’s sexual passion, must be withheld from such a child. In addition to these precautions, we will repeatedly warn the child against the dangers of excesses of masturbation.
The children are now old enough to understand. Although the harmfulness of masturbation has been greatly exaggerated, still it is more injurious than the natural act. Among other injurious effects, the masturbator uses strong psychical and physical stimulants, and the harm to health is in proportion to the height of excitement. Especially injurious to the brain is mental masturbation. The voluptuous day-dreamers are often unable to free their thoughts from fancies and pictures of lustful circumstances when they are alone.
Teachers especially should be alive to the excessive danger of the so-called platonic attachments among their pupils. The sentimental fancy taken by an older boy to a younger boy in boys’ schools, or by an older girl to a younger girl, in girls' schools, between whom, in the regular course in the school, there ought to be very little natural companionship, is always suspicious. The teacher or guardian must know that such attachments, which appear so touching and romantic, have a most dangerous resemblance to abnormal passion.
The sequelae of immoderate masturbation are often quite disastrous. There is, in the first place, general neurasthenia, with all its accompanying symptoms, as photopsias, glistening and dazzling before the eyes, photophobias, dry conjunctivitis (particularly found among masturbating young girls and old maids), and functional sexual disturbances, as diurnal pollutions and spermatorrhoea. Other symptoms are indolence, lack of energy, shyness in demeanor, want of self-reliance, disinclination to study, incapacity for serious work, shortness of memory, absent-mindedness, unsteadiness of character, hypochondria and melancholia.
The children become peevish and irritable, they are reserved in conversation, apathetic in manner, hesitating in actions, slovenly in dress, and contradictory. Cerebral anemia is of common occurrence among those addicted to excesses in masturbation. Hence vertigo is a common symptom and fainting spells occur often. (Girls especially are liable to be affected by syncope.) Perspiration breaks forth on the slightest exertion, and the slightest exercise occasions much shortness of breath. Neuralgia of the testicles, ovaries and the bladder is also frequently caused by excess. The neuralgia of the neck of the bladder is particularly distressing. The patient is frequently seized with a desire to pass water, and the evacuation of the bladder is attended with pain. The frequent calls to urinate occur oftener during the day than during the night. Particular danger of long-continued masturbation lies in the development of impotency in men and frigidity in women.
Besides the nervous phenomena, there are often found real anatomical alterations. As the habit is more frequently indulged in, the prolonged congestion produces a catarrhal process in the urethra, prostatic gland, seminal vesicles and varicocele[BP] in the male; and in the female, catarrh of the ovaries, tubes, uterus and especially of the endometrium. These conditions give rise to uncomfortable and distressing sensations which demand relief and are gotten rid of only by a continuation of the habit. Thus a vicious circle is continually at work. The results are stricture of the urethra, spermatorrhoea, disturbances of the intestinal tract, as dyspepsia, flatulence and constipation, and palpitation of the heart.
The congested genital glands, furthermore, excrete and secrete excessively. In this way the elements of the internal secretion are either in a state of atrophy or otherwise disturbed. The organism is thus deprived of these important elements and suffers accordingly.