“This is a subject most painful to dwell upon; one upon which it is hard to think, to speak, or to write, without seeming to partake in some measure of its pollution. Still, attention to it is vital to any successful effort to arrest the vices of impurity. The evils which are directly inflicted upon the health, the physical development, the constitution, by these secret practices, are enough in themselves to command our interest. It sometimes happens that the habit is acquired by accident, or persons of a peculiar temperament are led to it by a spontaneous impulse. More frequently, however, it is taught by one generation to that which follows; and so general is this education of evil, that it is rare to find those who have been fortunate enough to escape wholly from its contamination. Unhappily the physical pollution is not all; for, as a matter almost of course, there are associated with it loose conversations, licentious imaginings, and low ideas of the relations of the sexes. It leads to the reading of obscene, or at least voluptuous books, gazing upon pictures of the same description, and to general licentiousness of thought and of language. It is not strange, when the mind is thus filled with such images, and taught to dwell upon and brood over them in the immature period of youth, that this part of our nature should be prematurely and unnaturally developed, and that the opportunities of more advanced years should lead to that state of morals among young men which is so notorious, and so much to be deplored.
“Is it not obvious then, where the remedy is to be applied, if indeed a remedy be possible? Is it not obvious that our success must be small indeed if we confine ourselves to means intended to check the overt indulgences of maturity in licentiousness in one generation, whilst those who are to constitute the next are left to the same fearful development of their animal passions, which must lead them on, by steps as certain as the grave, in the same career of indulgence?”[26]
Such being the case, and seeking what is for the good of men alone, without regard as yet for the interests of women, we are compelled to indorse marriage as a most important sanitary measure, alike for enabling a reasonable gratification of the sexual instinct, for the avoidance of disease, and for restraining men from alternatives alike disastrous to themselves, their descendants, and to society.
I proceed now to discuss the time in a young man’s life at which marriage becomes advisable.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Hints to Young Men, &c., p. 36.
[14] Report of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities, 1867, p. 19.
[15] Criminal Abortion in America. Philadelphia, 1860, p. 14; North Am. Med. Chir. Review, Mar. 1859, p. 260.
[16] American Journal of Science and Art. New Haven, March, 1867, p. 141.
[17] For remarks pertinent to the above, see editorials in the New York Medical Record, February, 1867, p. 550, and in the Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter, for the same month, p. 137.