Plain Facts for Old and Young

by John Harvey Kellogg

[Failure of Special Senses.]—Dimness of vision, amaurosis, spots before the eyes, with other forms of ocular weakness, are common results of this vice. The same degeneration and premature failure occur in the organs of hearing. In fact, sensibility of all the senses becomes in some measure diminished in old cases.

[Spinal Irritation.]—Irritation of the spinal cord, with its resultant evils, is one of the most common of the nervous affections originating in this cause. Tenderness of the spine, numerous pains in the limbs, and spasmodic twitching of the muscles, are some of its results. Paralysis, partial or complete, of the lower limbs, and even of the whole body, is not a rare occurrence. We have seen two cases in which this was well marked. Both patients were small boys and began to excite the genital organs at a very early age. In one, the paralytic condition was complete when he was held erect. The head fell forward, the arms and limbs hung down helpless, the eyes rolled upward, and the saliva dribbled from his mouth. When lying flat upon his back, he had considerable control of his limbs. In this case, a condition of priapism seems to have existed almost from birth, owing to congenital phimosis. His condition was somewhat improved by circumcision. In the other case, in which phimosis also existed, there was paralysis of a few of the muscles of the leg, which produced club-foot. Circumcision was also performed in this case and the child returned in a few weeks completely cured, without any other application, though it had previously been treated in a great variety of ways without success, all the usual remedies for club-foot proving ineffectual. Both of these cases appeared in the clinic of Dr. Sayre at Bellevue Hospital, and were operated upon by him.

We have recently observed several cases of spinal disease which could be traced to no origin but masturbation. Two patients were small boys, naturally quite intelligent. They manifested all the peculiarities of loco-motor ataxia in older persons, walking with the characteristic gait. The disease was steadily progressing in spite of all attempts to stay it. An older brother had died of the same malady, paralysis extending over the whole body, and finally preventing deglutition, so that he really starved to death.

[Insanity.]—That solitary vice is one of the most common causes of insanity, is a fact too well established to need demonstration here. Every lunatic asylum furnishes numerous illustrations of the fact. "Authors are universally agreed, from Galen down to the present day, about the pernicious influence of this enervating indulgence, and its strong propensity to generate the very worst and most formidable kinds of insanity. It has frequently been known to occasion speedy, and even instant, insanity."[51]

51 Arnold.

"Religious insanity," so-called, may justly be attributed to this cause in a great proportion of cases. The individual is conscience-smitten in view of his horrid sins, and a view of his terrible condition—ruined for both worlds, he fears—goads him to despair, and his weakened intellect fails; reason is dethroned, and he becomes a hopeless lunatic. His friends, knowing nothing of the real cause of his mysterious confessions of terrible sin, think him over-conscientious, and lay the blame of his insanity upon religion, when it is solely the result of his vicious habits, of which they are ignorant.

In other cases, the victim falls into a profound melancholy from which nothing can divert him. He never laughs, does not even smile. He becomes more and more reserved and taciturn, and perhaps ends the scene by committing suicide. This crime is not at all uncommon with those who have gone the whole length of the road of evil. They find their manhood gone, the vice in which they have so long delighted is no longer possible, and, in desperation, they put an end to the miserable life which nature might lengthen out a few months if not thus violently superseded.

If the practice is continued uninterruptedly from boyhood to manhood, imbecility and idiocy are the results. Demented individuals are met in no small numbers inside of hospitals and asylums, and outside as well, who owe to this vice their awful condition. Plenty of half-witted men whom one meets in the every-day walks of life have destroyed the better half of their understanding by this wretched practice.