Plain Facts for Old and Young

by John Harvey Kellogg

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[A few words to boys and girls]

[INTRODUCTION.]

Books almost without number have been written upon the subject treated in this work. Unfortunately, most of these works are utterly unreliable, being filled with gross misrepresentations and exaggerations, and being designed as advertising mediums for ignorant and unscrupulous charlatans, or worse than worthless patent nostrums. To add to their power for evil, many of them abound with pictorial illustrations which are in no way conducive to virtue or morality, but rather stimulate the animal propensities and excite lewd imaginations. Books of this character are usually widely circulated; and their pernicious influence is fully as great as that of works of a more grossly obscene character. In most of the few instances in which the evident motive of the author is not of an unworthy character, the manner of presenting the subject is unfortunately such that it more frequently than otherwise has a strong tendency in a direction exactly the opposite of that intended and desired. The writer of this work has endeavored to avoid the latter evil by adopting a style of presentation quite different from that generally pursued. Instead of restricting the reader's attention rigidly to the sexual function in man, his mind is diverted by frequent references to corresponding functions in lower animals and in the vegetable kingdom. By this means, not only is an additional fund of information imparted, but the sexual function in man is divested of its sensuality. It is viewed as a fact of natural history, and is associated with the innocence of animal life and the chaste loveliness of flowers. Thus the subject comes to be regarded from a purely physiological standpoint, and is liberated from the gross animal instinct which is the active cause of sensuality.

There are so many well-meaning individuals who object to the agitation of this subject in any manner whatever, that it may be profitable to consider in this connection some of the principal objections which are urged against imparting information on sexual subjects, especially against giving knowledge to the young.

I. Sexual matters improper to be spoken of to the young.

This objection is often raised, it being urged that these matters are too delicate to be even suggested to children; that they ought to be kept in total ignorance of all sexual matters and relations until nature indicates that they are fit to receive them. It is doubtless true that children raised in a perfectly natural way would have no sexual thoughts until puberty, at least, and it would be better if it might be so; but from facts pointed out in succeeding portions of this work, it is certain that at the present time children nearly always do have some vague ideas of sexual relations long before puberty, and often at a very early age. It is thus apparent that by speaking to children of sexual matters in a proper manner, a new subject is not introduced to them, but it is merely presenting to them in a true light a subject of which they already have vague ideas; and thus, by satisfying a natural curiosity, they are saved from supplying by their imaginations distorted images and exaggerated conceptions, and from seeking to obtain the desired information from evil sources whence they would derive untold injury.

What reason is there that the subject of the sexual functions should be treated with such maudlin secrecy? Why should the function of generation be regarded as something low and beastly, unfit to be spoken of by decent people on decent occasions? We can conceive of no answer except the worse than beastly use to which the function has been so generally put by man. There is nothing about the sexual organism which makes it less pure than the lungs or the stomach. "Unto the pure all things are pure," may have been written especially for our times, when there is such a vast amount of mock modesty; when so much pretense of virtue covers such a world of iniquity and vice. The young lady who goes into a spasm of virtuous hysterics upon hearing the word "leg," is perhaps just the one who at home riots her imagination in voluptuous French novels, if she commits no grosser breach of chastity. The parents who are the most opposed to imparting information to the young are often those who have themselves indulged in sexual excesses. In the minds of such persons the sexual organs and functions, and everything even remotely connected with them, are associated only with ideas of lust and gross sensuality. No wonder that they wish to keep such topics in the dark. With such thoughts they cannot well bear the scrutiny of virtue.

Sexual subjects are not, of course, proper subjects for conversation at all times, or at any time in a spirit of levity and flippancy.