Just about twelve months later, I again awoke one morning to find another small set of muscles paralyzed. I immediately received one intravenous injection of salvarsan, and the paralysis practically disappeared a week later. I was disinclined to receive further injections as long as suffering from no serious outbreak. I however kept my system steeped in potassium iodide for several months following.
No Alcohol, No Syphilis.
Each attack of paralysis came at the close of one of the only two periods of my life when I have consumed large quantities of temperance beers (sarsaparilla and root beer), from two to three pints a day. The small amounts of alcohol steadily imbibed apparently brought on the serious outbreaks. Furthermore, both came at the height of the grape season, which fruit, up to the second paralysis, I have always consumed in large quantities. In my case, practically all the serious outbreaks of syphilis came during the grape season.
In the tenth year after inoculation, I was for an entire winter the most crippled person daily mingling with the New York crowds. The rheumatism never troubled me before or since. It immediately succeeded the first paralysis. Rheumatism remedies proved entirely ineffective.
Subsequently to the second paralysis, for the thirty months up to this book’s going to press, I have totally abstained from all drinks containing even a trifling percentage of alcohol, as well as from grapes and unfermented grape products. During these months I have experienced no outbreak beyond the abrasion in the groin if not kept lubricated with vaseline. More than ever I am convinced of the truth of the maxim: No alcohol, no syphilis.
The Author at Thirty-four.
As already indicated, three years after castration, my open (i.e., quasi-public) career as a fairie came to an end through my removal to a distant small city where such a career incognito would be impossible. I also now considered myself past the age for such a career, being in my thirty-second year. My suffering from practically total abstinence was now slight compared with earlier periods of isolation, and only such as multitudes of normal individuals endure whom the rules of society compel to celibacy. I no longer lost my self-control, nor was driven into the poor quarters to make a quest under the most unfavorable and hazardous conditions.
Year 1907—Alone in Rockies’ Wilds.