Confidential Chats with Boys

by William Lee Howard

I have told you in the first Chat about the bad effects of allowing your bowels to retain matter that should always be kept out of the body. The absorption of the poisons from this dead stuff left from food causes headaches, laziness and in time affects the complexion. It is a lot of natural filth left in the pocket of the lower bowel which Nature intends should be thrown out daily. There are muscles in this bowel or pocket especially for this purpose. If you neglect to work the muscles placed for this purpose, they soon become weak, inactive and refuse to perform their duty unless irritated by some drug, salts or castor oil. In a healthy boy—one who has taken any decent care of himself—these medicines are never needed. If such methods to make the muscles of the lower bowel work are constantly used, the muscles lose their tone and of course usefulness. Then in later life the veins become full of black blood, swell and often burst. These swollen veins are generally called piles. You see how you can avoid these disagreeable things, which are only plain signs that the man or boy has kept in his lower bowel filthy stuff. Just think for a moment; would you allow filthy stuff to remain in your pocket? Of course not; yet if this stuff were kept there, it would not do you physical harm. It would be a little disagreeable, I admit, but not bring about the ill health it does when kept in the pocket of the bowel.

Now, when you have the gland of the penis inflamed from the gathering of the matter behind it, you can readily see how it may be aggravated by any other dead material in the same region of the body. And this region in the growing boy is very sensitive to all disturbances. So here is another reason why you should empty your bowels EVERY day.

You will ask: Why is this secretion coming behind the gland of the penis harmful if it is natural?

It is there to keep the gland and its covering from growing together. If it were not there the urine would irritate and inflame the parts. Whenever we have inflammation we have a tendency to growth. Under these circumstances the covering of the penis would adhere to the gland, and then would come great trouble.

The secretion is a sort of oil for the sliding parts. But this oil has to be renewed by fresh oil—this is the reason for washing the old, rancid oil and letting fresh oil take its place. Again, if this rancid secretion is allowed to remain it becomes absorbed and then you have another poison in your system.

It is useless for a boy to try to become a strong man unless his sex organs have the best of care. I don’t mean that you should keep your mind upon the subject; quite the contrary. If you have kept them clean and attended to the little matters I have mentioned, your mind will not be upon the sex organs. If you wash your teeth every day and have them always in good condition, you do not think of them. You chew your food thinking of the coming ball game—not of your teeth. But if you neglect them soon come pain and trouble; then in spite of all the thinking of the next ball game, your mind WILL go to those awful teeth.

Just so with your sex organs; a decent regard for their care drives out all thoughts but what are necessary and decent.

The neglect or abuse of the sex organs—this latter subject we shall have a plain talk about—affects all the other portions of the body. It causes stupidity and soft muscles. Sometimes big muscles will be seen in a youth who has neglected the toilet of his organs. But these muscles are fatty muscles. They do not contain strong, blood-red fibres of true muscles. Moreover, the FORCE behind these muscles, the nerve cells, are themselves weakened by the absorption of secretions and the whole general effect of the unclean and often abused parts.

Remember this fact: You cannot perform big deeds when a man if you have neglected the little ones belonging to the development of your body. The foundation of every big structure, brain or building, is the essential part of the work. Unless this is built upon solid ground and of solid material, ruin comes when pressure is brought to bear.

I have seen hundreds of men with powerful brains and intellects unable to utilize them because their foundations for withstanding pressure were weak. And it was ever the same old cry: “No one ever told me, Doctor!”