is peculiar. He is listless, shy, retiring, and easily confused; he avoids society, preferring solitude; there is a want of steadiness and decision in his locomotion; his inferior extremities seem deficient in power, and all his movements betray a mind ill at ease.

THE MIND.—His mental operations are confused; his speech is embarrassed, awkward, and without directness; his memory is defective, and he is absent-minded and given to reverie. If the habit has long existed, and been excessively frequent in repetition, epilepsy may be produced; or serious mental disorder, as delusional insanity, dementia, etc., may occur.

THE SEXUAL ORGANS.—The state of the genital organs varies with the length of time the habit has been indulged. In some young subjects, there will be observed an extraordinary development of the organ, owing to premature excitement; but the disproportion is not maintained. Prof. Barthalow says: "With the progress of the habit the organ becomes small and relaxed, the erections feeble, the corpora cavernosa either waste away or their vessels lose their tonicity, whereby an apparent shrinkage takes place; the corpus spongiosum and the glands also shrink, so that the prepuce (fore-skin appears unnaturally elongated. The testes may increase in size, become tender and irritable, or they may waste away to nothing but little strings; the latter is the more usual result.

“Pains in the small of the back, a sense of weight and aching in the loins, around the anus, and in the testes is experienced. The appetite is capricious, the digestion feeble, and the bowels are constipated, or constipation alternates with diarrhœa.

“The mind is deficient in power of attention, the imagination is constantly pervaded with vague erotic dreams, the moral sense is blunted, and the perceptions are dull and confused. Pains in the head, in the occipital and frontal regions (front and back of head), and a sense of fullness, and in serious cases alarming Vertigo (dizziness and falling); pains in the course of the principal nerves, and an extreme nervous susceptibility, are experienced. The organic nervous system manifests a functional disturbance in harmony with the disorder of the nervous system of animal life. Gastralgia and abdominal pain (pain in stomach and bowels) and uneasiness are in some cases very distressing symptoms.

“The distinctiveness of the foregoing symptoms will be determined by the extent and duration of the habit, and by the constitutional peculiarities of the patient. The more highly developed the nervous system, and the more it preponderates in activity over the muscular and digestive systems, the more serious the effects.

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EFFECTS OF MASTURBATION ON THE MIND

“The most serious mental effects are produced by masturbation. This vice, commenced at or before the period of puberty, interferes seriously with the development of the brain and the evolution of the mental faculties.

“That spermatorrhœa will produce in one class of cases mental disorders, and not in another, indicates either that some predisposition to these disorders existed, or that the habit of self-pollution was merely an expression of mental alienation (insanity). The images which pervade the minds of boys possessed of the highly-developed nervous organization of masturbators are those of delusional insanity.

“There is, however, a cerebral (brain) phase of spermatorrhœa which may be separated from the two preceding classes. It is characterized by indistinctness of vision, dilatation of the pupil, amblyopia (near-sightedness), diplopia (double sight); diminution in the sensitiveness of the auditory apparatus (deafness); feebleness of voice; mental preoccupation, hebetude of mind, confusion of ideas, and a profound melancholy.

“The termination of such cases is in suicidal monomania, delusional insanity, etc. In that variety of the cerebral form in which a decided predisposition must be admitted to exist, to disorder of the intellectual faculties, there are found various forms of mental alienation. The chronic form is the most common, which corresponds to the melancholia of Pinel, or the lypemania of Esquirol, terminating in dementia. Several of the most characteristic cases which have happened under my observation correspond to the delusional insanity of Bucknill and Tuke.”—[Manual of Psychological Medicine, Phila. ed., p. 103.]

INSANITY FROM SPERMATORRHŒA.

Many writers are disposed to underrate the importance of this tendency in spermatorrhœa. The statistics of any of our large insane asylums will illustrate the influence of masturbation in the production of insanity. Mr. Holmes Coote, in a discussion which followed Dr. Drysdale’s paper on the “Medical Aspects of Prostitution,” read before the Harveian Society of London, remarked that “he still entertained the opinion that there were no worse evils appertaining to human weakness than this. He had opportunities of witnessing the fact that among the young there was no cause of insanity more common than indulging in habits which he would not further particularize, but which were known to result in the most complete bodily and mental prostration.”—[British Medical Journal, Feb. 17, 1866.]

Dr. John P. Gray, the distinguished Superintendent of the State Asylum at Utica, New York (Twenty-Fourth Annual Report, 1867), thus speaks of the influence of masturbation in the production of insanity: “The records of this institution show five hundred and twenty-one cases admitted directly attributable to this vice, and I am well convinced that the number is greatly understated.”

We might add confirmatory testimony from a variety of sources, but the foregoing is sufficient for our purpose.

Our Treatment is Pleasant, Quick and Lasting.

IMPORTANT.—Peculiar, numb, dead, aching, or tingling sensations in the hands, arms, legs or feet, and headache and specks before the eyes on stooping or reading; also sleeplessness, too sound sleep, and apprehensive dreams should be watched for, and the moment they appear danger from Paralysis or Insanity is to be apprehended and proper treatment at once taken. These symptoms may mean nothing in some cases, but they are terrible harbingers of ill in others.

A CASE OF INSANITY FROM SELF-ABUSE.—(Fig. 4.)

The following case, taken verbatim from the Care Book of the Insane Asylum at Blackwell’s Island, will serve as a type of the many to be found in every hospital for the insane in this country. (And a terrible and noteworthy fact is, that according to the recent annual reports of these institutions, both in this country and Europe, insanity, idiocy and dementia from Seminal Losses and Sexual Abuses, are increasing from year to year.)