division of the few threads which cause contraction of the prepuce, and keeping it drawn back for a few days, by covering it with dry lint, will usually suffice. I have by using these precautions in many instances been able to dispense with circumcision, which would have been otherwise necessary-an operation that I always avoid, if possible, especially in young children.

It has been, indeed, suggested by some persons that the universal performance of circumcision would be of no small benefit. This, however, can be only a speculation. Circumcision is never likely to be introduced amongst us, and there is no doubt that the above-mentioned precautions will suffice in most cases to remove all ill effects arising from the existence of a long and narrow prepuce, or from the retention of the prepuce1.

If in the young human being the existence of the foreskin may produce the above evil consequences, later in life we shall see that its presence or absence may lead to most important consequences, particularly when speaking of impotence (see that chapter).

Several confessions that have been made to me induce the suggestion for the consideration of parents and schoolmasters, whether the practice of climbing in gymnasia is not open in some degree to objections. The muscles chiefly called into action in climbing, are those the excessive exertion of which tends to excite sexual feelings. Boys have, as I know, sometimes discovered this, for more than one adult has told me that, when at school, he had found that he derived pleasure from the exercise, and had repeated it quite in ignorance of the consequences.

Those who will refer to p. 30 will not suspect me of undervaluing athletic exercises, but if this particular one has the effect I have described, I should certainly advise its discontinuance.

Persons having the care of children cannot too constantly bear in mind that the tendency of all irritation or excitement of the generative system, either mental or physical, is to induce even the youngest child to stimulate the awakened appetite, and attempt to gratify the immature sexual desires which would otherwise have remained dormant for years to come. In a state so artificial as that of our modern civilization, the children of the upper classes are sadly open to this temptation. An

1In a state of nature the foreskin serves as a complete protection to the glans penis; nevertheless, to the sensitive, excitable, civilized individual, the prepuce often becomes a source of serious mischief. In warm climates, the collection of the secretions between it and the glans is likely to cause irritation and its consequences; and this danger was probably the origin of circumcision. The existence of the foreskin predisposes to exaggerate the effects of syphilis, and I am fully convinced that the excessive sensibility induced by a narrow foreskin, and the difficulty of drawing back the prepuce, is often the cause of emissions, masturbation, or un due excitement of the sexual desires.

enervated sickly refinement tells directly on the children that are at once its offspring and its victims, begetting precocious desires, too often gratified, and giving rise to the meanest and most debasing of all vices. The melancholy and repulsive habit of masturbation, so degrading and debilitating to the child, and so injurious in its effect on the after life, will be fully discussed in a later chapter.

SECOND PERIOD-YOUTH

THE FUNCTIONS AND DISORDERS IN YOUTH

PART I

NORMAL SEXUAL CONDITIONS IN YOUTH

YOUTH (by which we mean that portion of man's earthly existence during which he is growing-that is, in which he has not yet attained his maximum of mental and physical stature and strength) is, as regards the reproductive functions, to be divided into two periods. The line of demarcation is the occurrence of that series of phenomena which constitute what we call puberty. During the first of these two periods, or childhood, strictly so termed, the fitting condition is, as we have seen in the last chapter, absolute sexual quiescence.

In the second period, or that of youth, which we now propose to consider, quiescence wakes in to all the excitement of the most animated life-a spring season, so to speak, like that so brilliantly sketched by our great poet :

"In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast, In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest,

In the spring a livelier iris changes in the burnished dove,

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."

Of the real nature of this new condition, of its temptations, of the incalculable advantages of resisting them, and of the means of doing so, it is now my purpose to speak, as plainly and concisely as possible.

Dr. Carpenter thus describes the change from childhood to youth: "The period of youth is distinguished by that advance in the evolution of the generative apparatus in both sexes, and by that acquirement of its power of functional activity, which constitutes the state of PUBERTY. At this epoch a considerable change takes place in the bodily constitution: the sexual organs undergo a much increased devel

opment; various parts of the surface, especially the chin and the pubes, become covered with hair; the larynx enlarges, and the voice becomes lower in pitch, as well as rougher and more powerful; and new feelings and desires are awakened in the mind."

"To the use of the sexual organs for the continuance of his race MAN is prompted by a powerful instinctive desire, which he shares with the lower animals. This instinct, like the other propensities, is excited by sensations; and these may either originate in the sexual organs themselves or may be excited through the organs of special sense. Thus in man it is most powerfully aroused by impressions conveyed through the sight or touch, but in many other animals the auditory and olfactory organs communicate impressions which have an equal power, and it is not improbable that in certain morbidly excited states of feeling the same may be the case with ourselves."-Carpenter's Physiology, 7th edition, p. 825.

With this bodily and mental change or development special functions, hitherto quiescent, begin their operations. Of these the most important in the male is the secretion of the impregnating fluid, the semen.

"From the moment," says Lallemand, "that the evolution of the generative organs commences (the testicles act), if the texture is not accidentally destroyed, they will continue to secrete up to a very advanced age. It is true that the secretion may be diminished by the absence of all excitement, direct or indirect, by the momentary feebleness of the economy, or by the action of special medicines, but it never entirely ceases from puberty up to old age." ("Les Pertes Seminales," p. 240, vol. ii.)

And now begins the trial which every healthy youth has to encounter, and from which he must come out victorious if he is to be all that he can and ought to be. The child should know nothing of this trial, and ought never to be disturbed with one sexual feeling or thought. But with puberty a very different state of things arises. A new power demands to be exercised, a new want to be satisfied. It is, I take it, of vital importance that boys and young men should know, not only the guilt of an illicit indulgence of their dawning passions, but also the danger of straining an immature power, and the solemn truth that the want will be an irresistible tyrant only to those who have lent it strength by yielding; that the only true safety lies in keeping even the thoughts pure. Nothing, I feel convinced, but a frank statement of the truth, will persuade those entering upon puberty that these new feelings, powers, and delights must not be indulged.

It is very well known to medical men that the healthy secretion of semen has a direct effect upon the whole physical and mental conformation of the man. A series of phenomena attend the natural action of the testicles influencing the whole system; helping, in fact, in no small

degree, to form the character itself. A function so important, which, in truth, to a great extent determines, according as it is dealt with, the happiness or misery of a life, is surely one of the last, if not the very last, that should be abused (see chapter on Semen).

But what, too often, are the facts? The youth, finding himself in possession of these sexual feelings and powers, utterly ignorant of their importance or even of their nature, except from the ribald conversation of the worst of his companions, and knowing absolutely nothing of the consequences of giving way to them, fancies-as he, with many compunctions, begins a career of depravity-that he is obeying nature's dictates. Every fresh indulgence helps to forge the chains of habit; and it too often happens in consequence of the morbid depression to which these errors have reduced him, that he fancies that he is more or less ruined for this world, that he can never be what he might have been, and that it is only by a struggle as for life or death that he can hope for any recovery. In too many instances there is no strength left for any such struggle, and, hopelessly and helplessly, the victim drifts into irremediable ruin, tied and bound in the chain of a sin with the commencement of which ignorance had as much to do as vice.

Not that this natural instinct is to be regarded with a Manichæan philosophy as in itself bad. Far from it. That it is natural forbids such a theory. It has its own beneficent purpose; but that purpose is not early and sensual indulgence, but mature and lawful love. Let us hear what Carpenter eloquently says on this point:

"The instinct of reproduction, when once aroused, even though very obscurely felt, acts in man upon his mental faculties and moral feelings, and thus becomes the source, though almost unconsciously so to the individual, of the tendency to form that kind of attachment towards one of the opposite sex which is known as love. This tendency, except in men who have degraded themselves to the level of brutes, is not merely an appetite or emotion, since it is the result of the combined operations of the reason, the imagination, the moral feelings, and the physical desire. It is just in this connection of the pschyical attachment with the more corporeal instinct that the difference between the sexual relations of man and those of the lower animals lies. In proportion as the human being makes the temporary gratification of the mere sexual appetite his chief object, and overlooks the happiness arising from mental and spiritual communion, which is not only purer but more permanent, and of which a renewal may be anticipated in another world, does he degrade himself to a level with the brutes that perish."-Carpenter's Physiology, 7th edition, p. 826.

Shakespeare makes even Iago say—

"If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sen