[Note: in the original text, headings like the above appeared on the top of each page. Where possible, we have placed the headings directly before the paragraph(s) they describe.]
III.
MALE MASTURBATION.
Viewing the world over, this shameful and criminal act is the most frequent, as well as the most fatal, of all vices. In our country, however, it is second in frequency—though not, surely, in importance—only to the crime of libertinism. It is encountered in all ages, from the infant in the cradle to the old man groaning upon his pallet. But it is from the age of fourteen to twenty that it ravages are most frequent and most deplorable. Nothing but a sense of inexorable duty, in the hope of effecting a radical reform by awakening the alarm of parents and teachers to the enormous frequency and horrible consequences off this revolting crime, could induce the author to enter upon the sickening revelation.
Granted that, as already stated, it must, if persevered in, reveal itself, it is only the most aggravated cases that are brought to the notice of the physician, and these usually are hopeless and incurable. The vast majority escape detection, and the practice in such, though indulged to a comparatively moderate extent, does not the less seriously, but only the less completely, impair the intellect and lay the foundation of physical, mental, and moral maladies, the causes of which are usually as unsuspected as they are consequently persistent in their operation.
The frequency of masturbation before the age of puberty is in direct relation to the development of the nervous system, and the opportunity afforded for acquiring a knowledge of the sin from pernicious examples.
The predominance of the action of the nervous system over that of the other portions of the human organization is exceedingly frequent in young children, and is the most powerful predisposing cause of the vice in question. It can never, of course, be attributed to the stimulation exerted on the genital organs by the presence of the spermatic fluid, for in them this secretion does not exist. It sometimes happens that, by a kind of special organic idiosyncracy, the organs of generation become the seat of abnormal sensitiveness or irritation in young subjects, at once the occasion and the signal for the explosion of this most terrific and fatal passion. This explains the great number of examples in which , even in the nursery, during the “innocent slumbers of childhood,” the genital organs are observed to be in a state of erection, or erethism, unnatural at that age, and which can by no possibility be supposed to subserve and physiological end. It is obvious that, in such a condition of abnormal excitation, the least accidental touch, or even an involuntary or mechanical movement, may very easily lead to a most frightful and devouring passion.
However, in all probability, the most common origin of this nervous concentration and precocious sensibility is to be found in the criminality of passionate creatures to whose care the innocent little beings are confided, as nurses or young servants. “Wise women” have been known to adopt this method of quieting the outcries of the youngest infants! Such children never fail, sooner or later, to avail themselves of their frightful discovery. Facts of this nature demand the vigilant solicitude of moralists, heads of families, principals of schools, of all persons, in short, to whom the destinies of the young are confided.
French physicians have already bestowed great attention on this subject of infantile masturbation, though there are probably few physicians of experience in this country who can not recall facts equally astonishing with those we are about to quote.
Dr. Doussin Dubreuil relates the case of a child who contracted the habit spontaneously at the age of five years, who, in spite of all that could be done, died at sixteen, having lost his reason at eleven. Deslandes, in his work on onanism, speaks of a confirmed masturbator at eighteen months!
The author of some years since consulted in a case of inveterate priapism in a child four years of age. The erethism had continued during four or five entire days. The urine was voided drop by drop, and the paroxysms of suffering were at intervals extreme. We found the little patient surrounded by ladies and “wise” old women, who were actually endeavoring to reduce the organ by immodest procedures. The secret was found to consist wholly in the presence of a minute calculus which had lodged in the urethra, and which being removed the erethism subsided; but a well-nigh fatal lesson had been imparted through the insane attempts at relief.
“A young man from Montpelier,” (we translate from Tissot,) “a student of medicine, died from excess of this kind of debauch. The idea of his crime so agitated his mind that he died in a kind of despair, believing that he saw hell open at his side to receive him. A child of this city, six or seven years of age, instructed, as I believe, by a female servant, polluted himself so often that the slow fever which resulted very soon terminated fatally. His fury for this act was so great that it could not be prevented, even in the last days of his life. When told that he was hastening his death he consoled himself by saying that he would go the sooner to find his father, who died some months before.”
Here is the narration of a subject who became a masturbator a little later:
“I knew nothing of the vice of onanism until the age of ten years, when one of my companions, at the college where I was placed, instructed me. I could not tell you the number of times that I practiced it to the age of fifteen; then only my eyes were opened to the whole enormity of my fault. I am now eighteen, but though for three years I have not fallen again, I am no less afflicted with frequent pollutions, which occur in spite of myself, during five or six nights in succession. I am never permitted to enjoy tranquil repose; the whole day I am sad. I have four times changed my school, and every-where I have seen this kind of libertinism carried to excess. Where I terminated my studies, we assembled often in parties of twelve or fifteen to indulge this fine practice. It is doubtless due to my temperament that I have outlived nearly all my comrades; save one, whom I meet quite often, and who leads a very wretched life, all have died in the most frightful torments.”
| Terrible Case. | Combining all the Miseries and Baseness |
The following case combines all the miseries and all the turpitude of this terrible evil in the person of one individual:
“ L.D., a watchmaker, had been virtuous and healthy until the age of seventeen. At that time he delivered himself to masturbation which he repeated three times a day, and the consummation of the act was always preceded and accompanied by a slight loss of consciousness, and a convulsive movement of the extensor muscles of the head, which was forcibly thrown back, while the neck became extraordinarily swollen. In less than one year he began to experience great weakness after each act. This warning was not sufficient to drive him from the danger. His soul, already wholly delivered to this infamy, was no longer capable of other ideas, and the repetition of the crime became every day more
frequent, until he found himself in a condition which led him to be apprehensive of death. Wise too late, the evil had made such progress that he could not be cured, and the genital organs became so irritable and so feeble that there was no longer required the act to produce seminal emission. . . . The spasm which formerly occurred only at the consummation of the act and ceased at the same time, had become habitual, and often seized him without apparent cause, and in so violent a fashion that during the whole time of the paroxysm, which sometimes lasted fifteen hours and never less than eight, he experienced in the back of the neck such violent pains that he commonly raise, not cries merely, but howls, and it was impossible for him, during all this time, to swallow either liquids or solids. His voice became hoarse, but I have not remarked that it was more so during the paroxysms. He lost entirely his strength. Obliged to abandon his profession, incapable of any thing, overwhelmed with misery, he languished almost without succor during several months, so much the more to be pitied that a trace of memory which had nearly vanished, only served to recall to him incessantly the causes of his misfortune, and to augment all the horror of his remorse. I learned his condition; I visited him;
I found less a living being than a corpse groaning upon the straw; emaciated, pale, filthy, exhaling an infectious odor; almost incapable of any movement. He lost often a pale and watery blood by the nose; a constant slime flowed from the mouth; attacked with diarrhea, he rendered his excrements in his bed without knowledge of the fact; the spermatic flux was continual; bleared, troubled, and dull, he had no longer the faculty of motion; the pulse was extremely small and rapid; the respiration very labored; the emaciation excessive, except at the feet, which commenced to be dropsical. The disorder of mind was not less. Without memory; incapable of connecting two phrases; without reflection; without inquietude as to his fate; with no other sentiment than that of pain, which returned with all the accessions at least every three days; a being far below the brute; a spectacle of which it is impossible to conceive the horror; one would with difficulty recognize that he had formerly belonged to the human species. I succeeded promptly, by the aid of remedies, in controlling those violent spasmodic accessions which only recalled him so cruelly to consciousness by the pains. Content to have relieved him in this respect, I discontinued remedies which could not ameliorate his condition. He died at the end of some weeks, (June 17, 1857,) dropsical from head to foot.” (Onanisme, par Tissot.)
At the first glance the onanist presents an aspect of languor, weakness, and thinness. The countenance is pale, sunken, flabby, often leaden, or more or less livid, with a dark circle around the sunken eyes, which are dull, and lowered or averted. A sad, shameful, spiritless physiognomy. The voice is feeble and hoarse; there are dry cough, oppression, panting, and fatigue on the least exertion; palpitations; obscured vision; dizziness, tremulousness, painful cramps; convulsive movements like epilepsy; pains in the limbs, or at the back of the head, in the spine, breast, or stomach; great weakness in the back; sometimes lethargy; at other times slow, hectic, consumptive fever; digestive derangements; nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, or progressive emaciation. Sometimes the body is bent, and often there are all the appearances of pulmonary consumption, or the characteristics of decrepitude joined to the habits and pretensions of youth.
Such is the physical degradation of the masturbator. It is only, however, in habitual and confirmed onanists that such grave alterations are manifest, nor, indeed, in most cases that all the evils described are present. Enough has been said, however, to enable any intelligent observer to recognize the confirmed onanist. Occasional offenders manifest the same characteristics in different degrees, and it would be difficult for even such to escape the practiced eye of the physician. Perhaps the most constant and invariable, as well as earliest signs, ar the downcast, averted glance, and the disposition to solitude.
But while the physical symptoms are so grave, the moral degradation goes even further. Prominent characteristics are, lost of memory and inl acts of onanism will surely be punished in proportion to their crimes; while the very individuals who seem to escape, are those who most surely carry the punishment for the remainder of their lives, never live to attain old age, and most frequently fall victims to some grave chronic disease, the germs of which they owe to this detestable vice. Or an acute malady, which they resist far less readily than others, cuts the thread of their existence in the prime of their manhood.
The reformed onanist is the earliest and surest prey of severe epidemics, as cholera, yellow fever, etc., by reason of his bad antecedents, and the deteriorated condition of his constitution.
Lest we be accused of exaggerating the dangers of onanism, we refer, in addition to the authorities already quoted, to the following, from the father of medicine to the most eminent physicians of our time, all of whom sustain every word we have uttered concerning the horrible consequences of this crime: Hippocrates, (De Morbis, lib. ii, c. 49,) Areteus, (De Signis et eaus. dius. morb. lib. ii, c. 5,) Lomnius, (Comment de Sanit. tuend, p. m., 37,) Boerhaave, (Instit., p. 776,) Hoffman, (Consult.,) Ludwig, (Instit. physiol.,) Kloekhof, (De morbanim. ab. infir. med. cereb.,) Levis, (A Practical Essay upon Tabes Dorsalis,) and very many others.
The author has had patients from many boarding-schools, and has learned facts which convince him that in all of them masturbation is practiced to a fearful and most injurious extent. In saying all, he means literally all without a single exception. If there exist a single exception, he has yet, by the most diligent and searching inquiry, to ascertain the fact. If there exist a single exception, it must be a boarding-school of angels.
It was the case in every boarding-school to which we ourself were sent as a boy, and in our whole professional career we have never lost an opportunity of satisfying ourself upon the question of its continued existence. In conversation with professors and teachers of both sexes, from the university to the village school, these horrible apprehensions have been more than confirmed. Let those who read these pages reflect upon the numberless instances, which must have come within the observation of all medical or lay observers, of youths who stood high in their classes, and ranked quite as intellectual prodigies up to or a little beyond the age of puberty, say from fourteen upward—who suddenly, without obvious cause, became stupid as dunces, or losing their vivacity, seemed to fail rapidly in intelligence, and to disappoint the high hopes which had been entertained of them. Ninety-nine per cent. of these examples are cases in point.
From "A Physician" (probably C. F. Vent), Satan in Society published by Edward F. Hovey, 1877.
