196 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOUISKJ 



The loss of the influence of the sexual glands results 

 in the production of an effeminate man, while the re- 

 moval of these glands in a young woman who has not 

 reached the age of jDuberty produces a mannish woman. 

 It appears, then, that the influence of the sexual glands 

 is to develop, in man, manly characteristics, or those 

 special features which contribute to make up man- 

 hood; while the sexual glands of woman produce in 

 her those qualities and characteristics which are espe- 

 cially womanly. 



Within the last twenty years, in dealing profession- 

 ally with some ten or twelve thousand cases of men who 

 have been, in various ways and various degrees, trans- 

 gressors of the law of chastity, we ha^/e particularly 

 noted the frequency of effeminacy in appearance as a 

 characteristic of those cases in which, habits of sexual 

 indulgence had been begun before puberty, and prac- 

 ticed to a considerable extent during the developmental 

 period, showing that the excessive loss of the activity 

 of the sexual glands in a normally developed person 

 produces results analogous to those which follow the 

 extirpation of the glands. 



In view of these facts, we can readily understand 

 why the acute observation of the trainers of the Greek 

 athletes led them to require, as one of the conditions 

 most essential to the development of the highest de- 

 gree of physical vigor, absolute continence— not simply 

 temperance, which is all that is expected by most 

 trainers at the present time. The conditions of Greek 

 society were certainly less favorable to purity and con- 

 tinence than are those of to-day; yet so great was the 

 ambition of the Greek to win a prize in the Olympian 

 games that he willingly exercised the great self-control 

 necessary under the peculiar circumstances under 



