198 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOUNG 



destroying their health, happiness, and life, by follow- 

 ing the promptings of their unbridled passions. Need 

 I say that I have never seen a man suffer from keeping 

 himself pure?" 



In the course of our own professional experience, 

 we have never met with a single instance in which dis- 

 ease of any kind was present as the result of a pure 

 or continent life. On the other hand, we have seen 

 the most horrible results from the unlawful and un- 

 professional advice sometimes given by physicians to 

 young men, suggesting unchastity as being essential 

 for the relief of some physical weakness, though we 

 have never met with a single case in which the slight- 

 est benefit had been derived from following such ad- 

 vice. Observations with reference to the character of 

 those who give professional advice of this sort have 

 long ago led us to the belief that, as a rule, only those 

 who have themselves been impure to such an extent 

 that they were bereft of their ability to judge prop- 

 erly of the influence of a pure and continent life, are 

 capable of giving such unwise and immoral advice. 



Acton, an eminent London physician, declares that 

 the claim that disease results from continence "is a 

 device of the unchaste, a lame excuse for their own 

 incontinence, unfounded on any physiological law." 

 The same writer adds: ''The admitted fact that con- 

 tinence is frequently productive of distress, is often a 

 struggle hard to be borne, still harder to be completely 

 victorious in, is not to be at all regarded as an argu- 

 ment that it is an evil." 



These statements are amply confirmed by common 

 experience with animals, especially in Continental Eu- 

 rope, where the castration of working animals is prac- 

 ticed only to a very small extent. The experience 



