458 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOUNG 



tive, pure, innocent little girl. Her father lavished 

 upon her numerous presents, and spent hundreds of 

 dollars to obtain her recovery to health. Yet through 

 this awful vice she was ruined utterly, and rendered 

 so wholly perverse and bad that she had no desire to 

 be better, no disposition to reform. God only knows 

 what will be her sad end. May none who read these 

 lines ever follow in her footsteps. 



The Danger of Boarding-Schools.— Some years 

 ago a young lady came under our medical care who 

 had suffered for some time from a serious nervous 

 difficulty which had baffled the skill of all the physi- 

 cians who had treated her case, and which occasioned 

 her a great amount of suffering, making it necessary 

 that she should be confined to her bed most of the time, 

 the disease being aggravated by exercise, and the 

 patient having been much weakened by its long con- 

 tinuance. 



All the remedies usually successful in such cases 

 were employed with little or no effect, and we were 

 feeling somewhat perplexed, when the young lady sent 

 for us one day, and as we entered the room she burst 

 into tears, and acknowledged that she had been ad- 

 dicted to the habit of self-abuse, and that she was 

 still suffering from involuntary excitement during 

 sleep. Having been placed in a boarding-school when 

 quite young, she had there learned the vile habit, and 

 had practiced it without knowing anything of the ill 

 effects or really appreciating its sinfulness. When 

 she learned, some years after, that the habit was a 

 most pernicious vice, and of a character to bring de- 

 struction to both soul and body, she endeavored to free 

 herself from its shackles; but she found herself too 

 securely bound for escape. It seemed, indeed, an utter 



