Human Physiology. 295 



has written like a man of true science, and therefore of true 

 morality. He lays it down as an axiom that the development of 

 the individual, and the reproditction of the species, stand in an 

 inverse ratio to each other. He says: "The augmented devel- 

 opment of the generative organs at puberty can only be rightly 

 regarded as preparatory to the exercise of the organs. The 

 development of the individual must be completed before the 

 procreative power can properly be exercised for the continu- 

 ance of the race." And in the following extract from his 

 "Principles of Human Physiology," he confirms my statement 

 respecting the unscientific and libertine advice of too many 

 physicians: "The author would say to those of his younger 

 readers, who urge the wants of nature as an excuse for the 

 illicit gratification of the sexual passions, 'Try the effects of 

 close mental application to some of those ennobling pursuits to 

 which your profession introduces you, in combination with 

 vigorous bodily exercise, before you assert that appetite is unre- 

 strainable, and act upon that assertion.' Nothing tends so 

 much to increase the desire as the continual direction of the 

 mind toward the objects of its gratification, whilst nothing so 

 effectually represses it as a determined exercise of the mental 

 faculties upon other objects, and the expenditure of nervous 

 energy in other channels. Some works which have issued from 

 the medical press contain much that is calculated to excite, 

 rather than to repress, the propensity ; and the advice some- 

 times given by practitioners to their patients is immoral, as 

 well as unscientific." 



It is a medical a physiological fact, that the best blood in 

 the body goes to form the elements of reproduction in both 

 sexes. The nervous power which we expend in this process is 

 probably more important than the matter over which it pre- 

 sides. In a pure and orderly life this matter is reabsorbed it 

 goes back into the circulation, ready to form the finest brain, 

 nerve, and muscular tissue. By its aid a man can become the 



