360 Human Physiology. 



There is also in one sex the loss of a highly vitalised fluid 

 formed from the blood, and containing its finest essence a 

 fluid which seems, indeed, to be a concentration of the nerve- 

 force of organic and animal life. In the other sex a disordered 

 ovarian action and menstruation may produce similar exhaus- 

 tion. Nature calls for this expenditure only at maturity, and 

 at rare intervals, and for a specific purpose. When amative 

 waste begins in early life with unnatural indulgence, when it is 

 continued by excess of what nature intended, it must always be 

 a cause of disease; and it is one of the most common causes 

 of many of the most distressing diseases. It affects the nervous 

 system and all the vital functions, weakens digestion, impover- 

 ishes the blood, paralyses the skin, wastes the muscles, weakens 

 the intellect and memory, and is a frequent cause of palsy or 

 apoplexy, insanity or dementia. 



On the painful subject of secret amative indulgence in both 

 sexes, I cannot quote a higher, a more respectable authority 

 than Copland's Dictionary of Practical Medicine. "It is," 

 says this work, "the Moloch of the species," and is "far more 

 prevalent in very young children of both sexes than is generally 

 supposed," and is a cause of hysteria and of insanity, of which 

 it is "a most influential predisposing and exciting cause."- " It 

 is, I believe, a growing evil, with the diffusion of luxury, of 

 precocious knowledge, and of the vices of civilisation, and is 

 even more prevalent in the female than in the male sex, and 

 occasions many of the disorders connected with the sexual 

 organs." And similar to this is the testimony of many English, 

 European, and American medical writers. 



I cannot neglect here to mention the moral causes of disease. 

 Every violent emotion, even hope and joy, may be, in certain 

 cases, a cause of insanity or death; but there are depressing 

 emotions which develop tendencies to disease, and remarkably 

 favour the action of other causes of disease. Dread, fear, 

 terror, seem to have a very direct influence upon the spread of 



