The Cause. 



freely, and for many centuries the public mind 

 appears to have been too much engrossed with 

 religious affairs to leave room for such subjects ; 

 therefore the world was left in darkness, so far 

 as written testimony goes, until the eighteenth 

 or possibly seventeenth century, when the 

 ravages made by sexual vices had become so 

 apparent that a few of the bolder spirits of the 

 medical profession came to the front to warn us 

 of the evil of these vices. 



These generally met with rebuke from the 

 more orthodox, who preferred to go on practising 

 the healing art without concerning themselves 

 much about causes. 



Frederick Hoffman, an eminent physician of 

 Hall, near Magdeburg, and the celebrated 

 Herman Boerhaave, of Leyden, were among the 

 first to write on this subject at the commence- 

 ment of the eighteenth century. They were 

 followed shortly after by Dr. Tissot, author of 

 the famous " Traite de 1' Onanisme," which 

 traced many diseases to that evil. A twentieth 

 century writer, styling himself John Allen 

 Godfrey, says that Tissot erected a "colossal 

 bogey "when he wrote his "Traite del' Onanisme." 

 John Allen Godfrey wrote in advocacy of the 

 very vices denounced by Tissot and others, but I 

 believe his book, entitled " The Science of 

 Sex," has been suppressed. It was a work 

 calculated to do much harm in the hands of 

 single people and widows, to whom he recom- 

 mends occasional masturbation as a " nervous 

 sedative " and " a clarifier of the mind." Nothing 

 could be wider of the truth, as I shall endeavour 



