Aye We a Declining Race ? 



sluggish, respiration is weak and therefore fails 

 to purify the blood, the juices necessary for 

 digestion are insufficient or of inferior quality 

 and so the body is not properly nourished, and 

 is subject to all kinds of disease. These condi- 

 tions once acquired, it is easy to conceive how a 

 body goes from bad to worse, until eventually it 

 is unable to digest sufficient food to nourish it. 

 " Nervous exhaustion, whatever its occasion, is a 

 pathological degradation from which there is 

 ever ready to spring up a plentiful crop of nerve 

 ailments." (Norman Kerr, M.D. : " Inebriety," 

 p. 170.) 



The heart is often the first organ to suffer from 

 excessive draining of nerve force, and the first 

 indications of disease are palpitations and short- 

 ness of breath. " Masturbators who have long 

 been in the habit of giving way to that vice, 

 especially complain of these symptoms, and often 

 put them before all others. I might indeed give 

 palpitation a prominent place among the results 

 of sexual excess." (Dr. Curschman : " Ziemsson's 

 Cyclopedia," Vol VIII.) 



Paraplegia, a peculiar form of spinal paralysis, 

 in which voluntary motion is interrupted below 

 the affected part of the spinal cord, " may be 

 brought on by various causes, chiefly of an 

 exhausting kind by cold, by intemperance in 

 drinking, by excessive sexual intercourse, or, still 

 more surely, by self-abuse. I have had the last 

 cause assigned to me voluntarily by patients 

 themselves." (Sir Thomas Watson.) 



Chorea St. Vitti. " All circumstances adapted 

 to increase the excitability of the nervous system 



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