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THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. 269
to its uses. It is the best or worst, the noblest or the
vilest, the Iappiest
or the most miserable of human
passions, as it is properly or improperly gratified. The
nervous exhaustion which it occasions is the direct
cause of most cases of dyspepsia, rheumatism, con
sumption, palsy, epilepsy, apoplexy, the nervous and
uterine diseases of women, and, in fact, of two-thirds
of all the diseases of mankind.
" There is but one sin,"
said a wise man, in the bitterness of his experience. It
was this one sin, he thought, which was the cause of
all others.
The abuse of amativeness, which begins in childhood,
and even infancy, rapidly exhausts the nervous power.
The generative function takes strength from the organic
and the animal powers. It fails, and all fail. The
stomach can not digest, for want of the nervous energy,
spent in oft-repeated and fruitless orgasms. Nutrition
can not be carried on in the capillary system. The
waste matter, which should be carried off by the se
creting and excreting organs, is retained to poison the
fountains of life. The skin becomes dry and withered ;
the eye dull ; the mind weak and disordered ; all noble
passions lose their force ; the whole system is in dis
to dis
cord and disorder, and ready to become a prey
ease. Then comes epilepsy, or spinal disease, or
dropsy, or some form of consumption.
The habit of self-pollution in boys leads to that of
involuntary seminal emissions, in itself a disease, and a
continued cause of nervous exhaustion, and final impo
tence. In girls the same habit causes leucorrhcea, or
of the womb,
mucous discharges from the vagina, falling
irregular and painful menstruation, a loss of all pleasure