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DISEASES OF THE GENERATIVE SYSTEM. SO"*
It is a sin, a crime, if you please ; but it is a sin or crime
against nature, often not against
reason or conscience.
It is a crime that brings its own —
punishment a sin that
makes its own hell. Nature can not forgive such sins.
They are unpardonable, as are all sins against the holy
spirit of life.
There is no reason or conscience to govern a child
not two years old, and many such fall into this habit.
from the infantile
Many a child sinks into the grave
practice of masturbation. In these cases, no doubt, the
disease is hereditary. A diseased parent has impressed
his child. A
the full force of his sensual passions upon
mother has marked her infant with this vice, by having
her own amativeness excited during the sacred period
of gestation.
This is not always the cause—at least, it is not the
sole cause of the disease. In little girls it comes by the
accident of some uncleanliness, or eruption, irritating
the parts, and compelling the friction which results in
the unnatural are gratification. Boys abused by igno
rant and libidinous nurses, who play with their organs,
both to gratify their own sensuality, and to keep the
children quiet or please them, when they are peevish
or ill-tempered. Older boys and girls, allowed to sleep
with servants, or children are already corrupted, in
itiated into this practice. Children at school, especially
at boarding schools, teach each other, and one boy or
girl will infect a whole school.
I see around me many reasons for believing that this
practice is fully as common— perhaps more common—
with girls than boys. Few of either sex escape this
pollution. When it is not at first a disease of the gene-
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