Plain Facts for Old and Young | Page 3

sitz bath--Ascending douche--Abdominal bandage--Wet compress--Hot and cold applications to the spine--Local fomentations--Local cold bathing--Enemata--Electricity--Internal applications--Use of electricity--Circumcision--Impotence--Varicocele-- Drugs--Rings--Quacks--Closing advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
A CHAPTER FOR BOYS.
Who are boys?--What are boys for?--Boys the hope of the world--Man the masterpiece--How a noble character is ruined--The marvelous human machine--The two objects of human existence--The nutritive apparatus-- The moving apparatus--The thinking and feeling apparatus--The purifying apparatus--The reproductive apparatus--How a noble character and a sound body must be formed--The downhill road--Self-abuse--A dreadful sin-- Self-murderers--What makes boys dwarfs--Scrawny and hollow-eyed boys-- Old boys--What makes idiots--Young dyspeptics--The race ruined by boys-- Cases illustrating the effects of self-abuse--Two young wrecks--A prodigal youth--Barely escaped--A lost soul--The results of one transgression--A hospital case--An old offender--The sad end of a young victim--From bad to worse--An indignant father--Disgusted with life--Bad company--Bad language--Bad books--Vile pictures--Evil thoughts-- Influence of other bad habits--Closing advice to boys and young men. 419
A CHAPTER FOR GIRLS.
Girlhood--How to develop beauty and loveliness--The human form divine--A wonderful process--Human buds--How beauty is marred--A beauty-destroying vice--Terrible effects of secret vice--Remote effects--Causes which lead girls astray--Vicious companions--Whom to avoid--Sentimental books-- Various causes--Modesty woman's safeguard--A few sad cases--A pitiful case--A mind dethroned--A penitent victim--A ruined girl--The danger of boarding-schools--A desperate case--A last word--A few words to boys and girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470

INTRODUCTION.
Books almost without number have been written upon the subject treated in this work. Unfortunately, most of these works are utterly unreliable, being filled with gross misrepresentations and exaggerations, and being designed as advertising mediums for ignorant and unscrupulous charlatans, or worse than worthless patent nostrums. To add to their power for evil, many of them abound with pictorial illustrations which are in no way conducive to virtue or morality, but rather stimulate the animal propensities and excite lewd imaginations. Books of this character are usually widely circulated; and their pernicious influence is fully as great as that of works of a more grossly obscene character. In most of the few instances in which the evident motive of the author is not of an unworthy character, the manner of presenting the subject is unfortunately such that it more frequently than otherwise has a strong tendency in a direction exactly the opposite of that intended and desired. The writer of this work has endeavored to avoid the latter evil by adopting a style of presentation quite different from that generally pursued. Instead of restricting the reader's attention rigidly to the sexual function in man, his mind is diverted by frequent references to corresponding functions in lower animals and in the vegetable kingdom. By this means, not only is an additional fund of information imparted, but the sexual function in man is divested of its sensuality. It is viewed as a fact of natural history, and is associated with the innocence of animal life and the chaste loveliness of flowers. Thus the subject comes to be regarded from a purely physiological standpoint, and is liberated from the gross animal instinct which is the active cause of sensuality.
There are so many well-meaning individuals who object to the agitation of this subject in any manner whatever, that it may be profitable to consider in this connection some of the principal objections which are urged against imparting information on sexual subjects, especially against giving knowledge to the young.
I. Sexual matters improper to be spoken of to the young.
This objection is often raised, it being urged that these matters are too delicate to be even suggested to children; that they ought to be kept in total ignorance of all sexual matters and relations until nature indicates that they are fit to receive them. It is doubtless true that children raised in a perfectly natural way would have no sexual thoughts until puberty, at least, and it would be better if it might be so; but from facts pointed out in succeeding portions of this work, it is certain that at the present time children nearly always do have some vague ideas of sexual relations long before puberty, and often at a very early age. It is thus apparent that by speaking to children of sexual matters in a proper manner, a new subject is not introduced to them, but it is merely presenting to them in a true light a subject of which they already have vague ideas; and thus, by satisfying a natural curiosity, they are saved from supplying by their imaginations distorted images and exaggerated conceptions, and from seeking to obtain the desired information from evil sources whence they would derive untold injury.
What reason is there that the subject of the sexual functions should be