Searchlights on Health | Page 3

account of ignorance.
The better plan, however, is to so educate and enlighten old and young
upon the important subjects of health, so that the necessity to call a
physician may occur less frequently.
5. PROGRESSION.--A large, respectable, though diminishing class in
every community, maintain that nothing that relates exclusively to
either sex should become the subject of popular medical instruction.
But such an opinion is radically wrong; ignorance is no more the

mother of purity than it is of religion. Enlightenment can never work
injustice to him who investigates.
6. AN EXAMPLE.--The men and women who study and practice
medicine are not the worse, but the better for such knowledge; so it
would be to the community in general if all would be properly
instructed on the laws of health which relate to the sexes.
7. CRIME AND DEGRADATION.--Had every person a sound
understanding on the relation of the sexes, one of the most fertile
sources of crime and degradation would be removed. Physicians know
too well what sad consequences are constantly occurring from a lack of
proper knowledge on these important subjects.
8. A CONSISTENT CONSIDERATION.--Let the reader of this work
study its pages carefully and be able to give safe counsel and advice to
others, and remember that purity of purpose and purity of character are
the brightest jewels in the crown of immortality.
[Illustration: BEGINNING RIGHT.]
* * * * *
THE BEGINNING OF LIFE.
1. THE BEGINNING.--There is a charm in opening manhood which
has commended itself to the imagination in every age. The undefined
hopes and promises of the future--the dawning strength of intellect--the
vigorous flow of passion--the very exchange of home ties and protected
joys for free and manly pleasures, give to this period an interest and
excitement unfelt, perhaps, at any other.
2. THE GROWTH OF INDEPENDENCE.--Hitherto life has been to
boys, as to girls, a dependent existence--a sucker from the parent
growth--a home discipline of authority and guidance and
communicated impulse. But henceforth it is a transplanted growth of its
own--a new and free power of activity in which the mainspring is no
longer authority or law from without, but principle or opinion within.

The shoot which has been nourished under the shelter of the parent
stem, and bent according to its inclination, is transferred to the open
world, where of its own impulse and character it must take root, and
grow into strength, or sink into weakness and vice.
3. HOME TIES.--The thought of home must excite a pang even in the
first moments of freedom. Its glad shelter--its kindly guidance--its very
restraints, how dear and tender must they seem in parting! How
brightly must they shine in the retrospect as the youth turns from them
to the hardened and unfamiliar face of the world! With what a sweet
sadly-cheering pathos they must linger in the memory! And then what
chance and hazard is there in his newly-gotten freedom! What instincts
of warning in its very novelty and dim inexperience! What possibilities
of failure as well as of success in the unknown future as it stretches
before him!
4. VICE OR VIRTUE.--Certainly there is a grave importance as well as
a pleasant charm in the beginning of life. There is awe as well as
excitement in it when rightly viewed. The possibilities that lie in it of
noble or ignoble work--of happy self-sacrifice or ruinous
self-indulgence--the capacities in the right use of which it may rise to
heights of beautiful virtue, in the abuse of which it may sink to the
depths of debasing vice--make the crisis one of fear as well as of hope,
of sadness as well as of joy.
5. SUCCESS OR FAILURE.--It is wistful as well as pleasing to think
of the young passing year by year into the world, and engaging with its
duties, its interests, and temptations. Of the throng that struggle at the
gates of entrance, how many may reach their anticipated goal? Carry
the mind forward a few years, and some have climbed the hills of
difficulty and gained the eminence on which they wished to
stand--some, although they may not have done this, have kept their
truth unhurt, their integrity unspoiled; but others have turned back, or
have perished by the way, or fallen in weakness of will, no more to rise
again; victims or their own sin.
6. WARNING.--As we place ourselves with the young at the opening
gates of life, and think of the end from the beginning, it is a deep

concern more than anything else that fills us. Words of earnest
argument and warning counsel rather than of congratulation rise to our
lips.
7. MISTAKES ARE OFTEN FATAL.--Begin well and the habit of
doing well will become quite as easy as the habit of doing badly. "Well
begun is half