PART V.
Masturbation, Female.
Alas, that such a term is possible! 0, that it were as infrequent as it is monstrous, and that no stern necessity compelled us to make the startling disclosures which this chapter must contain! We beseech, in advance, that every young creature into whose hands this book may chance to fall, if she be yet pure and innocent, will at least pass over this chapter, that she may still believe in the general chastity of her sex; that she may not know the depths of degradation into which it is possible to fall. We concede that only a wide-spread existence of the crime could justify this public description of its consequences. We believe that a smaller proportion of girls than of boys are addicted to it, but the number is nevertheless enormous, and the dangers are all the greater, that their very existence is so generally ignored.
Beyond all dispute the crime exists. We translate the following from an acknowledged high medical authority, the "Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales:"
"Naturally more timid and more secret than boys, the effects of their reunion, although very fatal, are less than in the latter. At the same time a culpable negligence in the boarding-schools of 'young ladies,' too frequently allows to be introduced there the disorders of masturbation. This practice is dissembled from the impenetrative or careless eyes of the teacher under the guise of friendship, which
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