Sexology/Part 4
PART IV.
Masturbation, Male.
Viewing the world over, this shameful and criminal act is the most frequent, as well as the most fatal, of all vices. In our country, however, it is second in frequency—though not, surely, in importance —only to the crime of libertinism. It is encountered in all ages, from the infant in the cradle to the old man groaning upon his pallet. But it is from the age of fourteen to twenty that its ravages are most frequent and most deplorable. Nothing but a sense of inexorable duty, in the hope of effecting a radical reform by awakening the alarm of parents and teachers to the enormous frequency and horrible consequences of this revolting crime, could induce the author to enter upon the sickening revelation.
Granted that, as already stated, it must, if persevered in, reveal itself, it is only the most aggravated cases that are brought to notice, and these usually are hopeless and incurable. The vast majority escape detection, and the practice in such, though indulged to a comparatively moderate extent, does not the less seriously, but only the less completely, impair the intellect and lay the foundation of physical, mental and moral maladies, the causes of which are usually as unsuspected as they are consequently persistent in their operation.
The frequency of masturbation before the age of puberty is in direct relation to the development of the nervous system, and the opportunity afforded for acquiring a knowledge of the sin from pernicious examples. 
SECTION OF MALE PELVIS AND ORGANS.
The predominance of the action of the nervous system over that of the other portions of the human organization, is exceedingly frequent in young children, and is the most powerful predisposing cause of the vice in question. It can never, of course, be attributed to the stimulation exerted on the genital organs by the presence of the spermatic fluid, for in them this secretion does not exist. It sometimes happens that, by a kind of special organic idiosyncracy, the organs of generation become the seat of abnormal sensitiveness or irritation in young subjects, at once the occasion and the signal for the explosion of this most terrific and fatal passion. This explains the great number of examples in which, even in the nursery, during the "innocent slumbers of childhood," the genital organs are observed to be in a state of erection, or erethism, unnatural at that age, and which can by no possibility be supposed to subserve any physiological end. It is obvious that, in such a condition of abnormal excitation, the least accidental touch, or even an involuntary mechanical movement, may very easily lead to a most frightful and devouring passion.
However, in all probability, the most common origin of this nervous concentration and precocious sensibility is to be found in the criminality of passionate creatures to whose care the innocent little beings are confided, as nurses or young servants. "Wise women" have been known to adopt this method of quieting the outcries of the youngest infants! Such children never fail, sooner or later, to avail themselves of their frightful discovery. Facts of this nature demand the vigilant solicitude of moralists, heads of families, principals of schools, of all persons, in short, to whom the destinies of the young are confided.
French physicians have already bestowed great attention on this subject of infantile masturbation, though there are probably few physicians of experience in this country who cannot recall facts equally astonishing with those we are about to quote.
Dr. Doussin Dubreuil relates the case of a child who contracted the habit spontaneously at the age of five years, who, in spite of all that could be done, died at sixteen, having lost his reason at eleven. Deslandes, in his work on onanism, speaks of a confirmed masturbator at eighteen months!
Another case was that of inveterate priapism in a child four years of age. The erethism had continued during four or five entire days. The urine was voided drop by drop, and the paroxysms of suffering were at intervals extreme. The attending physician reports that he found the little patient surrounded by ladies and "wise" old women, who were actually endeavoring to reduce the organ by immodest procedures. The secret was found to consist wholly in the presence of a minute calculus which had lodged in the urethra, and which being removed the erethism subsided; but a well-nigh fatal lesson had been imparted through the insane attempts at relief.
"A young man from Montpelier" (we translate from Tissot), "a student of medicine, died from excess of this kind of debauch. The idea of his crime so agitated his mind that he died in a kind of despair, believing that he saw hell open at his side to receive him. A child of this city, six or seven years of age, instructed by a female servant, polluted himself so often that the slow fever which resulted very soon terminated fatally. His fury for this act was so great that it could not be prevented, even in the last days of his life. When told that he was hastening his death, he consoled himself by saying that he would go the sooner to find his father, who died some months before."
Here is the narration of a subject who became a masturbator a little later:
"I knew nothing of the vice of onanism until the age of ten years, when one of my companions, at the college where I was placed, instructed me. I could not tell you the number of times that I practiced it to the age of fifteen; then only my eyes were opened to the whole enormity of my fault. I am now eighteen, but though for three years I have not fallen again, I am no less afflicted with frequent pollutions, which occur in spite of myself, during five or six nights in succession. I am never permitted to enjoy tranquil repose; the whole day I am sad. I have four times changed my school, and everywhere I have seen this kind of libertinism carried to excess. Where I terminated my studies, we assembled often in parties of twelve or fifteen to indulge this fine practice. It is doubtless due to my temperament that I have outlived nearly all my comrades; save one, whom I meet quite often, and who leads a very wretched life, all have died in the most frightful torments."
Perhaps the most constant and invariable, as well as earliest signs of the masturbator are the downcast, averted glance, and the disposition to solitude.
Prominent characteristics are, loss of memory and intelligence, morose and unequal disposition, aversion, or indifference to legitimate pleasures and sports, mental abstractions, stupid stolidity, etc. A distinguished German physician, Gottlieb Wogel, gives the following truthful picture:
"The masturbator gradually loses his moral faculties, he acquires a dull, silly, listless, embarrassed, sad, effeminate exterior. He becomes indolent ; averse to and incapable of all intellectual exertion; all presence of mind deserts him; he is discountenanced, troubled, inquiet whenever he finds himself in company; he is taken by surprise and even alarmed if required simply to reply to a child's question; his feeble soul succumbs to the lightest task; his memory daily losing more and more, he is unable to comprehend the most common things, or to connect the simplest ideas; the greatest means and the most sublime talents are soon exhausted; previously acquired knowledge is forgotten; the most exquisite intelligence becomes naught, and no longer bears fruit; all the vivacity, all the pride, all the qualities of the spirit by which these unfortunates formerly subjugated or attracted their equals, abandon them, and leave them no longer aught but contempt; the power of the imagination is at an end for them; pleasure no longer fawns upon them; but in revenge, all that is trouble and misfortune in the world seems to be their portion. Inquietude, dismay, fear, which are their only affections, banish every agreeable sensation from their minds. The last crisis of melancholy and the most frightful suggestions of despair commonly end in hastening the death of these unfortunates, or else they fall into complete apathy, and, sunken below those brutes which have the least instinct, they retain only the figure of their race. It even frequently happens that the most complete folly and frenzy are manifest from the first."
According to Dr. Franck, "Masturbators are not only a charge upon society, but are even dangerous," and this celebrated physician exhorts to exercise over them the most active supervision. Says Dr. Debreyne:
"Consider now this imbruted and degraded being; behold him bent under the weight of crime and infamy, dragging in darkness a remnant of material and animal life. Unfortunate! He has sinned against God, against nature, and against himself. He has violated the laws of the Creator; has disfigured the image of God in his own person, and has changed it into that of the beast, imago bestice. He is even sunken below the brute, and, like him, looks only upon the ground. His dull and stupid glance can no longer raise itself toward Heaven; he no longer dares lift his miserable brow, already stamped with the seal of reprobation; he descends little by little into death, and a last convulsive crisis comes at length, violently to close this strange and horrible drama."
As we have said of the physical, so also can we say of the moral punishment of the masturbator. Not all offenders are visited so severely as above described. Perhaps even a small proportion of the whole number die in this manner; yet, in this comparatively small minority, those who persist in the practice will sooner or Inter surely be included. Let no one delude himself with the false assumption that he can be exempt from this universal law. There can be no possible exemption! Those who persist will surely die the death most horrible of all deaths; and those who practice the most limited and most occasional acts of onanism will surely be punished in proportion to their crimes; while the very individuals who seem to escape, are those who most surely carry the punishment for the remainder of their lives, never live to attain old age, and most frequently fall victims to some grave chronic disease, the germs of which they owe to this detestable vice. Or an acute malady, which they resist far less readily than others, cuts the thread of their existence in the prime of their manhood.
Let those who read these pages reflect upon the numberless instances, which must have come within the observation of all medical or lay observers, of youths who stood high in their classes, and ranked quite as intellectual prodigies up to or a little beyond the age of puberty, say from fourteen upward—who suddenly, without obvious cause, became stupid as dunces, or losing their vivacity, seemed to fail rapidly in intelligence, and to disappoint the high hopes which had been entertained of them. Ninety-nine per cent of these examples are cases in point.