The generative system and its functions in health and disease / by James George Beaney.

  • James Beaney
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The generative system and its functions in health and disease / by James George Beaney. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    hypersensitiveness of the genital apparatus. This view of the case is set forth by a modern writer in the following- words :— This purity and ignorant innocence in children are not in any way unnatural. It is true that a different rule prevails among many of the lower animals. For instance, no one can have seen young lambs gambolling together without noticing at what an early age the young rams evince the most definite sexual propensities. Precocity in them is evidently intuitive, as it cannot depend on the force of example. This contrast between children and young animals may be explained by the fact that the animal's life is much shorter than that of man, its growth is more rapid, its office in the world is lower and more materia], its maturity is sooner reached, and sexual pro- pensities are therefore naturally exhibited at a much earlier age. In still lower forms of life the sexual period com- mences yet earlier. In many species of moths, no sooner is the perfect insect produced than it proceeds at once to the exercise of the function of procreation, which completed, its own existence ceases.^) When the child becomes a youth, and the stage of full sexual development arrives, marked by the concomitant change in the voice, the growth of the beard, and the general indications of virility, that full capacity known as puberty fits him for the complete functions of physical intercourse. It should only appear at that time from sixteen to eighteen years of age, although there are thousands of instances where it appears long before the proper period, but these are unfortunate instances of abnor- mal activity. The stage from childhood to youth is eloquently described by Dr. Carpenter in his large work on Physiology, where he says:— The period of youth is distinguished by that (&) Acton.
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