Works on phrenology, physiology, and kindred subjects / by O.S. Fowler.

  • Orson S. Fowler
Date:
[1877?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Works on phrenology, physiology, and kindred subjects / by O.S. Fowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/632 (page 4)
    our institutions of learning ; because there, the absence of exercise, the seclusion from ‘female society, and the character of their studies, especially those that cultivate (vitiate) the imagination, all tend to in- duce and increase the evil.’ The following is from Dr. Alcott:— ‘ We believe that there is not a town in New England, whose bills of mortality, from year to year, are not greatly increased by this fearful and wide wasting scourge. We believe that a majority of our diseases and infirmities—our aches, our pains, and our deformities too—after tlia age of puberty, are either induced or aggravated in this way. The following is from Dr. Snow, of Boston : ‘Self-pollution is undoubtedly one of the most common causes of ill health that can be found among the young men of this country. From the observations that I have been able to make, I am satisfied that the practice is almost universal. Boys commence it at an early age ; and the habit once formed, like that of intemperance, becomes almost un- conquerable. In boarding schools and colleges, it obtains oftentimes without an exception. Hence the many sickly students, and the many young men of' the most brilliant and promising talents, who have broken their constitutions and ruined their health, as it is saul, by hard study ! ’ Mr.’ Fowler adds, that even females do not escape the infection of tins horrible vice. He says,— , . • _ ‘ They may be less infected, yet women, young and modest, are dying by thousands of consumption, of female complaints, of nervous or spina) affections, of general debility, and of other ostensible complaints innumerable, and some of insanity, caused solely by this practice. On this noint. Dr. Woodward again thus speaks out: St two years ago, a young woman, aged twenty-two years, came under my care, in a state of the worst form of insanity. She was furious, noisy, filthy, and, apparently, nearly reduced to idiocy. She had been in this condition many months, and continued so for some time while with me. She was pale and bloodless, had but hit e• ejppe- tite frequently rejected her food, and was reduced in flesh and strength. Find in oilier one day more calm than usual, I hinted to her the subject of masturbation Lself-pollution], and informed her that, lf P^ctised it she could not get well—if she abandoned it, she might. She did not de y the charge, and promised to follow my advice strictly. In two or three weeks from this time, she was perceptibly better ; W mind miproved as her health gained ; and both were much better in the course of a few ‘ a, The recovery was very rapid in this case. At the end o six month's she had excellent health, was quite fleshy, and became perfectly sane * and has continued so, so far as we have known, to this t,me- “Not long since, a case of periodical insanity came under my obser- §SS'sSSSi which individuals of the same sex have been reduced to t e same de graded state. They ate now, and w c.u.tatghto a melancholy spectacle of human misery ;hr, o“finmovernable passion, cacv or modesty, constantly harassed by tne most ungov« t ’ iaY Vxr’flnonce of nronensities excited to morbid activity oy a and under the influence ot prop , d a large proportion c will be found to have originated in tins cause.