The private medical friend, or, A warning voice to young men : an essay on the errors of youth and the secret infirmities of the generative organs, resulting from solitary habits, youthful excess, or infection, with practical observations on the premature failiure of sexual power illustrated with many cases in proof of the Author's succesful mode of treatment / by Henry Smith.

Smith, Henry, active 1982.

Date:: 1857

Credit: The private medical friend, or, A warning voice to young men : an essay on the errors of youth and the secret infirmities of the generative organs, resulting from solitary habits, youthful excess, or infection, with practical observations on the premature failiure of sexual power illustrated with many cases in proof of the Author's succesful mode of treatment / by Henry Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$t0 the tho'mnds *» still suffer, *~»3 or mure, as 1 did. 7 • P 1 fhe lanJentable symptoms enumerated in the.se pages mv feiw’ 1 aU) iee\ convinced> ]ar£e numbers of my feJlow^ men as being hue the reflex of their own condi- •J6.1 doubt lf> al?ODg the unhappy cases brought Ward there !« one which exhibits so tearful a havoc in otnmeilt’1 ant l11yslcal attributes of humanity, as did my “I acquired the habit of self-abuse at school: and 1 *■ l110', f r,vvben * *°°k baok uPon the years and j^eais during whicdi he unnatura1 lust held possession of my very souf. Jer - ZgT^l UnCwSCI0Uf 6lther 0fitS gadt or its dan¬ ger, but lime brought its alarm, and forced upon me the knowledge of both. Then, however, I was so fa? the victim of the propensity that 1 had lost the power of resistance. My frame had become attenuated and feeble—my mental faculties bad lost their elasticity-resolution was gone- and I was in a great measure helpless. So I drifted on to destruction. Ihen memory almost altogether failed—mv sig t became more and more obscured—and my brain was habitually in the confused condition of a drunkard's, though I was always a temperate man. I grew so sensitively Ti¬ mid and nervous that the falling of a leaf would have star¬ tled me. I shunned socxety-I feared even to meet my acquaintances—I could not study—and the pulpit, for which 1 had been educated, was a terror to me. “For a single moment a ray of hope revived me, as I thought of marriage. An angel of the other sex had Tais^d brighter visions m my soul. But, alas ! another moment reminded me that such a blessing was not for one who had so trampled on the laws of God and nature as I had done 1 was not only aware that I was utterly disqualified for ,1m marriage bed—the very parts being shrivelled up and dis¬ organised—but several portions of my body were covered with unsightly and irritating eruptions. So I became dis¬ honourable or crazy in the eyes of those who had esteemed me—retreated like a guilty thing from the advances I had made and well nigh broke an angel’s heart “ Yet, during this one hopeful interval, fdid succeed, to a great extent, in subduing the horrid infatuation: and 1 ultimately completely mastered it. The fearful consepuen- cos however, remained; for that vital energy which I had$

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