THE PASSIONS 
IN THEIR RELATIONS TO 
HEALTH AND DISEASES. WORKS ON CUTANEOUS DISEASES, &c., 
BY 
HOWARD F. DAMON, A.M., M.D., Harv. 
THE NEUROSES OF THE SKIN: Their Pathology and Treatment. Svo. 
1868. 
THE STRUCTURAL LESIONS OF THE SKIN: Their Pathology and 
Treatment. Illustrated. Svo. 1869. 
PHOTOGRAPHS OF SKIN DISEASES. Taken from Life. With Descriptive 
Text. 4to. 1870. 
LEUCOCYTHEMIA: The Boylston Medical Prize Essay of Harvard University 
for 1863. Svo. 
NEW TREATMENT OF VENEREAL DISEASES and of Ulcerative Syphil- 
itic Affections by lodoform. Translated from the French of Dr. A. A. Izard. 
1872. 
THE PASSIONS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO HEALTH AND DIS- 
EASES: Love and Libertinism. From the French of Dr. Bourgeois. 1873. 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE SYPHILIDS, or Syphilitic Affections of the Skin. 
From the French of Dr. Schweich. (In preparation.) 
SYPHILIS IN ITS RELATIONS TO MARRIAGE. From the French of 
Dr. Edmund Langlebert. (In preparation.) THE 
PASSIONS 
IN THEIR RELATIONS TO 
HEALTH AND DISEASES. 
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF 
DR. X. BOURGEOIS, 
LAUREATE OF THE ACADEMY OF MEDICINE OF PARIS, ETC. 
HOWARD F. DAMON, A.M., M.D. 
“The passions can augment the number and intensity of diseases to a point which 
it is impossible to assign ; and, reciprocally, the hideous empire of physical ill can be 
contracted by virtue within limits that cannot be fixed.”—J. Dr 
BOSTON: 
JAMES CAMPBELL. PUBLISHER, 
18 Tremont Street. 
1876. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 
JAMES CAMPBELL, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
CAMBRIDGE : 
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
ignorance prevails among all classes of 
society in regard to a subject which not only con- 
cerns the health and happiness of individuals, but the 
permanency even of the social fabric. It is due to a 
morbid fear to enlighten the young in regard to the ills 
engendered by misguided passions. Not until the un- 
happy victim struggles to escape the thraldom of his 
sexual instincts is the veil uplifted. Whose is the deli- 
cate task of imparting the information necessary to avert 
this sad catastrophe? Who shall'endeavor to reform 
this greatest of physical and moral evils? All may 
assist; but the good physician who makes a ministry 
of his art, who is the constant spectator of human suf- 
fering— should raise his warning voice against those 
secret sins which sap the physical and moral growth of 
the individual. Nor should he even encourage those 
incestuous and adulterous means of preventing this evil 
which have for their end to compromise and corrupt the 
conscience ; to cause the disaffection or destruction of the 
family, and those great social convulsions which over- 
whelmed and desolated the most highly cultivated yet 
corrupt nations of antiquity. VI 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
The dread of physical ills, which alone keeps so many 
of our youth from morbid desires and sensual indul- 
gences, has been made almost the only incentive to vir- 
tuous habits by those who have contributed to this 
department of medical knowledge. 
Terrible indeed are the consequences of libertinism 
to the health of individuals and families. Certain and 
dreadful is the retribution. Generations yet to come 
are made the sufferers. 
But who shall paint the misery, the remorse, the hor- 
ror, of the stricken conscience when it awakes to the 
enormity of its crimes, from that moral death in which 
it has stifled its most exquisite sensibilities? 
Consistent with the highest intellectual requirements 
of the age, a noble adjunct to the physical and moral 
culture of youth, must be considered the department of 
hygienic instruction which shall relate to the proper 
management of the passions and their subjection to the 
dominion of the will. 
If this little work shall furnish any new suggestions 
to instructors and heads of families on the important 
subjects upon which it treats, the delicate and somewhat 
difficult task of its translation will not have been done 
in vain. 
Boston, February, 1873. 
HOWARD F. DAMON. TO THE READER. 
'T'HE subject treated in this book is of considerable 
importance. The book addresses itself not only 
to physicians, but also to persons who are charged with 
the education and direction of men, to ministers of re- 
ligion, to the heads of families; it is equally proper for 
married people and for young people. All have need 
of being enlightened upon the physical ills engendered 
by love and libertinism. 
But the subject is a delicate one to treat; so we have 
imposed upon ourselves the obligation of having always 
present in our mind this maxim of Aristotle : 
To say what should be said, to only say what should 
be said, and to say it as it should be said. TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
PAGB 
Translator’s Preface v 
To the Reader vii 
I. Love. 
I. Definitions. —Different Manifestations of Love.— 
Love the Source of all the Passions, Sensual, 
Moral, Platonic Love. Gallantry. Coquetry . n 
11. Physiological and Social Influences on Love.— 
Puberty. Symptoms of Love; those of Unbri- 
dled Love 7 
111. Different and Complementary Faculties in Man and 
in Woman. Sympathies in Love. —Varied Char- 
acters of Love in Man, in Woman, in each Indi- 
vidual, in each People. Marriage is the Con- 
summation of love : it is its Emancipation ... 15 
IV. Happy Love: its Salutary or Painful Effects on 
the Health and Mind. Thwarted and Jealous 
Love : Influence on the Organism ; Diseases which 
result from it. Observations. Some Statistical 
Results . .24 
V. —Advantages of Marriage for Society, for Man him- 
self.— Inconveniences of Celibacy; its Dangers 
for the Health 44 X 
CONTENTS. 
PAGE 
VI. Precocious Marriages. Dangers of the Pleasures of 
Love in very Young, Delicate Persons ; in Old Men. 
Marriages disproportionate by Age. Diseases 
which should prevent Marriage. Alliances be- 
tween Blood-Relations 52 
VII. —Means of preventing Unruly Love. The Proper 
Direction of Love in Youth; it will be necessary 
to re-establish Betrothals.—Duties and Reciprocal 
Functions of Husband and of Wife 
VIII.—Treatment of Disordered Love by Moral and Hy- 
gienic Means and by Medication 70 
11. —Libertinism. 
I. Definition. General Considerations 85 
11. Historic Glance at Libertinism in Ancient and Mod- 
ern Times. Libertinism is the most Active Cause 
of the Dissolution of Society 90 
111. Physiological and Social Causes of Libertinism, of 
Prostitution, of Masturbation, of Pederasty . . too 
IV. Can Man remain continent during a Certain Time, 
even all his life ? Is not Absolute Continence or- 
dinarily a Cause of Diseases? m 
V. The Course and Allurements of Libertinism. Por- 
trait of the Debauchee, of the Courtesan, of the 
Masturbator 119 
VI. Syphilis, the Product of Libertinism. Its Lesions 
and its Varied Symptoms; its Modes of Conta- 
gion. Syphilitic Cachexy. Metamorphoses of 
Syphilis. Its Injurious Influence on the Race . . 126 
VII. Why Libertinism is so Injurious to Health. The 
Different Diseases engendered by Venereal Ex- 
cesses. Several — Opinions of the 
most Celebrated Physicians. —lnvoluntary Sem- 
inal losses.— Eloquence of a Few Figures . . . 135 CONTENTS. 
xi 
PACK 
VIII. Very Great Dangers of Libertinism in Young Peo- 
ple, in Old Men, in Delicate Persons, in the Sick . 156 
IX.— Conjugal Onanism, or the Artificial Relations be- 
tween Man and Wife in order to avoid Concep- 
tion.— Immorality, Dangers to the Health . . . 163 
X. Solitary Onanism. Its Bad Consequences for the 
Soul and for the Body. Observations. Several 
Examples of Rapid Death occasioned by this Vice 175 
XI. —Treatment of Onanism by Moral, Hygienic, and 
Coercive Measures 185 
XII. How the Education of the Family should favor Good 
Morals. Some Advice to Young Men. The 
Laws should protect Woman 190 
XIII. Means of combating Libertinism in acting on the 
Intelligence, the Heart, the Senses. Medical 
Treatment 197 I. 
LOVE. LOVE. 
“ Songez-y bien ! I’amour et ses liens 
Sont les plus grands ou des maux ou des biens.”l 
I. 
DEFINITIONS. DIFFERENT MANIFESTATIONS 
OF LOVE. LOVE THE SOURCE OF ALL 
THE PASSIONS. —SENSUAL, MORAL, PLATON- 
IC LOVE. GALLANTRY. - COQUETRY. 
T OVE, in its largest acceptation, is an attraction 
towards the beautiful, the good, the true, with 
a lively desire of possession. 
God, the perfect Being, is all love. He has 
diffused love through all nature; and He has im- 
posed upon man, the emanation of His divinity, 
the law of love. 
In man, love manifests itself in many ways. It 
has many objects for its food. 
Supreme love is the love of God, eternal 
beauty, sovereign good, truth itself. 
Around the Divine love all the other loves radi- 
ate and are resplendent: the love of humanity, 
which has animated the Socrateses, the Platos, the 
1 Voltaire. 4 
LOVE. 
Augustines, the Vincents de Paul; the love of coun- 
try, to which Brutus, Decius, the braves of Ther- 
mopylae, the heroes of all countries and all times, 
have been sacrificed; the love of nature, of art, of 
science, each of which have had and always will 
have their passionate lovers, their devoted victims ; 
conjugal love, which attracts man towards woman, 
and woman towards man, and unites them together 
body and soul; love of the family, which makes a 
harmonious whole of father and mother, of chil- 
dren, of brothers, of sisters ; in fine, self-love, which 
too often overrules and corrupts the purity of the 
other sentiments. These different forms of love 
can become exalted, and engender religious, po- 
litical, patriotic fanaticism, nostalgia, intellectual 
manias, unbridled love, paternal blindness, self- 
love, egotism. 
Love constitutes the foundation of human nature. 
It is the motor power of all the actions, the prin- 
ciple of all the passions. It may be discovered in 
the pleasures of libertinism, in the sensualities of 
intemperance, in the furors of rage, in the weak- 
nesses of fear, in the soft quietudes of idleness, in 
the agitations of ambition, in the poisons of envy, 
in the violent emotions of jealousy. 
We have only to occupy ourselves with the con- 
sideration of love as it exists between man and 
woman. 
Love thus considered is that secret affinity which 
attracts one t6 the other, enchains them by the ITS DIFFERENT MANIFESTATIONS. 
5 
sweet sympathies of the soul and the irresistible 
attraction of the senses, and confounds them in a 
voluptuous union, in fine, for the perpetuation of 
the species. 
Powerful instinct! The Creator has placed it 
in us, in order that we may continue His work, 
charging us to repair the ravages of death by a 
continual transmission of life. 
Love responds to two inseparable necessities of 
our nature: the desire of living in another, and the 
desire of renewed life in another. 
Man loves because he has a horror of isolation, 
and because, when alone, the thought of his coming 
to nought cannot escape him. He must live with 
another and in another. Hence the conjugal asso- 
ciation, which unites feebleness with force, grace 
with gravity, tender affection with austere reason, 
pleasure with labor. 
Man loves, also, because he has need of immor- 
tality, even on this earth. He has the desire of 
surviving himself, of prolonging his existence, in 
being born again in his children. It seems to him 
that the more scions he puts forth, the more his life 
will be enlarged, extended. 
Same as the light, in traversing the prism, is 
decomposed into bundles of different colors, so 
love, a very complex passion, is separated by ob- 
servation into many elements. 
Thus we notice : physical want, that violent long- 
ing of the senses; the need of attachment, innate 6 
LOVE. 
in the heart of every man, and which leads him to 
identify himself with another self; self-love, which 
is proud of the power that it exercises; often, a 
little coquetry or curiosity, jealousy or the fear of 
losing the riches we possess. And, in the midst of 
all that, the imagination, with its seductive illusions, 
mirrors with deceptive splendor all things that per- 
tain to love. 
The union of man and woman has not alone for 
its end the rekindling without cessation of the flame 
of life : it ought still more to associate together souls, 
to put in common the diverse faculties of each being, 
to complete one by the other, and to contribute in 
that way to their happiness and their moral per- 
fection. Thus it is necessary that love should par- 
take more of the soul than of the body. Sensual 
love, so so monotonous, ought to be 
controlled and purified b}' the love of the heart, so 
durable, so varied : one should be made subordinate 
to the other. Then we shall have modesty and 
chastity there. Moral love, not dependent alone 
on the passionate senses of youth, but attaching 
itself to the soul, can alone remain, and remain 
faithful, because the soul alone can remain always 
beautiful. 
It is thus that through the centuries love has 
been understood by men of the greatest genius and 
of the most beautiful souls, —by Socrates, Plato, 
Plutarch, Dante, Petrarch, Michel Angelo, Pascal. 
Plutarch expresses himself thus : " Those who have ITS DIFFERENT MANIFESTATIONS. 
7 
deprived love of whatever it has too gross and too 
violent, in order to let its light only penetrate into 
the soul, its splendor and its warmth, are not slow 
in passing from the admiration of the corporal 
beauty of persons whom they love to the contempla- 
tion of the beauty of the soul.” "All virtue comes 
to me from her,” exclaims Petrarch, speaking of 
Laura, "as every tree from its root. That which 
attaches me to her is a soul superior to all that we 
see in this world : her conduct and her manners 
are an image of the life which is led in heaven.” 
" Sensuality,” says Michel Angelo,1 "is an un- 
bridled desire, which kills the soul, and not love. 
Love has the power of rendering souls perfect 
here below, and it conducts them to heaven.” "It 
seems,” writes Pascal,2 "that we have entirely 
another soul when we love : we are elevated by 
this passion, and become all greatness.” 
Love called Platonic that is to say, separated 
from all sexual desire may exist, and 
at times between persons of different sex; but it 
requires much calmness of the senses and purity 
of heart. Often the sentiment becomes materialized 
little by little; and the senses as well as the souls 
end by becoming exalted, inflamed, and confounded 
with each other. 
We should distinguish love from coquetry and 
gallantry. 
1 Michel Angelo, Sonnets. 
2 Pascal, Discours sur I’Amour. 8 
LOVE: ITS DIFFERENT MANIFESTATIONS. 
Gallantry, less lively, less serious, more egotistic, 
more sensual than love, seeks rather physical beauty 
than moral beauty. It desires the satisfactions of 
vanity or the senses, not the pure joys of the heart. 
It attaches itself to nothing; but, fickle and greedy, 
it changes ever, and ever desires. Hastening from 
conquest to conquest, it laughs at the sentiments 
which gave it birth. It is a play, 
“Jeu cruel qui bient6t m&ne a la perfidie, 
Des plus doux sentiments corrompt la puretd, 
Ternit le caractere et nui| a la beaute.” 
Coquetry is an artifice of love or of vanity seeking 
to give birth to desires by an indirect provocation. 
It is, in woman, a continual labor in the art of 
pleasing; such are the incitements, the caprices, 
the fancies, the gentle oppositions, the concerted 
refusals, the thousand artifices, in fine, which ex- 
cite passion by obstacles ingeniously raised. Co- 
quetry, inherent in the gracious nature of woman, 
can be reconciled with virtue and modesty when it 
is only used within certain limits and for avowed 
motives ; but it is a dangerous weapon when made 
use of by hypocritical women, perfidious sirens, 
who seek only to enkindle ardent desires for the 
purpose of serving their culpable designs. 11. 
PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON 
LOVE. PUBERTY. SYMPTOMS OF LOVE: 
THOSE OF UNBRIDLED LOVE. 
In savage man, love is above all engendered by 
the desire for reproduction. It is almost reduced to 
a physical necessity. Civilization has made of it a 
sentiment of affection which partakes as much of 
the soul as of the body. 
This sentiment, so elevated above the others, 
man has not always been able to develope in him- 
self, neither to repel it when he desires, by the sole 
force of his will. Love sometimes seizes upon the 
soul, agitates it, holds dominion over it, notwith- 
standing the most lively resistance. 
This passion can break forth suddenly, at first 
sight: a look, a word has sufficed. How account 
for this mysterious phenomenon, this strange fasci- 
nation? How explain this invincible attraction 
towards the loved person? It seems as if there 
were a vital affinity between certain natures, a sort 
of magnetic fluid which tends to bring them to- 
gether. It is this which constitutes sympathy in 
love. VVe see, in general, sympathy become estab- 
lished between two beings opposed in temperament, IO 
LOVE. 
nature, character, who, by their contrasts, become 
harmonious and complete. 
“ II est des noeuds secrets, il est des sympathies 
Dont, par de doux rapports, les ames assorties 
S’attachent I’une a I’autre et se laissent piquer 
Par ce je ne sais quoi qu’on ne peut expliquer.” 1 
Other influences, physiological as well as social, 
predispose to love or cause it to burst forth. 
Youth, this spring-time of life, is the veritable 
season in which the passion burns with all its fires; 
then love is active, impetuous, exalted, but fickle 
and inconstant. If this sentiment is developed at 
a more advanced age, it is less violent, but more 
tenacious and of longer duration. However, love 
has no age. "It is always being born,” Pascal has 
said; " and it is for this reason that the poets repre- 
sent it as a child.” 
Men of sanguine temperament, with their incessant 
ardor for pleasures, are more predisposed to love 
and to sensual enjoyments. Then come nervous 
persons, whose exquisite sensibility gives them vivid 
and delicate impressions. The lymphatic tempera- 
ment is the least disposed to the transports of the 
passions. 
More impressionable, more tender than man, 
woman is more sensible to love: she is more sin- 
cere in her passion, gives herself up to it entirely, 
sacrifices herself without reserve. Man is, in love, 
1 P. Corneille. CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS. 
more adventurous, more audacious; but he only 
gives it a part of his heart and spirit, reserving 
himself for other passions. 
The more chaste the soul, the more easily love 
seizes upon it, and often burns there with a devour- 
ing fire. The habits of libertinism in man, of gal- 
lantry in woman, preserve them from excess of 
passion. 
In all classes of society, in all professions, in the 
midst of diverse occupations, love does its work; it 
reigns everywhere with its charms, its ardors, its 
inquietudes, its jealousies, its distractions. Works 
which require a sustained bodily activity, an in- 
cessant application of the mind, leave men colder, 
calmer; whilst works which exalt the imagination 
and sentiments, like poetry, music, literature, pro- 
voke more easily the erotic aspirations. 
Melancholic, dreamy minds, indolent natures, 
who do not know how, or do not wish to give food 
to their vital activity, are often beset by love- 
sickness. It is the same with persons who spend 
their time in the languors of effeminacy, the irk- 
someness and futilities of idleness. 
It is in social reunions, in the midst of the ener- 
vating atmosphere of balls, of theatres, of festivals, 
that the heart, young and novice, is quickly capti- 
vated ; for there, to the fascinating charms of lux- 
ury, toilettes, perfumes, are added the artifices of 
coquetry, the solicitations of gallantry. On the 12 
LOVE. 
other hand, nothing is more powerful to excite 
love than intimacy with persons of the opposite 
sex, and daily tete-a-tete conversation. " The wind 
kindles the fire,” says Socrates, " but familarity 
kindles love.” 
Beauty, grace, moral qualities, rank, fortune, 
predispose to passion, by exciting our admiration 
or our ardent desires. It is not rare that ambition, 
pride, vanity even, cause it to burst forth. Man, 
pursuaded that a woman does not know how to resist 
him, or that she burns in secret for him, believes 
his honor at stake to pledge himself for her happi- 
ness, who seems to be languishing with love. On 
her part, woman, flattered by the least demonstra- 
tion of amiability, looks favorably on the man who 
seems to interest himself in her. 
Let us see with what care nature raises the human 
couple to the procreative functions which are de- 
volved upon them. 
Wonderful phenomena manifest themselves in 
the organism at the epoch of puberty. They con- 
cur in preparing man and woman with physical and 
moral attributes which render them worthy of the 
reproduction of the species. 
The }Toung man assumes a more vigorous struc- 
ture, his muscles acquire form, his chin is covered 
with a downy beard, his voice becomes sonorous, 
a masculine expression marks the features of his 
countenance and announces his future greatness. 
The blood circulates with more activity in his veins. CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS. 
13 
warms the brain and the heart, and brings to all 
the functions a new vigor. Sensations, until then 
unknown, throw this young soul into vague inquie- 
tudes, into languishing reveries, which are not with- 
out charms. Desire to see and to learn impel him 
to fathom the mysteries still hidden. The necessity 
for love manifests itself by voluptuous dreams, and 
by an expansive ardor which impels him towards 
woman. Then come the timid provocations, the 
passionate demonstrations. But the young man 
loves at first without knowing whom he loves: 
he loves the women before loving one alone; he 
seeks them, he pursues them, envelopes them with 
his glances, breathes in their perfumes, trembles 
at their least contact. All his senses, directed 
towards love, procure him a thousand varied en- 
joyments. 
Preserving her soft and delicate complexion, 
the young girl becomes enriched in freshness and 
in beauty ; her graceful proportions take on volup- 
tuous contours. The organs of generation, having 
become the centre of a vital flux, develop a new 
function,—that of the courses, or menstruation.1 
Feeling the sympathetic reaction impressed on her 
whole being by this brilliant metamorphosis, the 
young girl quits her childish plays, gives herself 
up to tender aspirations, becomes pensive, melan- 
choly, seeks the silence of solitude, and from time 
to time is seized with involuntary tears, those 
1 Vide Raciborski, Traitd de la Menstruation. Paris, 1867. T4 
LOVE. 
delicious tears which comfort. She creates 
for herself then an ideal being that her imagination 
is pleased to clothe with all charms, all qualities; 
it is on him that she concentrates all the faculties 
of her soul; it is him that she sees by day in her 
thoughts, by night in her dreams; it is in him 
that she hopes ; he will be her love, her happiness. 
Sweet illusions, which are often replaced by sad 
realities ! 
Happy age ! How easily love insinuates itself 
into the soul! A spark suffices to kindle a fire. 
When love has taken possession of man, it is soon 
discovered. The passion seizes him b\- the senses 
and by the soul. In the soul, it shakes all the fac- 
ulties, the most lively and the most powerful, the 
most delicate and the most serious; the imagina- 
tion, the spirit, the heart, even the reason. In the 
organism, it is felt in the very depths of life, and 
attacks the most important functions. 
Remarkable changes take place in the character, 
in the habits, in the actions, and in the health of 
the man who loves. 
To his gayety or to his habitual thoughtlessness 
succeed all at once a tender melancholy and pro- 
longed reveries; his bearing, his physiognomy, his 
look, above all, are in harmony with his most se- 
rious thoughts. He pronounces less frequently, or 
more often than customary, the name of a person 
of the other sex. Let this name be spoken, imme- CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS. 
15 
diately his countenance is colored with a lively red ; 
and his hands, in a distracted manner, often insen- 
sibly trace its cherished initials on paper or the 
sand. 
Blind to the most visible faults of the person 
loved, the lover sees her good qualities in every 
thing and always ; and, every time he can, he ex- 
alts with enthusiasm her least merits. Little by 
little, his expressions and his gestures, his opinions 
and his tastes, are modified and replaced by those 
of the person whom he loves. 
The lover becomes more preoccupied with his 
toilet, wears certain colors by preference, makes 
changes in his apartment, neglects the domestic 
animals which but lately engaged his solicitude. 
He forsakes some of his friends, and seeks new 
ones. At the same time, his business is neglect- 
ed, his duties badly performed; the hours of his 
business, the times and places of his walks, are 
changed. 
If he finds himself in certain society, he is pre- 
occupied, gloomy, absorbed in himself; in an- 
other, he is amiable, earnest, talkative. At the 
sight of the person loved, he is seen to blush, to 
be disturbed, to stammer; his heart palpitates, his 
hand trembles. When he believes himself alone, 
he suffers long sighs to escape him, he sometimes 
sheds involuntary tears. By night, the same image 
illumines always his dreams. 16 
LOVE: CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS. 
When love becomes unbridled, the appetite is 
lost, the body becomes emaciated, the countenance 
grows pale, the eyes are sunken, the vital forces 
rapidly decrease ; but they can become exalted by 
that febrile and nervous energy which wastes so 
quickly the vitality. The pulse is feeble, small, 
irregular, during the absence of the person loved; 
but, at her sight, at her remembrance, it becomes 
strong, tumultuous. There are, on the one hand, 
violent palpitations of the heart, which predispose 
to hemorrhages: on the other, an agonizing con- 
striction, which oppresses the chest; chills alter- 
nate with fits of heat; sleep is short, agitated. 
The moral nature is not less affected than the 
physical. The most intelligent man becomes stu- 
pid. He has in his brain but one thought, his 
love; in his heart but one sentiment, his love. 
Making all subservient to his passion, he does not 
know, he does not see, he does not comprehend, 
any thing except his love : it is all in him. There, 
in truth, we have the monomania, with its fixed 
idea, its exaltation, its delirium, its false concep- 
tions, its perverted judgments. How hard a char- 
acter to please, tenacious, intractable! What 
negligence of affairs the most serious ! What con- 
tempt of honors, position, riches ! What thought- 
lessness for the friends who counsel ! What want 
of respect for the relatives who would direct! What 
servile and blind obedience to the object of his pas- 
sion,— obedience which subjects him and exposes 
him to all, in order to always please ! 111. 
DIFFERENT AND COMPLEMENTARY FACULTIES 
IN MAN AND IN WOMAN. SYMPATHIES IN 
LOVE. VARIED CHARACTERS OF LOVE IN 
MAN, IN WOMAN, IN EACH INDIVIDUAL, 
IN EACH PEOPLE. MARRIAGE IS THE CON- 
SUMMATION OF LOVE: IT IS ITS EMANCI- 
PATION. 
Different are the attributes of the body and of 
the soul in man and in woman. They correspond 
to the different role which the Creator has imposed 
upon each ; they indicate the true relations of one 
towards the other. 
Woman, less elevated in stature, less hardy in 
complexion, than man, gains in beauty what she 
loses in vigor: in her, the more abundant cellular 
tissue gives to her form graceful contour; richer 
lymph and blood make the skin clearer and more 
rosy. The physical organization of man, more 
powerful, is better constituted to support the rude 
fatigues and out-of-door labors. The muscular 
feebleness of woman, her slender extremities, her 
delicate senses, indicate her vocation for the cares 
within doors of the household, and minute works 
of dexterity and suppleness. 
In man, the organs of generation are less devel- 
oped than in woman. But, then, man has only i8 
LOVE. 
to communicate the breath of life to a new being, 
whilst woman must form its blood, and furnish to it 
during a long time the elements of nutrition. 
The cerebral mass predominates in man; in 
woman, it is the cerebellum and spinal marrow 
which preponderate. Man is superior by reason 
of his intellectual faculties'; woman, by her instinc- 
tive and sensitive faculties. One is distinguished 
by genius, imagination, reflection, will; the other, 
by shrewdness, quickness, clearness of mind, by 
exaltation and mobility of the sensations and the 
sentiments. We have on one hand, as the type of 
man, Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, Dante, Petrarch, 
Raphael, Newton ; that is to say, that which has 
been thought, conceived, and done the most grand 
and the most sublime in poetry, in philosophy, in 
eloquence, in art, in science. We find on the other 
hand, as the lype of woman, Aspasia, Lucretia, Cle- 
opatra, Magdalen, Saint Theresa, Heloi'se, Joan 
d’Arc; that is to say, that which has been produced 
the most vivacious and the most exalted in sensu- 
ality, in suffering, in pure love, in devotion. 
In the conjugal association, man, more powerful, 
more reasonable, more of a master of his actions, 
should be the support, the protector, the director. 
Woman, more sensible, more dependent, more lov- 
ing, should bow to his authority, should know how 
to make of devotion her law, of sacrifice her tri- 
umph, of abnegation her greatness. When man is 
cast down, in despair at the labors of life, he finds HUMAN FACULTIES AND SYMPATHIES. 
19 
hope, consolation, and often inspiration, in the 
bosom of woman ; for there has always been rec- 
ognized in her a surprising faculty to fathom, to 
divine, the mysteries of the future. 
Thus, the study of the faculties of either sex 
shows there is no identity in them, no equality; 
but diversity, dissemblance, contrasts. Assur- 
edly, nothing could be more contrary to the views 
of the Creator than to wish to make woman the 
equal of man, in seeking to invest her with the 
same attributes, the same functions : it would be to 
despoil her of her most noble prerogatives, her 
most magnificent qualities. Nor, indeed, should 
we make of her a divinity enclosed in a sanctuary, 
in order to receive there a worship and homages. 
No : woman is neither our equal nor our superior. 
She is the companion of man. God has created the 
elements of the human couple diverse, dissimilar, 
in order to attract one towards the other, in order 
to complete one by the other. He has made two 
halves of a same being : without one another they 
are only fragments. It is necessary, then, that 
they be united together by marriage, in order to 
form the harmonic whole, and attain the complete 
enjoyment of all the human faculties. 
In the role of love, in the work of generation, 
we observe the same diversity, which attracts the 
two sexes, cements their union, and engenders 
life. 
Man is active and provocative; woman, passive 20 
LOVE. 
and submissive. One is ardent, the other colder: 
the first commands and triumphs, the second sup- 
plicates and succumbs. But, by compensation, the 
more feeble being reigns over the stronger: the 
latter sells his protection at the price of pleasure, 
and the former borrows strength from the strong 
by abandoning herself to him. Woman subdues 
man in submitting herself to him. 
Man, brown and hairy, dry and hot, impetuous 
and hardy, finds woman white and smooth, moist 
and cool, gentle and modest. One should give, 
the other is constituted to receive. One has a prin- 
ciple of superabundance, of force, of generosity, 
which tends to diffuse itself: the other aspires, by 
her feebleness, to collect, to absorb, the exuberant 
vitality of man, in order to establish the level, the 
harmonic equality. So, the end of the union of 
love, the procreation of a new being, cannot be 
fulfilled except by this physical and moral unifica- 
tion, by means of which the two elements of the 
human couple reciprocally equalize and saturate 
each other. 
We understand now how love is engendered in- 
stinctively by the contrasts which are presented by 
two beings of different sex. These contrasts ex- 
plain well those spontaneous sympathies which 
sometimes appear so strange. 
Each man seeks, in a person of the other sex, the 
qualities which are wanting in him. These quali- 
ties please us in a companion, and we aspire to HUMAN FACULTIES AND SYMPATHIES. 
21 
assimilate them to ourselves. For the dry, meagre, 
lively man, the moist, fat, nonchalant woman is 
suitable; for the effeminate, flabby man, there is 
need of a virile, energetic woman; a robust consti- 
tution is attracted towards a delicate complexion.1 
In love, like repels like. Two similar constitu- 
tions, two beings either too cold or too ardent, 
jostle and clash with one another every instant; 
and this condition of similitude becomes, in a hus- 
band and wife, a cause of aversion and even of ster- 
ility. We should, however, observe that beyond 
certain limits contrasts have no longer the power of 
attraction. And if we shall not And striking con- 
trasts in a certain number of .conjugal unions, it is 
because civilized man does not always let himself 
be guided by nature and the secret instincts Ox 
sympathy. 
Love manifests itself with very different charac- 
ters according to the sex, the temperament, the 
climate, even. 
In love, man seeks rather physical beauty; 
woman, moral beauty. Man’s love is more sen- 
sual, more jealous, more transitory; that of 
woman, more affectionate, more confidthg, more 
faithful. Man exacts the first kind of love, woman 
the last. 
1 In this is one of the great laws of nature. Contraries are 
attracted to one another : likes repel each other. It is met with 
in physics, in chemistry, in natural history, in physiology, in 
medicine, in morals. 22 
LOVE. 
Before sexual union, it is man who loves the 
most earnestly, because he sacrifices more, pains, 
marches, contests : he spares nothing. 
When the act is consummated, it is, in her turn, 
the woman who loves more and for a longer time. 
Then, her love becomes labor and suffering. She 
must nourish with her blood the being to which 
man has communicated life; she must bring it into 
the world in the midst of cruel pains; she must 
continue for it incessant cares. • 
Thus woman passes the active part of her life 
in love. Madame de Stael has said with reason, 
" Love, which is only an episode in the life of 
men, is the entire history of the life of women.” 
To love much explains the whole of woman. She 
loves as she lives, as she breathes. Nature seems 
to have given her only one desire, love ; one duty, 
love;, one recompense, love. "We can divide,” 
says Reveille-Parise, "the life of women into three 
periods: in the first, they dream of love; in the 
second, they make it; in the third, they regret it.” 
Who concedes the most loves the most. 
According to the faculties and the temperament 
of individuals, love is invested with a different char- 
acter. It is unaffected and quiet in simple hearts, 
heroic and religious in great souls, anxious and 
sombre in the jealous ; it is overbearing and tyran- 
nic in the proud, sensual and gross in the egotistic, 
sentimental and romantic in the poet, light and in- HUMAN FACULTIES AND SYMPATHIES. 
2 3 
constant in the voluptuary. The sanguine man is 
all ardor in love, but his fire is quickly extinguished ; 
the nervous is exalted, and reveals his passion with 
loquacity; the bilious, more concentrated, only half 
unveils it. 
Climate and manners are not without influence 
on the varied forms of love. Passion shows itself 
burning and cruel in Spain, voluptuous and lasciv- 
ious in Italy, lively and fickle in France, tender and 
sentimental in Germany, melancholy and calm in 
England, cold and brutal in Lapland. 
When love is true and pure, it does not find 
its complete satisfaction except in the indissoluble 
bond of marriage. Marriage is its natural con- 
summation. 
In fact, love cannot of itself, reduced to its own 
forces, attain to the ideal of which it dreams. 
What does it demand? Union, peace, stability. 
What does it promise? Respect for the being 
loved, an eternal fidelity. Well! But it does not 
last any more than the smoke which passes: it 
engenders but troubles, sufferings, inquietudes; it 
but tends without cessation to profanation. Mar- 
riage gives to it all the advantages which it cannot 
possess of itself: movable, it attaches it; restless, 
it calms it; egotistical, it forces it to devotion ; sen- 
sual, it makes it chaste; oppressive, it renders it 
respectful. 24 
LOVE. 
Marriage has been said to be the tomb of love. 
Yes, it is true, if it is only considered in relation to 
its sensual pleasures : the violence of the senses is 
appeased, the ardor of physical desire diminished. 
But, still, is not human love also and above all a 
sentiment coming from the soul? It needs, then, 
communion of soul with soul, the spiritual posses- 
sion of being by being. Marriage, which enfran- 
chises man from the t}rranny of the senses, leaves 
to love all of its buoyancy. It is even its emancipa- 
tion, the only true, the only real one. In marriage, 
passion is less vivacious; but that which it loses in 
freshness it gains in maturity. The flower withers; 
but the roots penetrate deeper, and the fruits are 
multiplied. 
And why should you no longer meet with love in 
marriage? Indeed, in a well-united couple, at 
every instant, in all their actions, it is there, it 
breathes, it lives. I see it seeking at first to har- 
monize their thoughts, to unite their souls, forcing 
itself afterwards to purifying them, to making them 
attain the perfection of the virtues. I see it slum- 
bering sometimes in the happy calms and sweet 
monotonies of life, but quickly awaking and arous-i 
ing itself in the tempests and common troubles, in 
the anguish of the soul, in its struggles with dis- 
ease, with death. It is there, being born again 
each time that it gives birth to a new offspring; it 
is there still, concentrating itself in the affectionate HUMAN FACULTIES AND SYMPATHIES. 
25 
cares of the education of the family ; it is always 
there, seated at the domestic fireside, with its un 
foreseen rejuvenescences, its kind indulgences, its 
tenderness, and its incessantly varied enjoyments. 
Where you will never meet with these is in your 
marriages of money, of speculation, of ambition, 
of debauch. Is it possible that love can ever enter 
and prostitute itself in these unseasonable and un- 
natural associations which violate the holy laws of 
the heart? IV. 
HAPPY LOVE ! ITS SALUTARY OR PAINFUL 
EFFECTS ON THE HEALTH AND MIND. - 
THWARTED AND JEALOUS LOVE : INFLU- 
ENCE ON THE ORGANISM; DISEASES WHICH 
RESULT FROM IT. OBSERVATIONS. SOME 
STATISTICAL RESULTS. 
Accordingly as it is happy or thwarted, love is 
the source of the most ineffable enjoyments or the 
most frightful sufferings. When the passion be- 
comes unbridled, it occasions grave disorders in 
the econom}L 
Look at the first period of the nuptial union, 
a season so fugitive, during which life is only ten- 
derness and infatuation. This new and sudden 
situation consecrated to please, to love, to confess 
it, and to hear it repeated, makes giddy, enchains, 
transports, in spite of one’s self. It is a delirium, it 
is an exaltation which holds one fast in a ravishing 
madness. One is no longer himself: he is identified 
with the being loved. He does not think, he does 
not feel, he does not breathe, he does not live, ex- 
cept in her: of two hearts, of two lives, there is no 
longer but one heart, but one life. 
Joy continues, happy love has all of its effects : it ITS INFLUENCE ON THE HEALTH. 
27 
animates, it facilitates all the vital functions. The 
respiration is deep; the action of the heart aug- 
mented, to the point of determining those gentle 
palpitations so much boasted of by the poets. The 
eyes are brilliant, the physiognomy is gladdened, the 
face colored with a lively carnation. The gestures 
are frequent, the voice soft, the language facile, 
rich. At its paroxysm, speech no longer being 
able to suffice to express the thought, it is in a silence 
full of charms, it is in a species of ecstasy that love 
exhales its most delicious perfumes. 
Love is as the sun of the soul: it warms, it 
vivifies all our being. It has been seen to cure a 
number of physical maladies, a number of moral 
infirmities. 
It is the exciting remedy, tonic par excellence, 
in affections of languor and of consumption. The 
following instance has vividly struck me. 
M. D., aged thirty-six years, born of a phthisical 
father and a mother of a nervous temperament, had 
coughed for more than a year. The superior part 
of the right lung was crowded with tubercles in the 
crude state. The appetite was lost, the strength 
diminished. The 12th of August, 1854, there came 
on an abundant expectoration of blood. I gave him 
constant attention. Nevertheless, the emaciation and 
consumption made progress. 
A young widow, his neighbor, came, out of simple 
pity, to make him first a few visits, to console him ; 
afterwards she cared for him with devotion. The 28 
LOVE. 
gentleness and modesty of the patient attached her 
more and more to him : it became even a pleasure 
to her to give him marks of the interest which she 
took in his sad fate. 
The heart of M. D. was still capable of senti- 
ment. He soon loved ; and, in proportion as the 
moral affection augmented, the physical disease 
diminished. The pity he had inspired became 
a sentiment more tender; and his love, shared 
and satisfied, restored him to health. From the 
verge of the grave he passed to the nuptial couch, 
without other remedy than a strong and happy 
love. 
Love is, above all, the remedy for melancholy, 
for hypochondria, for sadness, for ennui, for nostal- 
gia, for disgust of life and a tendency to suicide. 
Let the passion seize upon one of these men fa- 
tigued with the miseries and deceptions of this 
life, immediately behold him transformed. All is 
changed for him: desires are born, hope smiles 
upon him, the future is illumined. At length, 
amidst the new enjoyments which invite him, he 
forgets his past ills, and suffers himself to be easily 
enticed towards happiness. 
We have, moreover, seen love produce wonderful 
changes in the intellectual and moral faculties. 
Exalting the most noble sentiments, fortifying the 
intelligence and the will, it impels sometimes to the 
highest destinies. How many poets has it created, 
orators, heroes, artists,*savanls! ITS INFLUENCE ON THE HEALTH. 
29 
This is a truth supported by facts. 
Tissot speaks of a young man who at the age 
of twenty years still appeared so stupid that he 
would have been the laughing-stock of society, if 
his goodness and modesty had not turned ridicule 
aside. As ignorant as one could be, his conversa- 
tion was commonplace, even trivial. He became 
smitten with a very beautiful young Spanish girl, 
who did not know the French language, and who 
had no desire to learn it. His passion became vio- 
lent. In order to converse with his sweetheart, he 
began the study of her tongue. Then, little by 
little, his language became animated, easy, full of 
ideas and charms. In fine, his sleeping faculties 
took wing. At the end of fifteen months, he was a 
man truly interesting and instructed. 
The history of the painter Quyntyn is still cele- 
brated. He had pursued the business of farrier for 
ten years at Anvers, under the name of Mesius. He 
became amorous of the daughter of a painter, who 
refused him her hand, swearing at the same time 
that she would only give it to a painter. Strong in 
his passion, he quit the hammer, and took up the 
pencil. He was very soon so good a painter that 
the father accorded him his daughter with great 
pleasure. He became celebrated ; and the pictures 
which remain from him are still valuable. 
Sometimes love has been employed with success 
as the antagonist of other passions : thus, intemper- 
ance, idleness, ambition, can be modified by a chaste 30 
LOVE. 
affection which seizes strongly on the soul of an 
individual. 
Witness the salutary effects of love ! 
We will speak now of the disorders which are 
engendered by unbridled passion. 
Love, too ardent, by occupying the imagination 
without cessation has a bad influence on the or- 
ganism. 
There results, at first, a febrile excitement, which 
soon gives place to a languid condition of the func- 
tions, with loss of appetite, difficult digestions, 
sleeplessness, anxiety. Later, if the passion is tardy 
in being satisfied, we have the enfeeblement of the 
constitution, the emaciation, and the slow nervous 
fever, so well described by Lorry. In sanguine in- 
dividuals, we observe hemorrhages from the nose, 
from the chest, disorderly palpitations of the heart. 
Nervous subjects are tormented by troubles in sensi- 
bility and in sanguification, chlorosis, or the green 
sickness, neuralgia, hysteria, &c. 
It is not rare to see young married people aban- 
don themselves with too much ardor to sensual 
enjoyments. With abuse comes disorder in the 
health. Love does not transmit vitality except at 
the expense of him who gives it. In procreation, 
man in some sort snatches away from himself with 
violence a part of his being : it is the flesh of his 
flesh, it is the blood of his blood, which he gives; 
for the seed is the quintessence of life. Is it pos- 
sible that an excessive loss should not exhaust the ITS INFLUENCE ON THE HEALTH. 
31 
organism, and predispose to the most grave dis- 
eases? 
Very often venereal excesses bring on chronic 
diseases. 
Stitches in the side, cough, oppression, expectora- 
tion of blood, can attack delicate persons. 
In others, the nervous system being over excited 
by too frequent shocks, there are felt more particu- 
larly the effects of pathological troubles. From this 
cause we have undue susceptibility to impressions, 
hysterics, spasms, fainting fits, neuralgias. Hypo- 
chondria, melancholy, chlorosis, hysteria,1 are only 
consequences of an exhaustion sometimes rapid, at 
other times slow and progressive. 
It is an established fact that in woman we have 
grave disorders in menstruation, frequent abortions,2 
acute or chronic irritation or inflammation of the 
womb, jleurs blanches, and above all sterility.3 
In man, we have gonorrhoea, involuntary seminal 
losses, and impotence.4 These different affections 
are very frequent in the early days of conjugal union. 
In one or the other of the newly-married, the health 
J Vide Briquet, Trait 6 Clinique et Thdrapeutique de I’Hys- 
terie. Paris, 1859. 
2 Vide A. Tardieu, Etude Medico-L6gale sur rAvortement. 
3e Edition. Paris, 1868. 
3 Vide FI. Churchill, Traitd des Maladies des Femmes, trad, 
par Wieland et Dubrisaj. Paris, 1866. 
4 Vide Hunter, Traitd de la Maladie Vdnerienne. 36 edition. 
Paris, 1859. Lallemand, des Pertes Seminales Involontaires. 
Paris, 1836-42. Roubaud, Traitd de I’lmpuissance et de la SUi- 
rilitd. Paris, 1855, 2 vol. in-8. 32 
LOVE. 
is visibly altered. We do not know to what cause 
to attribute this change. The physician Should 
always busy himself in ascertaining about the con- 
jugal relations. He will thus often discover the 
hidden source of the trouble. 
Young married people are astonished, and despair 
at not seeing their most cherished hopes realized. 
Pregnancy does not arrive at its full term, or rather 
conception cannot take place. Uterine hemor- 
rhages replace the menstrual epochs. Let them 
give it attention ! Most often it is their sensual ex- 
cesses which they must blame. The fecundated 
ovum cannot be developed : it is expelled in conse- 
quence of the excitations frequently provoked by 
too often repeated coition. 
Thwarted love produces symptoms of sadness. 
The soul turns back upon itself. The functions of 
the organism fall into decay; the pulse becomes 
small, irregular; chills run from time to time 
through the extremities, a painful weight compresses 
the chest; the respiration is slow, interrupted by 
sighs; the countenance becomes pale, the eye dull, 
languishing. 
No longer finding charms in life, the lover un- 
happy, indifferent to all, is pleased with inaction 
and solitude. In him, the intelligence loses its 
activity, the senses their utility : he looks without 
seeing, he hears without comprehending. His 
feeble and plaintive voice painfully expresses his ITS INFLUENCE ON THE HEALTH. 
33 
thoughts. His nights are frightful: either he has 
sleeplessness or fatiguing dreams. 
Nothing can be more painful than the fear of being 
forsaken by the person that is loved. Composed of 
the most ardent passions, love, rage, sadness, 
pride,—jealousy partakes of all their pains, and 
suffers all their consequences. It agitates the soul 
by continual anxiety, by violent chagrins, by cruel 
anguish. Turn by turn tyrant or slave, the jealous 
man threatens, injures, maltreats : then he becomes 
appeased, he repents, he is humiliated; in order 
to become again, after a little, as furious, as unjust, 
as before. 
Who could tell of the struggles and the torments 
that torture the soul of the jealous man, and the in- 
ward pains, the incessant punishments to which his 
unhappy victim is subjected, slowly suffering mar- 
tyrdom ? 
Jealousy sometimes comes from impotence. It is 
that of those old men who, having espoused very 
young persons, are always in misery for fear that 
another profits from the pleasures which they no 
longer know howto taste. Our comic authors have 
pictured for us very pleasantly the embarrassments, 
the inquietudes, the tribulations, of those old uncles 
amorous of their nieces, those decrepit tutors who 
have united themselves with their pupils. 
At other times, jealousy is the property of virile 
force. It is that of Orosmane poniarding Zaire; 
it is that of the Roman who, not being able to 34 
LOVE. 
obtain the hand of his mistress, would rather pon- 
iard her than see her pass into the arms of another. 
It is still this passion, so impetuous in delicate 
and sensitive women, which creates the sublime 
despair of a Hermione abandoned by Pyrrhus; 
which inflames with rage the heart of a Medea, 
makes her send to her rival a poisoned robe, com- 
pels her even to slaughter her own children. 
Thwarted or jealous love has for its immediate 
effect to occasion dyspepsia. The appetite is lost, 
digestion becomes laborious, the stomach is the seat 
of severe pains, burning and cramp-like; risings 
of the food take place, nausea, gastric catarrh. 
The nutrition of the system languishes in conse- 
quence of insufficiency of alimentation. 
From this state to the most grave affections there 
is only one step. And, if the cause of the sad- 
ness continues, we see arise, according to the innate 
or acquired predispositions, chlorosis, nervous or 
hectic fever, pulmonary phthisis. 
A young girl without known cause becomes sad, 
dreamy. Her countenance becomes pale, her eyes 
sunken, the tears flow. She experiences sponta- 
neous lassitudes, she moans, she gives vent to sighs. 
Nothing diverts her, nothing occupies her mind : 
every thing tires her. She avoids her relations, her 
friends. She seems rapidly to become emaciated. 
A little cough shows itself, it becomes aggravated, 
fever sets in, then marasmus and death. This poor 
child has carried her fatal secret with her to the ITS INFLUENCE ON THE HEALTH. 
35 
grave: she loved with a love that was without 
hope ! 
How many fall thus in the flower of life, con- 
sumed at heart by this devouring ill ! 
The exaltations of the imagination, the excitations 
of the senses, the violent emotions so frequent in 
disappointed love, shake the nervous system fre- 
quently to the point of inducing mental depressions, 
spasms, nervous attacks, hysteria, epilepsy, and 
even catalepsy. 
Certain authors have attributed these nervous 
affections rather to continence, to chastity. Plato, 
Hippocrates, Galen, Fernel, Hoffmann, and many 
others, have sustained this erroneous opinion. 
It is necessary to combat this belief, which has 
never been submitted to verification by an actual 
observation. Modern writers show us these neu- 
roses taking place most frequently in young girls or 
women whose lively imagination abandons itself to 
voluptuous reveries ; whose mind is glutted by the 
reading of romances, by dangerous theatrical exhibi- 
tions ; whose senses are consequently inflamed by ir- 
resistible erotic desires. Assuredly these disorderly 
excitements cannot be appeased, except by sexual 
relations. And if the lascivious desires are not 
satisfied, if obstacles come to oppose the unbridled 
passion, then the over-excited nervous system is 
shaken, and occasions disorders the most serious 
and unaccountable. But do not make nature re- 
sponsible for these ills, which it would be possible 36 
LOVE. 
to prevent by regular habits, conformable to the 
precepts of hygiene and morality. 
In certain cases, thwarted love can give birth to 
an acute disease which rapidly brings with it death. 
The following is a remarkable case of nervous 
fever, or acute nervosism, which I observed in the 
year 1854. 
Mademoiselle C., aged twenty years, had become 
passionately amorous of one of her relatives, to 
whom she was promised in marriage. Circum- 
stances opposed themselves to the accomplishment 
of the promises given to the two lovers. The father 
exacted the separation of the young man. 
Scarcely is he gone, when the young girl falls into 
a profound sadness. She speaks no more, she eats 
no more, she drinks no more, and remains in her 
bed. The secretions are suppressed, the tongue 
becomes white, the taste acid, vomitings manifest 
themselves. The pulse is very frequent, without 
heat of the skin. At the end of a fortnight, the 
feebleness is extreme, the emaciation has made 
rapid progress. 
The symptoms are aggravated : oppression, sen- 
sations of suffocation, supervene ; from time to time 
there are convulsive movements in the arms, the 
legs, the jaws. The danger is imminent: medica- 
tion remains powerless. The frightened relatives 
recall the lover, who hastens back. Alas ! there is 
no longer time. The poor girl regards him with 
indifference, smiles upon him in a melancholy way. ITS INFLUENCE ON THE HEALTH. 
37 
Delirium, hallucinations, then drowsiness, announce 
her approaching end. She dies the twenty-eighth 
day of the disease. 
On another occasion I have been vividly struck 
by the rapid death of a young woman who was 
taken away in twelve days by an acute meningitis. 
She had surprised her husband in the arms of a 
concubine. Immediately fever, delirium, convul- 
sions, seized upon her. She died in paralysis and 
coma. 
Dr. A. Latour1 relates the following observa- 
tion : 
Madame X., aged twenty-five years, of sound 
constitution, and in good health, marries a man of 
art, who, in consequence of his profession, receives 
every day in his cabinet quite a large number of 
ladies. Jealousy, an implacable jealousy, seizes 
upon her mind. In consequence, she loses her 
thirst and appetite. She becomes feeble, she takes 
to her bed, a little fever supervenes : six weeks 
afterwards less than three months dating from 
the outset of the moral affection she dies hectic : 
autopsy, nothing, nothing, nothing! 
Unexpected deceptions, passionate emotions sub- 
dued, violent desires unacknowledged, often shake 
the reason of unfortunate lovers. 
We observe ambitious monomania in those who 
were swayed by ideas of greatness ; whilst genital 
furor shows itself in those unhappy persons who 
1 A. Latour, Union Medicale, Janvier, 1859. 33 
LOVE. 
were only impelled by the imperious desire of 
the senses. Jealous}' engenders a sort of furious 
madness, which degenerates into mania, and even 
dementia. 
The following observation is a case of homicidal 
mania provoked by a thwarted love : 
Pietro Domingues, an old man of sixty-five 
years, had a daughter named Maria Dolores, and 
lived alone with her in one of the little cots situated 
* 
upon the mountains of Segovia, where the two 
were employed in tending the flocks confided to 
their care. The young woman, aged eighteen years, 
conceived a violent love for a neighboring shep- 
herd who sought after her. The father of Dolores 
was obstinately opposed to their marriage. The 
passion of the lovers became inflamed by these 
obstacles, and soon had no longer bounds. The 
young man sought a last time to overcome the op- 
position of the old man, avowing to him that mar- 
riage could alone make reparation for the honor 
of his daughter. Always the same refusal. Then 
the capricious shepherd shamefully abandons his 
mistress, leaving her a prey to the most gloomy 
despair. 
From that day Dolores did not let a single com- 
plaint escape her. Mournful and silent, she con- 
ducted her flock into solitary places, avoiding all 
company, remaining sometimes entire days seated 
on the slope of a hill, without any thing being able 
to distract her from the fixed idea which seemed to 
absorb her. ITS INFLUENCE ON THE HEALTH. 
39 
Soon the alteration of her features, her savage eye, 
her hollow and abrupt voice, announced in her the 
outbreak of a mental disease, which rapidly became 
aggravated, and had the most terrible consequences. 
One evening, when the old shepherd was sleep- 
ing before the fire, where he had broiled a morsel 
of meat which was to serve for his supper, Dolores 
arrives from the mountain with her flock, which she 
encloses in the sheep-fold, and afterwards comes 
near the fire, where her father had given himself 
up to sweet sleep. A moment her sombre looks 
are fixed upon him : then all at once a horrible 
thought passes through her diseased brain. 
She smiles with the ferocity of the hyena in face 
of its prey; then, seizing one of the andirons, she 
deals with it many blows upon the head of the old 
man, who falls at her feet. . . . Seizing hold then 
of a knife, which is found in her parricidal hand, 
she plunges it entire into the heart of her victim, 
tears out the heart, which she places upon the 
burning coals, and sets about devouring it, utter- 
ing horrible shrieks which are heard even as far 
as the neighboring cabins. 
The shepherds arrive. They remain immovable, 
frightened at this scene of horror. 
"Approach! approach!” cries the fury to them 
in an exultant voice. " Behold ! he has deprived 
me of my Diaz : I have killed him! . . . He has 
broken my heart: behold his own !”. . . And at 
the same moment she shows them the remains of 40 
LOVE. 
the frightful repast, and invites them to partake, 
repeating, "It is his heart! It is the heart of my 
father.” . . . 
This horrible event took place the 20th of March, 
1826. Dolores, who proved to be insane, was shut 
up in an establishment at Saragossa. 
In women, who have to suffer so much the pains 
of love, two kinds of mental alienation are found 
which are peculiar to them: these are nympho- 
mania and erotomania. 
Nymphomania is a mania characterized by a 
violent desire for sexual union, exposing itself in 
provocative gestures and obscene proposals, with 
or without physical excitation of the organs. 
At the outset, the unhappy woman, occupied 
without cessation by voluptuous thoughts, 'abandons 
herself to the disorder of her passions, satisfying 
by lascivious touches the immediate desire which 
rules her. Later, not knowing any longer a check, 
she loses all shame, provokes the desires of the 
men whom she sees by gestures, looks, lascivious 
postures, lewd conversations. 
It is then that reason has lost entirely its empire. 
Mental alienation is complete. We see the }'oung 
girl, but lately the most timid, transformed into a 
shameless bacchanal. In these excesses of furious 
Just, her face is red, the eye inflamed, the lips 
dry, burning, the mouth frothy, the breath fetid. 
Finally, spasms of the larynx, with hydrophobia, ITS INFLUENCE ON THE HEALTH. 
41 
supervene, and convulsions of the limbs. At a 
period more or less remote, symptoms complicate 
the disease and bring on death. 
A stranger, relates M. Tardieu,1 of princely family, 
and of marvellous beauty, lived in Paris in one of 
the fashionable quarters of the city, prostituting her- 
self with lackeys and people of low degree. She 
had already been sequestered in the country of her 
birth, on account of the depravity of her manners. 
The scandal of her lewdness had enraged her 
family, who applied to the authorities of our coun- 
try for an examination of her mental condition. It 
was acknowledged that she was the subject of hys- 
terical mania, and not at all responsible for her acts. 
She was closely watched. She was compelled to 
travel. Eight months later, I was called by the 
authorities of the law to determine an infanticide in 
an elegantly furnished mansion in the quarter of 
the Place Vendome. 1 recognized with astonish- 
ment this same young woman. She was seated 
near the body of her new-born child which she had 
killed, indifferent, calm, without consciousness of 
her crime. 
In erotomania, the passion is rather in the imag- 
ination : it is a chaste, Platonic, ideal love. 
Esquirol2 reports the following case which pre- 
sents all its characteristics. A woman, aged thirty- 
1 A. Tardieu, Etude Mddico-Legale sur I’lnfanticide. Paris, 
1868. 
1 Esquirol, Des Maladies Mentales. Paris, 1838. 42 
LOVE. 
two years, quite tall, of robust constitution, having 
received a» brilliant education, had been sometime 
married, when she meets, in her relations with so- 
ciety, a young man of much higher rank than 
her husband. Immediately she becomes violently 
captivated with him: she murmurs at her posi- 
tion, speaks only with contempt of her husband, 
refuses to live with him, ends by taking an aversion 
to him, as well as his nearest relatives, who vainly 
endeavor to bring her back from her estrangement. 
o o 
The trouble augments. It becomes necessary to 
separate her from her husband. She speaks with- 
out cessation of the object of her passion ; she be- 
comes hard to please, capricious, irascible. She 
escapes from her relatives, to follow him. She 
sees him everywhere, she calls on him in her pas- 
sionate songs-: he is the most beautiful, the most 
grand, the most spiritual, the most perfect, of men. 
She avows that she is his wife, that it is he who 
lives in her heart, who directs all its movements, 
who rules her thoughts, who governs her actions. 
She has had by him a child, which will be as ac- 
complished as its father. She is often surprised in 
a sort of ecstasy, of transport: then her look be- 
comes fixed, a smile is on her lips. She often 
writes ardent letters, she makes verses which she 
animates with the most amorous expressions. Dur- 
ing the day or during the night, she talks to herself, 
sometimes in a loud voice, then in a low voice: in 
her solitary discourses, sometimes she laughs, some- ITS INFLUENCE ON THE HEALTH. 
43 
times she cries. Notwithstanding the most assidu- 
ous cares, this cruel condition lasts many years. 
An acute disease of the brain at last removes this 
unfortunate woman. 
These affections are met with in women who, 
exalted by the devouring fever of love, do not pre- 
serve any hope of appeasing it in the arms of the 
man that is loved. They are observed in young 
persons the most chaste and the most reserved, 
who have never tasted sensual pleasures. In gen 
eral, they are more to be feared in families'where 
there is an hereditary predisposition to insanity. 
Often there have been seen cases of suicidal mon- 
omania occasioned by the amorous passions. The 
following is an example of which I was the witness 
last year. It was jealousy, a concentrated jeal- 
ousy, repressed into the very depths of the soul 
which gave birth to it. 
M. G., endowed with excellent qualities, but 
of an exalted imagination and sensibility, marries 
a young woman whom he passionately loves. He 
enjoys during a year the charms of a delicious 
intimacy. He was happy. 
Without appreciable cause, he is seen to become 
gloomy, melancholic; he shuns society. He loses 
his appetite, nutrition becomes languishing, long 
periods of wakefulness exhaust him. His wife, 
alarmed, calls me to attend him. At the end of a 
certain time, seeing the ill become aggravated, I 
suspect a mental affection: I question my patient 44 
LOVE. 
with prudence, I inform myself by means of the 
family. No one knows, no one can find, the cause 
of the trouble which undermines him. 
However, his wife, who watches his actions, dis- 
covers, in a secret place, a case of pistols which he 
has hidden there. She demands of him the reason 
of this purchase : the unhappy man begins to shed 
abundant tears, and runs away without answering 
her. 
One day he comes to see me. He is agitated, 
his eyes are haggard, his voice is thick. "I am in 
despair ! ” he cried to me : "my reason wanders ! 
. . . I shall kill myself! . . . Save me ! . . . Behold 
the laudanum ! Ten times have I wished to poison 
myself. lam going to succumb ! ” 
" Indeed, what is the matter, my friend?” 
" What is the matter! . . . Indeed, I am jeal- 
ous,— jealous to madness! ... My wife does not 
love me : she has never loved me. She loved 
another before her marriage ! ” 
The cause of the trouble was thus revealed to 
me. The unhappy man had filled his head with 
false ideas, which tortured him without cessation. 
I combated as much as possible his delirious con- 
ceptions. Then, employing all the moral and thera- 
peutical means to treat this monomania, I succeeded, 
but after many attentions, to restore M. G. to reason 
and to health. 
Would we know the outrages, the crimes, the ITS INFLUENCE ON THE HEALTH, 
45 
suicides, the cases of mental alienation, caused by 
the erotic passions? We have onty to open the 
stated reports of criminal justice and of the estab- 
lishments for the insane. 
We find in France, as the average for the last 
twenty years, that 
Of 1,000 crimes 
82 are due to adultery, 
72 to concubinage or seduction, 
_ 46 to refusals of marriage, 
31 to jealousy. 
Of 1,000 crimes due to the amorous passions, 
there are 
230 poisonings, 
400 assassinations, 
220 murders, 
80 involuntary homicides, 
70 incendiarisms. 
Of 1,000 suicides 
106 are due to an unhappy love. 
Of 1,000 cases of mental alienation 
86 are the consequences of a thwarted love. V. 
ADVANTAGES OF MARRIAGE FOR SOCIETY, 
FOR MAN HIMSELF. INCONVENIENCES OF 
celibacy: its dangers for the health. 
In all times and in all countries, marriage has 
been honored, and celibacy stigmatized. The Jews 
excluded bachelors from assemblies of the people. 
The Spartans interdicted them the theatres, and 
had a festival in which the women scourged them 
in the public places. The Romans did-not receive 
their testimony in courts of justice; they solemnly 
crowned the virtuous citizens who had contracted 
many successive marriages. In the first era of 
Christianity, celibacy was a cause of inaptitude for 
public functions. For a long time in Germany, in 
Switzerland, the fortunes of bachelors reverted to 
the state after their death. In other countries, they 
were subjected to a tax. 
Why this respect accorded to marriage? Why 
this species of disgrace cast upon celibacy? It is 
because it has always been understood that mar- 
riage is the corner-stone of the social edifice, and 
that celibacy is one of its most active agents of 
destruction. 
In fine, by marriage there is increase of popula- 
tion. Celibacy tends to make it decrease. Indeed, MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY. 
47 
every state whose population decreases is in decay. 
We have arrived, in France, at this diminution of 
population.1 Celibacy is one of the causes. 
By marriage, there is order and harmony in so- 
ciety. . Woman is honored as the companion of 
man : the family form a homogeneous whole, an 
association, which unites members of different age, 
sex, strength, tendencies, and submits them to the 
same authority, the paternal authority. This little 
state in the state is one of immense usefulness for 
the social order. Celibacy profanes and debases 
woman; it subjects her to a shameful yoke in mak- 
ing her the plaything of the passions ; it engenders 
only disorders, troubles, divisions. 
By marriage, there is morality in society. Man 
fulfils the duty which nature imposes upon him ; he 
preserves, in the midst of the safe enjoyments of 
the family, the treasure of good morals ; he devotes 
himself with courage to the labors and to the ex- 
penses of the education of his children. In celi- 
bacy, man, abusing a liberty which exonerates him 
from all responsibility, gives wing to his perverse 
desires, and, in order to satiate them, profanes the 
domestic fireside's and the conjugal faith; he labors 
without cessation to corrupt the morals, and aban- 
dons to public charity the fruits of his debauches. 
Marriage is not less useful to man than to society. 
It is proved, by careful estimate, that more bache- 
lors die during the same number of years than 
1 Vide Bull, de I’Acad. de Med., Paris, 1867, t. xxxii. p. 741. 48 
LOVE. 
married men, and that the latter live a longer time 
than the former. Buffon 1 has sustained this opin- 
ion ; Deparcieux2 has demonstrated its truth in his 
mortuary tables, 8, 9, 10, and 11 ; Hufeland,3 Sin- 
clair,4 Haigart,5 have confirmed these results; and 
they have arrived at the same demonstration for 
woman, so exposed however to dangers by partu- 
rition. 
We may find the reason of this prerogative at- 
tached to the marriage state. 
Notwithstanding the cares and pains inseparable 
from this condition, the married couple, living ac- 
cording to the laws of nature, reciprocally complete 
their faculties. They aid one another, they relieve 
one another, they console one another, they care 
mutually for one another. They are obliged to 
devote themselves to a greater activity; and exer- 
cise and employment are the supports of health and 
of virtue. Protected from the diseases which the 
wandering Venus almost always communicates, 
they seldom abuse sensual pleasures, and liberty 
and habit temper their desires; and we know how 
well calculated is the resorption of the prolific 
juices to fortify vitality. 
1 Buffon, Supplement h I’Histoire Naturelle, t. iv. p. 267. 
- Deparcieux, Essai sur les Probabilites de la Vie Humaine. 
Paris, 1746. 
3 Hufeland, L’Art de Prolonger la Vie, nouv. edit., par 
J. Pellagot. Paris, 1870. 
4 Sinclair, Principes d'Hjgiene, extraits du Code de Santd. 
Genfeve, 1823. 
5 Haigart, Transactions Philosophiques, t. Ixvi. p. 147. MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY. 
49 
The bachelor, always led away by new objects, 
pressed to enjoy, most often forcing nature, seeking 
even to retain by excesses a fugitive and clandes- 
tine love, exhausts his nervous system, enfeebles 
his muscular forces, wears out his body by too fre- 
quent repetition of sensual enjoyments ; or, rather, 
living in apparent continence, he gives himself up 
to solitary vices, and contracts habits still more en- 
ervating. We know, besides, that man, in isola- 
tion, not having any object in life, falls easily into 
ennui, hypochondria, melancholia; he becomes 
sorrowful, morose, sometimes takes a disgust for 
life. It is thus that statistics show, in the class of 
bachelors, more cases of mental alienation and of 
suicide. Of 100 insane, it is calculated there are 
63 bachelors, and 37 married men ; of 100 suicides, 
it is found that 68 are bachelors, and 32 married 
men. 
The most general cause which retains men in 
the state of celibacy is the corruption of their mor- 
als. The man who lives in debauch no longer 
finds in his heart those strong and manly virtues 
which make him prefer the austerity of duty to the 
charms of equivocal pleasures. He is free : why 
should he impose upon himself a yoke? He can 
hasten from one woman to another: why shall he 
enchain himself by an indissoluble bond to one 
woman alone? He is not responsible for his works : 
why shall he charge himself with the burden of the 
family? And then, satisfied with gross enjoyments, 50 
LOVE. 
will he know how to appreciate the sweets of pure 
love, the delightful joys of paternity? I have often 
heard it said that the luxury of our age prevents 
marriage, because the wife and children cost too 
much for their support. This reason can be given 
but rarely, very rarely. Examine, and tell me if 
the ordinary life of the bachelor is not more oner- 
ous, if the support of a mistress does not absorb 
more money than a household well kept. You know 
that saying so true of Franklin : "It costs more to 
support one vice than to raise two children.” 
Marriage is the ordinary and natural vocation of 
the wise, orderly, chaste man. Let him accom- 
plish, then, his divine destiny. As to celibacy, it 
is proper for him only exceptionally; and in these 
cases it is honorable, glorious. It is proper for a 
few rare individuals, as great in mind as in heart, 
who remain chaste in order to attain a greater per- 
fection of virtue, or in order to serve humanity- 
better. The scholar who is to reveal to the world 
the mysteries long hidden, the artist who is to cre- 
ate master-pieces, have each become wedded to 
science, to art; and they will leave their discov- 
eries, their works, for posterity. Who shall blame 
them? This elder brother devotes himself to rais- 
ing the orphan family which his dying father and 
mother confided to him, and his heart and his life 
are occupied with this noble task. Who shall blame 
him? These holy sisters of charity, these Catholic 
priests, have adopted as brothers and friends the MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY. 
51 
sick, the poor, all men ; and they give themselves 
entirely to them, body and soul, in order the better 
to comfort them, the better to instruct them : they 
are full of the most pure love, of the love of God ; 
and this love sustains them, exalts them, impels 
them to great things. Who, then, shall blame 
them ? 
Let society know always how to respect, and 
how to honor always, these glorious examples of 
celibacy ; for they give birth to the most sublime 
instances of devotion, and unveil the most resplen- 
dent wonders of human nature. In this age, in 
W'hich the sensual affections absorb us so much, we 
doubt sometimes whether man can sacrifice himself 
to an idea, to a devotion, to a mystic love. Such 
examples recall to us this superiority of the soul 
over the body. 
Yes, privileged natures learn still to elevate them- 
selves in the pure regions of the ideal love of truth, 
beauty, goodness. They know how to have pleas- 
ure there, to taste there ineffable delights. Our 
minds, so occupied with the well-being of the body, 
can scarcely comprehend the pleasures hidden in 
mystic love, those sweet emotions, those holy 
jubilations, those chaste pleasures, those transports, 
those raptures of the soul identified with its God. 
In this intimate communion, the soul finds the 
plenitude of life. And certainly such satieties well 
replace the sensual affections, with their uncertain 
and fugitive enjoyments. VI. 
PRECOCIOUS MARRIAGES. DANGERS OF THE 
PLEASURES OF LOVE IN VERY YOUNG, DELI- 
CATE persons; in old men. marriages 
DISPROPORTIONATE BY AGE. DISEASES 
WHICH SHOULD PREVENT MARRIAGE. AL- 
LIANCES BETWEEN BLOOD-RELATIONS. 
The age of puberty is the period of development, 
of the bringing to perfection of the organs and of 
the moral and intellectual faculties. This brilliant 
metamorphosis is accomplished little by little, dur- 
ing several years. Let it be well known that it is 
necessary for man and woman to possess a pleni- 
tude of life in order to be able, without injury to 
themselves, to communicate life to others. It is 
necessary that the body shall have accomplished its 
growth; that the functions shall have completed 
their evolution ; that the intelligence shall have ac- 
quired its power, and the heart its treasures. Then 
only is there maturity, procreative maturity: it 
is nubility, the age of marriage. BufFon, Haller, 
Flourens, Bedard, and the greater part of physio- 
logists, fix nubility, in the temperate climates, at 
the twentieth year for woman, and at the twenty- 
fifth year for man.1 
1 Vide Raciborski, Traite' de la Menstruation. Paris, 1867. PRECOCIOUS MARRIAGES, ETC. 
53 
It varies a little, according to the constitution, 
the morbid predispositions, or the state of health 
of each individual. 
Almost never should the conjugal association 
take place before these ages. In the higher classes 
of society and in the working class, for different 
motives youth is sacrificed by precocious mar- 
riages. 
How many ills are concealed in premature unions ! 
To use, before the time, the pleasures of love, is to 
arrest its growth ; is to make a delicate complexion, 
emaciated muscles, feeble organs, poor blood ; it is 
to consecrate one’s self, consequently, to a languish- 
ing and sickly existence. Then, does any one pre-., 
sume that a young female boarder of eighteen years 
has the mind sufficiently formed in order to support, 
without giving way, the life of two; an organiza- 
tion sufficiently strong to resist without becoming 
enfeebled the prolonged labors of maternity? Why 
should she pass suddenly from youth to the life of 
perfect woman? Where is, then, her life of the 
young girl ? Why suppress this phase of exist- 
ence, so agreeable, so full of enchantments and 
of pleasures? 
In proportion as there is an hereditary or ac- 
quired predisposition to any constitutional disease, 
a too precocious union tends to awaken it, to make 
it break forth with violence. Imprudent parents, 
why cause this hasty marriage? Do you not fear 
that you will change soon these bridal flowers into 54 
LOVE. 
the cypress of mourning.? I have seen these frail 
young girls joyfully conducted to the altar. To 
me, a ph}rsician who reads the future, it seemed 
as if they had been prepared, innocent victims, for 
the sacrifice of death : in fine, one or two years 
later, they were sadly borne to the same altar in 
their cold casket. 
How many times phthisis is developed a short 
time after a marriage contracted before nubility ! 
In the same family, I have seen two sisters die 
during the first year of a precocious marriage. 
The eldest was married at eighteen years: two 
months after the union, the symptoms of pulmonary 
consumption manifested themselves, and she suc- 
cumbed before the end of the year. A few months 
afterwards, the sister married at the age of nine- 
teen years, and the same affection removed her 
before having attained her twentieth year. In- 
structed finally by this cruel experience, the par- 
ents did not consent to marry their last daughter 
until she had accomplished her twenty-fifth year. 
The health of this woman remained good. She 
had several children. 
Let us never count on the salutarjr influence of 
a conjugal union to strengthen a delicate constitu- 
tion, to ameliorate or cure a chronic disease. Fatal 
illusion! it is a hope almost always cruelly de- 
ceived. In their new position, the young couple 
find only too many causes for becoming enfeebled : PRECOCIOUS MARRIAGES, ETC. 
55 
in the man, the shocks of the nervous system, the 
losses of the vital sap ; in the woman, the discom- 
forts and sufferings in consequence of pregnancy, 
labors painful and prolonged by parturition and 
lactation.1 
Certain physicians have advised marriage as a 
remedy for the pathological affections of the uterus 
which are often observed in young girls, and for 
the nervous symptoms which are consequent upon 
them. "Be on your guard,” says M. Courty,2 
" against hoping that marriage may cure a uterine 
disease. It aggravates every real morbid condi- 
tion. Pregnancy, for one uterine disease that it 
cures, aggravates a thousand. For the young 
women attacked by uterine congestions with abun- 
dant courses, the conjugal union is often the source 
of infirmities which poison their entire life: the 
excessive sensibility of the genital organs is aggra- 
vated by sexual relations; the congestion becomes 
chronic, the anaemia augments, uterine displace- 
ments take place.” Fruitless unions, moral and 
physical tortures, what sad results ! 
The sad influence of precocious marriages ex- 
tends itself still more to the progeny. , The first- 
born of very young parents are, in general, either 
of feeble constitution or little intelligence; scrofula 
1 Vide Grisolle, De I’lnfluence que la Grossesse et la Phthisic 
Pulmonaire exercent reciproquement I’une sur I’autre (Bull, de 
I’Acad. de Med , Paris, 1849-50, t. xv. p. 10). Fonssagrives, 
Therapeutique de la Phthisie Pulmonaire, Paris, 1866, p. 30. 
2 Courty, Traite des Maladies de I’Utdrus. Paris, 1868. 56 
LOVE 
often attacks them. Do we not know that the first 
years a tree bears fruit that these fruits are in small 
number and of inferior quality? 
If man uses his generative faculties prematurely, 
he injures his health; likewise, if he abuses them 
in advanced age, he hastens to his ruin. 
There is danger for old men in the pleasures 
of love. At that period in which the powers decline, 
to use them is to abuse them. Man, in a green old 
age, is repugnant to believe that he is so. If he 
experiences some perfidious and tentative remin- 
iscences ; if the embers, scarcely extinguished, pre- 
serve a remnant of that fire which formerly con- 
sumed his heart, he believes himself still capable 
of supporting the losses and the shocks of sensual 
indulgences. Let him take care ; and let him hold 
fast to that wise maxim of Bishop Maury to his 
friend Portal: " I hold for a certainty that, having 
passed the age of fifty, a man of sense ought to 
renounce the pleasures of love : each time that he 
gives himself up to them is an additional shovelful 
of earth which he throws upon his own head.” 
Science possesses examples of apoplexies, of pa- 
ralyses, of ruptures, of aneurisms, of sudden deaths, 
which have taken place in the midst of these un- 
timely embraces. Violent and disordered emotions 
suddenly accelerate the contractions of the heart, 
over-excite the of the nervous system, 
and bring about these catastrophes. PRECOCIOUS MARRIAGES, ETC. 
57 
Shall I speak of those deplorable alliances be- 
tween men who touch upon decrepitude and those 
young girls whose parents are not ashamed to sac- 
rifice them to the interests of position and of for- 
tune? It is necessary to say boldly, Woe to the 
couple abusively matched! woe to the progeny which 
may be its product! These ridiculous and hideous 
amours have I know not what that is revolting to 
nature. There result only pains, regrets, criminal 
intimacies, for the wife ; dangers, diseases, fearful 
jealousy, for the cynical husband. The products 
of these monstrous matches are sickly, cacochymic, 
destined to a premature death : they are cut off by 
scrofula, rickets, pulmonary phthisis. 
Certain infirmities or diseases ought to deter from 
marriage. 
It is necessary to attach importance to the health 
of the persons who wish to contract marriage. 
However, I would not wish for any one to fall into 
exaggeration, in demanding for them perfect phys- 
ical qualities, as certain physicians desire. Man 
is tainted from his origin : each one bears in him- 
self a germ of disease, latent or visible, a lacuna 
in the vital harmony. In our days, nervous diseases, 
scrofulous affections, have become constitutional in 
most families. We should, then, limit extremely 
the number of alliances, if we were to wish to de- 
prive all those who are tainted with diseases or 
pronounced morbid predispositions. 58 
LOVE. 
However, marriages should be combined so as 
to neutralize, by opposition in constitutions, temper- 
aments, predispositions, the morbid hereditary ele- 
ments which may be found in the husband and 
wife.1 Two subjects eminently lymphatic or scrof- 
ulous, two nervous persons, two families predis- 
posed to affections of the lungs, ought not to mingle 
their blood. We should seek to counterbalance 
the debility of one married person by the strong 
constitution of the other. A secret instinct leads 
to this through sympathy, that we may not thwart 
nature. Diseases or infirmities which threaten di- 
rectly the physical or moral life of the individual, 
are propagated above all by generation, and can 
be a danger for either party, should absolutely re- 
strain from marriage. 
Thus: the different forms of mania, even light 
and those which present long lucid intervals, 
they are aggravated by genital transmission ; 
Epilepsy, which has resisted the crises of pu- 
berty and the resources of medicine, —it degener- 
ates, often in the same individual or in the children, 
into mania or dementia; moreover, it communi- 
cates itself by the fear which the attacks inspire 
or by imitation; 
Tuberculosis, whether it be declared or latent or 
in a marked state of predisposition in the family, 
it perpetuates itself in the race, and very often be- 
comes contagious for the other married person ; 
1 Vide P. Lucas, Traitd Phjsiologique et Philosophique de 
I’Heredite Naturelle. Paris, 1547-50. PRECOCIOUS MARRIAGES, ETC. 
59 
Inveterate syphilis, which poisons the springs 
of life; 
The different cachexies, which induce impotence, 
sterility, or give a sickly progeny which soon be- 
come extinct. 
One word about marriages between blood-rela- 
tions. 
We should avoid these unions, which are the 
cause of misfortunes and chagrins for their parents, 
because they almost always produce deterioration 
of the race. 
Men are subjected to general laws which govern 
all living beings. Indeed, the law of the conserva- 
tion of the species aims at the crossing of the races 
and the renewal of the vital fluids. 
From the most ancient times, legislators have pro- 
hibited marriages between blood-relations. Their 
disastrous effects on the duration of families and the 
health of the children have already been observed.1 
Rilliet2 has demonstrated the deplorable results, 
for the health and even the life of children, which 
proceed from this cause. 
These consequences are: 
ist. Absence of conception : 
2d. Retardation of conception ; 
1 Vide Boudin, Dangers des Unions Consanguines et Neces- 
sity des Croisements (Ann. d’Hjgiene, Paris, 1562, 2e serie, 
t. xviii. p. 5). 
2 Rilliet, Influence de la Consanguinity sur les Produits du 
Mariage (Bull, de I’Acad. de Med., Paris, 1856, t. xxi. p. 746). LOVE. 
3d. Imperfect conception (miscarriages) ; 
4th. Imperfect products (monstrosities) ; 
sth. Products of which the physical and moral 
constitution is imperfect; 
6th. Products more specially exposed to diseases 
of the nervous system, epilepsy, imbecility, or 
idiocy, deaf-mutism, paralysis, the diverse cere- 
bral diseases; 
yth. Products which die at an early age, and in 
a proportion much greater than the children born 
in other conditions; 
Bth. Lymphatic products, and predisposed to the 
diseases which depend upon the scrofulous and 
tuberculous diathesis. 
To this law there are certainly many exceptions. 
It is rare, however, that all the children escape the 
bad influence. The children attacked in a family 
are not all in the same manner: one is epileptic, 
another scrofulous. 
If some alliances between blood - relations are 
productive of beautiful and vigorous children, it is 
because the husband and wife present, in their 
ph}rsical and moral constitutions, remarkable feat- 
ures of dissemblance, of contrast. Then there is 
sufficient crossing and mixture in the two procre- 
ative natures. 
If I should wish to rise to more general consid- 
erations, I would demonstrate that the extinction, 
more or less premature, of noble families, of the PRECOCIOUS MARRIAGES, ETC. 
61 
historic families of all countries; that the deca- 
dence of royal races, have taken place in con- 
sequence of the numerous unions among them- 
selves, and consequently by default of crossing 
of blood. VII. 
MEANS OF PREVENTING UNRULY LOVE. THE 
PROPER DIRECTION OF LOVE IN YOUTH : 
IT WILL BE NECESSARY TO RE-ESTABLISH 
BETROTHALS. DUTIES AND RECIPROCAL 
FUNCTIONS OF HUSBAND AND WIFE. 
There are means of preventing the development 
of an unruly love. 
Above all, we should endeavor to oppose the 
birth of love before the age or in the conditions 
which are unsuitable for it. 
In the state of our civilization, it is impossible to 
remove young people from all the predisposing and 
determining causes of this passion. Nevertheless it 
is easy to give them an education less effeminate, 
less vain ; to attach less importance to dancing, to 
sentimental music; to accord a more judicious lib- 
erty to young persons. It is easy to banish from 
the sanctuary of the family the idlers, the flatterers, 
the men of a superior rank; to moderate those 
tastes for vanity and coquetry which attract atten- 
tion. It is easy to avoid, in presence of youth, 
those bantering, frivolous, suggestive conversations, 
which work upon the imagination, excite the curi- 
osity, or sacrifice modesty. 
The age of puberty has arrived. What shall be 
our conduct? At this critical period, a vague desire COUNSELS. 
63 
to love awakes. It will be necessary then for care, 
solicitude, tenderness, on the part of parents, in 
order to direct this undefined sentiment towards 
that which is beautiful and good! Before you 
abandon it to its true end, conjugal love, strive, 
prudent parents, to restrain it, to divert it, to direct 
it upon yourselves, on the family, on religious and 
charitable objects. You can do it. These virgin 
hearts are greedy for love. Very well! be all love 
for them, and surround them with the affections of 
yours. They will respond with happiness to these 
marks of sympathy. Then, occupy them with gen- 
erous works, works of piety, of charity, which 
will give them tender emotions, and will satisfy 
momentarily their need of affection. 
At the same time, you will maintain the activity 
of the body and mind by varied, agreeable, contin- 
uous labors. You will enlighten them little by little 
concerning the true state of society, its attractions 
and its dangers, its passions and its quicksands. 
You will speak with reason, seriously, without ex- 
aggeration, giving wise instructions, prudent warn- 
ings, in order to prepare them for the position they 
must fill. Finally, you will let them try their pow- 
ers, according to them a certain degree of liberty 
which permits them to see and to become instructed 
by themselves : you will authorize the discreet use 
of in order to serve as an apprenticeship to 
life. But, far or near, you will watch over them 
without cessation. 64 
LOVE. 
Above all, there should be established between 
father and son, between mother and daughter, a 
tender confidence; and it should always prevail. 
Then, when love shall insinuate itself into the 
young soul, it will be acknowledged. Then only 
will an honorable and worthy sentiment be allowed 
to develope. 
Love should necessarity precede marriage. It 
is necessary, before uniting their destinies for life, 
that man and woman be bound together in spirit 
and heart; that is to say, affianced. It is these 
betrothals which consecrate chaste and pure affec- 
tion, and give emotion to this sweet revelation of 
the heart. 
The ancient custom of betrothals is the safeguard 
for the purity of morals and the happy association 
of man and wife. This institution was known to 
the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Romans, and dur- 
ing the Middle Ages. In Germany, it has still 
preserved its poetical and moral character. The 
young people are sometimes affianced many years 
before their marriage. We see the young man, 
thus betrothed, with heart full of his chaste love, 
absent himself for a time in order to finish his edu- 
cation ; to perform his studies of science, art, his 
apprenticeship to a trade ; and to prepare himself 
for manly life. He returns to his betrothed with 
a soul which has remained pure, with a reason 
enlarged and fortified. Then both are ripe for the 
austere duties of marriage. COUNSELS. 
65 
Chaste love, consecrated by betrothals, can be 
cultivated in the midst of work. It lightens toil, it 
banishes ennui, it illumines the horizon of life with 
delightful prospects; it excites, in the young man, 
the manly courage and the high intelligence to cre- 
ate for himself a position in the world; in woman, 
the noble ambition to perfect herself to become a 
worthy companion and good adviser. 
During the stormy period of youth, it is the only 
means of preserving the virgin purity of the heart 
and of the body. Does any one believe that young 
men who in good season have in their heart a 
love, strong and worthy of them, would profane 
themselves, as they so often otherwise do, in vile 
affections, in those relations of a day, giving them- 
selves a holocaust to beauty without soul; or even 
to licentiousness without beauty? 
Unions, thus projected in advance, freely, from 
reciprocal esteem, give time to become acquaint- 
ed with each other, to appreciate and to fit them- 
selves for each other. 
How far are we, in France, from this prudent 
delay in marriage ! We marry in haste, by chance, 
without becoming acquainted. How could we not 
be deceived in one another, even without wishing 
to be? So, in the place of love, of intimacy, of 
mutual aid in marriage, how many are there who 
find only coldness, repulsion, intolerable burdens, 
continual troubles ! 66 
LOVE. 
Marriage is accomplished. It is necessary to 
arrive as quickly as possible at the fusion of the 
two souls. To melt into an harmonic whole, 
these souls should be transformed: habits, propen- 
sities, ought either to be developed, restrained, or 
destroyed. So, on the part of both, there will be 
need of that good-will, that sincerity, that patience, 
that concession, which attract and unite ; and not 
the levity, the self-love, the pride, which repel and 
isolate. In this new life, the husband and wife 
stand in the relation of preceptors to each other. 
The woman, more of a stranger to practical life, 
less serious, less strong, becomes the pupil of the 
husband, who, by his tender relations, initiates her 
little by little into the intellectual and moral world 
in which he dwells. The husband learns as much 
as he teaches: he discovers, in the depths of the 
soul of her whom he loves, treasures of affection, 
of goodness, of delicacy, before unknown to 
him. 
What if, until the establishment of this veritable 
unification, the education of the hearts meet with 
obstacles, love will cause them to be easily sur- 
mounted. For that purpose, the young married 
couple shall retire from the noise and distractions 
of the world, living together in the greatest possible 
intimacy : it is in silence and solitude that their 
metamorphosis will take place, and they will form 
themselves most quickly for this life of two. COUNSELS. 
67 
Man is the corner-stone of the household. He 
can do much good, or he can do much harm. 
He can avoid those brutal ways of the egotistical 
despot, who thinks he can do what he pleases, and 
who wishes to reign in absolute sovereignty. He 
can fashion himself to those habits of complaisance, 
of amiability, of kind attention, which the delicate 
sensibility of the wife requires. He can cover his 
companion, not with that cold protection prescribed 
by the code, but with that moral protection, all 
heart, which wards off the perils with which she 
is threatened by her inexperience and incomplete 
education. By an intimate intercourse, lie will ele- 
vate her little by little from the circle of frivolous, 
vulgar, erroneous ideas, which occupy her so often, 
to more serious, more fruitful, more rational ideas, 
so that both will be able to share the inseparable 
enjoyment of the riches of the mind as well as the 
riches of fortune. Instead of wasting the compan- 
ionable hours of leisure at the circle, at the cafe, 
he will accord them to the pleasant relations of the 
household. And his assiduity, his solicitude, his 
tender familiarity, will attest to the woman that she 
has not only a master, but an affectionate friend. 
If he is thus devoted, he will gain her confidence; 
and, with her confidence, he will have the control. 
As regards woman, it is proper for her to view 
marriage as a serious condition, imposing upon her 
the most austere duties. Far from regarding the 
o o 68 
LOVE. 
direction of the household as a sad, humiliating, 
annoying occupation, which should be abandoned 
to servants, it is necessary that she should give to 
it her devoted, incessant care; that she should 
direct it with order and economy. In the most 
humble acts of family life, it is possible to have an 
art for pleasing the taste, the imagination. So also 
grace, elegance, poetry even, should reign at the 
domestic fireside ; for all animate, vivify,1 and be- 
come colored with the breath of sentiment. Let 
the wife still be the intellectual companion of man, 
let her raise herself to the level of her husband by 
a cultivated education, let her share in the interest 
of his thoughts and his career, let her be able to 
refresh his leisure moments by the accomplishments 
and charms of a cultivated mind. And, if adver- 
sity comes to darken their horizon, she will need to 
be full of tenderness and consolation, of heroism 
and abnegation, in order to raise his depressed 
spirits, to sweeten the bitterness of afflictions. 
0 young woman ! if you would accept this part, 
so noble and so beneficent, of tutelary angel, never 
should you consume your time in the frivolous fu- 
tilities of vanity, in the extravagances of luxury; 
never should you put your whole soul into your 
silken rags and laces, your trinkets of gold and 
1 “Animate” and “vivify” are exact translations of the 
original words. They are used respectively in the sense of giv- 
ing spirit or soul and life or intensity to our ordinary senti- 
ments and acts.—Note of Translator. COUNSELS. 
69 
diamonds. Never should you think to seek for 
a fanciful ideal culpable hopes ! a troubled fu- 
ture ! in romantic passions. You should banish 
from yourself the demon tempters, who would not 
dare to approach the sacred sanctuary in which 
you had shut yourself up. But, on the contrary, 
you should be assured that you will always be 
pleasing, and to all, by the beauties of the mind, the 
charms of the heart, the attraction of the virtues. VIII. 
TREATMENT OF DISORDERED LOVE BY MORAL 
AND HYGIENIC MEANS AND BY MEDICATION. 
Love is, at heart, full of strength and desires. 
You discover it. What do you do? 
Assuredly, the best means of calming it is to 
satisfy it, is to give it possession or hope of posses- 
sion of the cherished being. But if there are cer- 
tain reasons which oppose marriage, you should 
hinder the passion from becoming more ardent, and 
seek to stifle it as soon as possible. The most cer- 
tain manner of doing it is to promptly fly from the 
danger. Make a voyage necessary, a prolonged 
absence : you can send young ladies into a fam- 
ily where they will find persons living quietly, 
strangers to troubles of the soul. 
It is long since that Ovid, the great master in 
such matters, has told us that absence and voyages 
are sovereign aids to remedy unhappy or disap- 
pointed love, even when it is inveterate : 
“Manat amor tectus, si non ab amante recedas : 
. Utile finitimis abstinuisse locis.” 
Persons of a changeable mind will find many 
diversions, amusements, from the company of intel- 
lectual, sprightly people; from serious occupations TREA TMENT. 
71 
of the mind; from manual labors which fatigue the 
body and captivate the attention. 
That which is needed above all for a soul sick 
from love is another soul which can possess its full 
confidence. Very often it is this chosen person 
who will bring about the cure. Let her at first try 
to gain the good-will by a tender compassion, a 
well-sustained attention to the sufferings and com- 
plaints of the unhappy lover. Let her surround 
him with tender cares, and have unlimited compas- 
sion ; considering unbridled love as a fever, which 
it is not possible to appease by the sole force of 
the will. She will seek to combat love with friend- 
ship : the affection of parents, relatives, friends, 
can produce a happy diversion. From time to 
time she will let escape, as if by accident, a word 
of caution, a wise remark, some reasonable advice. 
Has she seen that the person loved has offended 
against one of the laws of love, in exhibiting self- 
love, cupidity, or in manifesting any egotistical 
design, quickly let her seize upon this subject: a 
revelation made in time always produces a great 
effect. How many inveterate lovers have been 
thus cured ! 
A young widow was desperately in love with a 
man of whom the position and certain faults were 
dipleasing to her parents. They refused to have 
her marry him. Opposed in her passion, Madame 
F. falls into a profound sadness, shuns society, 
loses her appetite, emaciates, and soon becomes 72 
LOVE. 
sick. A cough, oppression in the chest, raising of 
blood, indicate the beginning of a pulmonary affec- 
tion. Having been called to attend her, I suspected 
that a hidden passion might be the cause of the 
disease. The mother confirmed me in my ideas. 
By adroit conversations, I gradually led my inter- 
esting patient to unbosom herself to me, and to 
confide to me her moral sufferings. I promised 
to interest myself in her case ; and so I did. Hope 
immediately restored her spirits. 
But, having learned that her lover was unworthy 
of her,—that he had a mistress, I hastened to 
enlighten the young lady. At first, she was very 
much affected. Then rage and indignation suc- 
ceeded to her violent love: she recognized her 
mistake and the danger of her passion. Her con- 
dition became ameliorated, and she returned to 
health. 
The following is an ingenious method, employed 
by a skilful physician, to restore quiet to a troubled 
soul. A charming young girl of Saragossa, be- 
longing to a noble family, had just finished a brill- 
iant education, when she was taken with uterine 
furor, which appeared to be developed by reading 
" Nouvelle Heloise ” and several other romances. 
The family physician, persuaded that he could put 
a rein upon this madness by acting powerfully on 
the imagination of the young person, took her 
suddenly and without explanation to a hospital for 
women with venereal diseases ; and there he placed TREA TMENT. 
73 
her in presence of a sick woman covered with 
syphilitic ulcers and in the most deplorable condi- 
tion. The sufferings, the regrets, the imprecations, 
of the unfortunate woman, produced such a vivid 
impression upon this young girl, that she returned 
immediately to her chaste and pure thoughts. 
The moral means to be employed against jeal- 
ousy will vary according to the indications. 
To old debauchees, who have united themselves 
to young wives, and profess to enchain their fickle 
hearts, what advice could any one give to calm 
their fruitless and ridiculous jealousy ? We must 
pity them, the unfortunate ones ! and prevail upon 
them to bear with .resignation the pain of their 
extravagant passion. 
When jealousy has its origin in a freak of the 
imagination, recourse will be had to means the 
most capable of appeasing the chimerical fears of 
the distressed soul: assiduous attentions, affection- 
ate caresses, diversions skilfully chosen, all will 
be employed with discernment. 
If any one should presume that the pain of the 
jealous man comes from the sense of his inferiority 
and feebleness, he should endeavor to show him 
an exclusive preference; he will extol upon every 
occasion his minor qualities. 
Sometimes jealousy can be cured by jealousy. 
A lady had been tormented for a long time by the 
incessant bickerings of a jealous husband. I ad- 74 
LOVE. 
vised her to feign on her part the strongest jeal- 
ousy. This means succeeded with him. 
We do not often succeed in overcoming the pas- 
sion by a direct attack. It is better to seek to 
reclaim the misguided soul by directing its ardor 
towards another end, towards that which is 
truly beautiful and good. The great art is to di- 
rect love; to give it other food, another object. 
For the transports of a disordered love, you should 
endeavor to substitute the love of glory, the study 
of the arts, the love of humanity, the love of God. 
How many cures have been obtained by this happy 
diversion in the direction of the affective faculties ! 
In this we have the most certain and most effica- 
cious means. 
You have still a powerful resource for appeasing 
the flame which consumes the being: you must 
divide in order to rule, divide et invpera; and, 
for that, you must scatter the forces of the intelli- 
gence, of the will, of the heart, upon many objects 
which have the power to please; you will succeed 
in causing harmony to reign in the desires. Let, 
above all, the patient seek the succors of religion. 
Its gentle rites, its counsels so tender, will soon 
have produced in him calm and peace. How 
many are there who, in despair through painful 
deceptions, have found life again in its protecting 
bosom ! 
“ C’est de tousles humains la mfere la plus tendre, 
Et son cceur en tout temps est pr6t a nous entendre I ”1 
1 A. Chenier. TREA TMENT. 
75 
We recommend indulgence towards those per- 
sons misled by love, when even they have fallen 
into grave errors. A cold and inflexible severity 
always diverts them from the proper course, whilst 
a tender solicitude can recall them to it. And, then, 
is it not sweet to the heart to pardon? 
In the therapeutics of love, hygiene plays an 
important part, either to prevent the passion or to 
aid in its cure. 
The alimentary regimen can modify much the 
erotic desires. At the epoch of puberty, young 
girls are often attacked by an extreme nervous 
excitability, which has its origin in atony of the 
digestive functions: the appetite is lost, nutrition 
languishes, the blood is impoverished. Diet and 
debilitants only aggravate the nervous disorders, 
and predispose to passion. We should hasten to 
give support, by strengthening, tonic nourishment, 
in order to restore harmony in the play of the 
organism. In young men, the contrary is the case : 
it is necessary often to restrain the luxuriant for- 
ces of vitality, a simple, coarse diet, of difficult 
digestion even, will be suitable. Let us avoid for 
both sexes meats which are high!}' seasoned and too 
succulent. The best spurs to the appetite consist 
in bodily exercises. If exciting wines, coffee, fer- 
mented drinks, are not entirely proscribed, they will 
only be permitted exceptionally. 
We should never leave youth to languish in an 
enervating effeminacy, the source of nervous dis- 7 6 
LOVE. 
eases, of phthisis, and of love. By occupying 
young men with fatiguing exercises of the body, 
not only do we fortify the organism, but we oppose, 
besides, a happy diversion to their unruly desires. 
Walks, excursions, plays, dances, some kinds of 
gymnastic exercises, are recommended for young 
girls. For young men will be added fencing, 
swimming, horseback riding, all kinds of gym- 
nastics. 
It has often been remarked that hunting has the 
power to prevent or combat love. " Diana has 
been made the enemy of Venus,” says the author 
of "Emile,” "and the allegory is very just: the 
languors of love only have birth during sw'eet re- 
pose ; and violent exercise stifles the tender sen- 
timent.” 
Music forms a part of the education. It has an 
immense influence on the morals. Let those styles 
of music be avoided which are capable of exciting 
too vivid emotions of the heart.1 
We should in no case permit the reading of 
romances ; the frequenting of balls, of theatres. 
To the exercises of the body and to diversions 
should succeed mental works. Those will be cho- 
sen which require a sustained attention. An essen- 
tial point is never to be left in idleness. "There 
are spirits,” says Montaigne, "who, if we do not 
occupy them with a certain subject which bridles 
J Vide Feuchtersleben, Hygiene de I’Ame, 3c edition, Paris, 
IS7O. TRE A TMENT. 
77 
and constrains them, are thrown disorderly, this 
way and that, into the current of imaginations. 
And there is no folly nor idle fancy which they 
do not produce in this state of agitation.” 
“ Supprime les loisirs, tu domptes les amours.” 
Neither watching nor prolonged sleep: they ener- 
vate body arid soul. Seven or eight hours’ repose 
in bed is always sufficient. Never shall we permit 
resting in bed in the morning without sleeping: the 
time thus lost is often fatal for the soul which aban- 
dons itself to revery. 
It will be often useful to advise persons who are 
suffering from the effects of love to make a pro- 
longed sojourn in the country, in the midst of at- 
tractive company. The grand phenomena of nature 
will calm the agitations of the heart, and appease 
the disordered ardors of passion. 
Others will find travel better. In going from 
city to city to admire the wonders of art, in ascend- 
ing mountains covered with eternal snows, in ad- 
vancing upon the roaring borders of a yawning 
abyss, in contemplating the majestic expanses of 
the sea, the soul becomes detached from the vain 
agitations of the earth, and penetrates the depths of 
eternity. It divests itself of the miserable littleness 
of passion, in order to become better. 
It remains for us to make known the medicines 
which can be prescribed, with the most success, in 
the treatment of affections engendered by disor- 
dered love. 78 
LOVE. 
For the consequences of violent emotions we 
shall employ the following remedies : aconitum na- 
ficllus, if there is headache, flushed face, febrile 
movement, bleeding of the nose, or palpitation of 
the heart, above all in people of a sanguine habit; 
belladonna, after the aconite, when the symptoms 
are not entirely dissipated, and there is joined to 
them a certain excitation of the brain ; chamomile 
(anthemis), in very impressionable women, in order 
to combat the symptoms of nervous agitation, with 
tremblings, faintings, exaltation of the imagination, 
loss of appetite, diarrhoea; -pulsatilla, in blond 
women, melancholy, with irregular menses, who 
suffer from palpitations of the heart; nux vomica, 
in choleric men. attacked by gastralgia, habitually 
constipated and subject to hemorrhoids. 
These medicines will be given in the dose of 
ten to twenty drops of the alcoholic tincture in ten 
tablespoonfuls of water; four tablespoonfuls of 
which are to be taken daily. 
Against the exaltation of the venereal appetite 
we shall often find indicated : -phosphoric acid, in 
feeble persons fallen into a state of exhaustion, hav- 
ing nevertheless violent erotic desires, with frequent 
nocturnal pollutions; quinia, in persons who have 
indulged in venereal excesses and who are still 
tormented by the genital orgasm ; iron, as the re- 
storative agent of the red globules of the blood, 
in the chlorotic state and in anaemia from loss of 
the vital fluids. In some cases, camphor or the TREA TMENT. 
79 
bromide of -potassium will be able to render useful 
services. 
Against the consequences of an unhappy or dis- 
appointed love we will prescribe : the bean of Saint 
Ignatius, if there is wasting and insurmountable 
sorrow, love of solitude, sighs, complainings, agi- 
tated sleep, a pale countenance, headaches, loss of 
appetite, laborious digestion, constriction at the 
epigastrium, chlorosis, hysterical attacks; phos- 
■phonic acid, after the bean of Saint Ignatius, for 
physical and nervous debility, emaciation, morose- 
ness, and taciturnity ; hyoscyamus niger, in jealousy 
with great distress, melancholy, nervous excitation, 
spasmodic affections; hellebore (veratrum viride), 
in some cases of taciturn melancholy with continual 
complainings, indolence, distrust, moroseness, in- 
somnia. 
We should observe, with great attention, if there 
is a faulty diathesis, or a constitutional or cachec- 
tic disease, such as scrofula, eczema, &c., anasmia, 
chlorosis, nervous derangement, &c., which keep 
up the passion. In these cases, it is by modifying 
the morbid symptoms that we shall restore order in 
the troubled mind. Sulphur, the alkalines, mercu- 
rials, iodine, iron, quinia, silica, arsenic, are, ac- 
cording to the cases, the best medicines to correct 
the morbific defects, whether original or acquired. 
Appropriate mineral waters, taken at their source, 
can replace the pharmaceutical preparations. LOVE. 
The following are examples of cures : 
Mademoiselle P., aged twenty-one years, came 
to consult me the 10th of March, 1858. She was 
pale, meagre, consumed by a slow fever. She had 
cruelly suffered from disappointment in love. A 
young man had for a long time sought her, and 
she had given him her heart. But, by a hateful 
treachery, her sister, older than herself, attracts 
and captivates the inconstant young man, and their 
marriage is soon consummated. How crushing to 
the soul of the poor forsaken one ! She is obliged 
to be present at the nuptial festivities, to sit at the 
same fireside, to see the happiness of the married 
couple. At first, she essayed to struggle against, 
to stifle, her anguish. Religion consoled her. But 
soon her strength declines, her appetite is lost, nutri- 
tion languishes, the nervous system is shaken, the 
menses are suppressed. And the unfortunate young 
lady was threatened by consumption when I saw 
her. I gave her the bean of Saint Ignatius for a 
fortnight. She was better. Then phosphoric acid 
saved her finally from organic ruin. 
A young woman, of the working class, had a 
lover who was displeasing to her parents. In con- 
sequence of a very violent scene, in which the fa- 
ther had sent the young man away, Julia B. falls 
into a nervous attack, for the first time in her life. 
Being immediately called, I prescribed belladonna. 
The next day, she had St. Vitus’s dance well char- TREA TMENT. 
acterized. Belladonna is still continued for several 
days. Then the hean of Saint Ignatius cures her 
completely at the end of three weeks. 
From their patients, let physicians seek, then, 
but with discretion, the hidden pains of the heart: 
they will cure them more easily. It is beautiful 
and noble, this mission of the man, who, for all of 
the catastrophes of life, for all the sufferings of the 
soul and of the body, is found present with the 
salutary balm which mitigates all suffering, with 
the word which calms and consoles, with the coun- 
sel which relieves and reanimates. 11. 
LIBERTINISM. LIBERTINISM. 
“ Fuis la ddbauche : elle est la mere 
De la souffrance.”1 
I. 
DEFINITION. - GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 
T3 Y libertinism should be understood the abuse 
of the organs of generation in their natural 
function, or the perversion of the function by a 
usage contrary to nature. 
There is abuse, ist, when the sexual relations 
become injurious to health; 2d, when they take 
place independent of marriage; 3d, when, in the 
conjugal union, they tend to avoid the propagation 
of the species. 
There is perversion when man cheats the natural 
desires by solitary enjoyments, as in masturbation, 
or onanism; or by degrading acts, and against 
nature, as in pederasty, or sodomy, and in bes- 
tiality. 
On account of the dangers and disorders of lib 
ertinism, governments have been obliged to author 
1 Thales. 86 
LIBERTINISM. 
ize houses of toleration, in order to bring together 
there the women who make a business of prostitu- 
tion.1 A special oversight and severe regulations 
give guarantees for the public health and morals. 
In a stage less degraded than the prostitute, we 
meet the kept-woman, who puts herself up at auc- 
tion, and sells herself to the highest bidder; the 
coquette, who seeks attentions, and abandons her- 
self to him who is most pleasing to her; the gri- 
sette, who, turn by turn, falls passionately in love, 
gives herself and sells herself. 
The libertine keeps company with these unfor- 
tunate women, amuses himself with their vulgar 
charms, satiates his gross appetites, and withdraws 
from them, according to his caprices. 
Debauchery does not always make itself appar- 
ent. It often has the most discreet modes of pro- 
ceeding. There, it is a husband, esteemed, 
honored by all, who hastens silently to the secret 
rendezvous of a mistress unknown to all. Here, in 
this mysterious boudoir, a young woman, in order 
to avenge herself of a husband who forsakes her, 
awaits with emotion the discreet lover, whom an 
intriguing duenna knows how to introduce without 
noise. In another place, enveloped in the shades 
1 Vide Parent-Duchatelet, De la Prostitution dans la Ville 
de Paris, 30 edition, Paris, 1557. —Jeannel, De la Prostitution 
dans les Grandes Villes au XIXe Sifecle, Paris, 1868. 
[Sanger, The History of Prostitution; its Extent, Causes, 
and Effects throughout the World. New York, Bvo, 1869. 
H. F. D.l DEFINITION. 
87 
of night, a young man glides secretly through the 
walks of a garden, there to meet an accommodat- 
[ing mistress, to whom he communicates the ardors 
of a burning love. How many works of darkness, 
how many exciting dramas, which have only two 
actors, a man, a woman! how many fearful 
crimes which remain shrouded for ever ! . . . 
Whether it is carried on openly or envelopes it- 
self in mystery, debauchery is not less the cause of 
numerous disorders. It does not elaborate less its 
deleterious poisons, whose dissolvent action insin- 
uates itself into all of the organs of the social body, 
and there produces strange symptoms, horrible 
convulsions, hideous wounds, which often pass into 
the state of gangrene. 
Truly, man ought to know well all the evils with 
which he is threatened by the abuse of sensual 
pleasures. He ought to know what these mistakes 
of a disordered passion, these intoxications with 
immoderate lust, must cost for his soul, for his 
body, for his health, for the duration of his life, for 
his progeny. 
If so many men do not attain their whole physical 
and moral destinies, if they do not raise themselves 
to the highest intellectual conceptions, if they are 
burdened by diseases, if they see death decimate 
the race, if they do not arrive at the term of lon- 
gevity marked out by nature, they can often blame 
themselves; for they themselves have been the 
artificers of their premature ruin. 88 
LIBERTINISM. 
They have hastened to gather in their flower all 
the pleasures of life. They have contaminated and 
squandered in advance the enjoyments reserved for 
a mature age. They have exhausted themselves, 
with an insensate furor, in enervating sensual pleas- 
ures, which consume the resources of the organi- 
zation and the vital forces. 
Then, having glutted themselves before their 
time, they are also, before their time, enfeebled, 
decrepit, impotent. And, when they think to pro- 
create a family, they have only left to them the 
remnants of a languishing life, which can only, pro- 
duce a blasted race. 
You see, in the great cities, these beings whom 
debauchery has blighted. They are wasted, pale, 
stunted in physique; in morals, they vegetate in 
idleness, egotists, senseless, incapable of resisting 
evil, capable of all the vices. 
You see, as their successors, those generations 
produced by libertinism. They are degenerate, 
stigmatized by scrofula, phthisis, eczematous affec- 
tions, and destined to a premature death. 
Religion and philosophy have always raised their 
voice against the turpitudes of libertinism. But 
few listen. It is the voice which cries in the desert, 
vox clamantis in dcserto. There no longer re- 
mains sufficient soul in the libertine to comprehend 
a noble language. 
It is necessary to expose before his eyes living 
pictures, examples of flesh and bone; to conduct DEFINITION. 
89 
him to the bed of sufferings where vice groans; to 
point out to him with the finger the walking skele- 
ton which falls in ruins; to make him touch the icy 
corpse of the victim. 
Who shall take upon himself this duty, if it is 
not the physician? Who shall speak louder, more 
firmly, and with more authority? 
The subject suggests much that is disgusting, it 
provokes much that is repugnant. Of what matter 
is it ? The physician should never shrink when 
duty commands him. Does he not go to the amphi- 
theatre, to amputate, to dissect upon dead bodies 
which are infected, that he may learn to relieve the 
sufferings of man? Must he not hasten to the relief 
of those afflicted with leprosy, variola, cholera, not- 
withstanding all the repugnance which they may 
inspire? Must he not plunge, when it is necessary, 
the steel and the caustic into the quivering flesh of 
his like, in order to remove and destroy the organ 
which threatens to cause death? 
He does all that. And we praise him, and we 
love him, and we respect him. 
Why, then, shall he hesitate, when it is neces- 
sary for him to touch upon the moral infirmities of 
humanity, to lay bare the hideous vices which de- 
grade it? There, also, he desires good. He points 
out the remedies which ought to cure or to prevent 
deplorable evils. 
Far from bringing down blame upon his own 
head, he can only merit the esteem of every one. 11. 
HISTORIC GLANCE AT LIBERTINISM IN AN- 
CIENT AND IN MODERN TIMES. LIBERTIN- 
ISM IS THE MOST ACTIVE CAUSE OF THE 
DISSOLUTION OF SOCIETY. 
In all times libertinism has been attached to the 
flanks of societies like a hideous leprosy, and al- 
ways ends by corrupting and destroying them. 
Since the most remote ages, we see people in- 
fected with the most disgusting vice. Amongst the 
Hebrews, Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed on 
account of their iniquities. Incests and bestiality 
are so frequent that there is need of laws to repress 
them. We know about the fornications of the Is- 
raelites with the daughters of the Midianites and 
Moabites, the debauches of David with Bathsheba, 
Absalom enjoying the concubines of his father, 
Solomon forming in his palace a harem number- 
ing seven hundred women and three hundred con- 
cubines. 
Egypt has always passed for a land of impu- 
dicities which the poets have branded: 
“Nequitias tellus scit dare nulla magis.” 
As nothing equalled the wealth .of the Ptolemies, 
who reigned in Alexandria, so nothing surpassed 
their debauches. Herodotus relates to us that the HISTORY. 
91 
pyramid of Cheops was built by all the lovers of the 
daughter of this king; and that she never would 
have raised this monument to such a height except 
by multiplying her prostitutions. Let us instance 
also the famous Cleopatra, who saw at her knees 
two masters of the world, who tempted Augustus 
and was repulsed. The spirit and beauty, so re- 
markable, of this courtesan queen, did not equal 
her excessive licentiousness. 
All the Orient, Syria, Media, Phoenicia, Tyre, 
and Sidon were the prey of an unbridled luxury. A 
devotion was rendered to sensual pleasures under 
the most revolting emblems; and the -phallus, or 
representation of the male reproductive organ, was 
borne in triumph by women in the processions and 
festivals. The young women of this country, ac- 
cording to Herodotus, were obliged, once in their 
lives, to give themselves up to the desires of stran- 
gers, in the temple of Venus; and were not per- 
mitted to refuse any one. These consecrated pros- 
titutions were practised still in Phoenicia in the time 
of Saint Augustine, who speaks of them. They 
were not abolished until the time of Constantine, 
who overthrew the temples, the haunts of these 
profanations. 
Notwithstanding the severity of the early legis- 
lators of Greece and Rome, it was impossible that 
these illustrious nations should remain free from the 
corruption which enervated other countries. 
Among the Greeks, the mysteries of Bacchus and 92 
LIBERTINISM. 
the sacred ceremonies of phallus were introduced 
long before the Ti'ojan war. There were seen in 
the processions half-nude young girls, with dis- 
hevelled hair like bacchanals, performing lascivious 
dances with men disguised as satyrs, and present- 
ing to the public the most obscene spectacles. 
Young virgins held it an honor to be initiated in 
the mysteries of the worship of Venus. Woe to 
those who held it in contempt! They were cruelly 
punished by this goddess, by soon feeling the flames 
of impudicity circulate in their veins; for it must 
be known that among the ancients nymphomania, 
or genital furor, was regarded as a punishment 
for forgetfulness of Venus. 
We know the places which the mother of love 
chose for her different abodes,—Paphos, Cythera 
(Cyprus), Miletus, Corinth, Mount Ida; and a 
hundred other temples were consecrated to her. 
Thus prostitution was in repute in Greece. Mis- 
tresses, izcuQcu, were allowed to all the 3Toung men 
before their marriage. The wise Socrates himself 
had intercourse with many courtesans, who were 
the veritable queens of the age. 
In ancient Rome, the corruption of the morals 
was still more extraordinary ; above all, in the times 
of the emperors. It was reserved to this city to 
astonish the universe by the boldness of its turpi- 
tudes, after having astonished it by the splendor of 
its triumphs. 
“ Saevior armis, 
Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem.” HISTORY. 
93 
Caesar, the first of Romans, was debauched to 
the extent that he merited to be surnamed every 
woman’s husband. He did not escape, however, 
the fate of most husbands of that time ; and he 
believed himself obliged to repudiate his wife, to 
whom Clodius was introduced, during the celebra- 
tion of the nocturnal mysteries in honor of Venus. 
To what excesses of lubricity did not Antony and 
Augustus reach with the principal matrons of Rome ! 
" Livia herself,” writes Suetonius, '* sought on all 
sides for young girls for Augustus, for the sole 
motive of ambition, and to preserve her influence.” 
It was not alone the court which presented the 
spectacle of debauchery. The young Romans were 
instructed in the arts of sensuality. Their masters 
were Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, and 
other erotic poets of these times. Neither Syb- 
aris nor Capua had pushed farther the search for 
sensual delights, which seemed to have come to 
overwhelm the Romans, to sink them in effem- 
inacy. 
In this general state of depravity, means were 
sought to excite and prolong the fires of concupis- 
cence. Philters and aphrodisiac potions were in 
common use. The eclogues of Theocritus and of 
Virgil show us what magic sorceries the shepherd- 
esses employed, in order to retain their lovers in 
their chains. We know that Lucretius and Calig- 
ula lost their reason by the use of one of these 
dangerous liquors. 94 
LIBERTINISM. 
The infamies of debauchery were carried to their 
height by such persons as Tiberius, Caligula, the 
Neros, Heliogabalus, those monsters of impu- 
dicity and cruelty. 
Tiberius, in his island of Capri, like a tiger in 
his cave, seems to have brought together all the 
refinements of luxury. It was necessary to invent 
words, unheard of and new, in order to express 
the disgusting turpitudes, the tableaux, the pos- 
tures, the plays, which lasciviousness the most 
shameless succeeded in conceiving in its extrav- 
agant deliriums. 
Caligula began by incest with all of his sisters, 
even in presence of his wife, and in the midst of 
their meals. He used to abuse women before their 
husbands, they being forced to gratify him. He 
boasted of being the emperor of all the vices ; and 
his palace was a veritable place of prostitution, 
of which the intriguing Cmsonia was the grand 
priestess. 
Messalina surpassed all the women of her times 
in her furious salacities. It was a little thing for 
this empress to become married publicly at Rome ; 
and almost under the eyes of her husband, with the 
historian Silius, she went even to the extent of dis- 
guising herself as a woman of the town, and obtained 
the singular triumph of being declared invincible 
for having borne in one night more assaults from 
men than the most debauched courtesans, 
“ Et lassata viris, necdum satiata recessit.’’ HISTORY. 
95 
Nero, and Agrippina his mother, sank still far- 
ther into the mire of debauchery by their incestuous 
connections. This hateful tyrant caused later this 
odious mother to be assassinated, in order to behold 
the womb where he was born. Murderer of his 
wife, he caused himself to be espoused by the young 
Doryphora, in a drunken banquet, in the midst of 
naked girls and lascivious dances. 
Heliogabalus permitted all crimes to those who 
practised the most cynical obscenities in his pres- 
ence. He himself openly offended public mod- 
esty by causing himself to be drawn in a chariot in 
a nude condition, by nude women, through the 
streets of Rome. Bestiality invested the purple of 
the Caesars. 
The bacchanalia of autumn from which there 
remains to us our carnival were accompanied with 
so much license that the Senate abolished them in 
the year 564 of Rome. They reappeared more un- 
bridled under the emperors. It was the same with 
the Lupercalia, the Saturnalia, the sacred mysteries 
of the good goddess of Syria. 
The old world, rotten with corruption even to its 
entrails, gave its last gasp of agony when Christi- 
anity appeared. 
Christianity came to preach morality, and a se- 
vere morality, which had never before been taught. 
It gave honor to the virtues of continence and 
chastity, until then unknown: celibacy was glori- 
fied, and monogamy sanctified as a sacred law. 96 
LIBERTINISM. 
Then the doctors of the Church, Jerome, Augustine, 
Tertullian, Lactantius, Origen, were heard to thun- 
der with vehemence against the lewdness of the 
Gentiles. 
Christianity was heard : it had the glory of re- 
forming morals. 
The barbarians of the North, who invaded the 
provinces of the Western Empire, had simple 
habits, and regarded with horror the licentious- 
ness of the ancient masters of the world. In con- 
forming to the laws of the Christian religion, they 
were preserved from the contaminations of the 
times, and presented the spectacle of the highest 
virtues. 
It is in modern Europe, enriched by all the trib- 
utes of luxury and commerce, that the revival of 
debauchery, the eternal companion of opulence 
and of pleasures, is seen. 
From the thirteenth century, the republics of 
Venice and Florence, Rome herself, swimming in 
luxuries, displayed the vices of sensuality. The 
scandals and the licentiousness of the Borgias and 
the Medicis are known. The protection which these 
celebrated families accorded to letters and to the 
arts gave birth, as a reflection of the corruptions of 
the times, to the licentious poems of Ariosto, the 
lascivious paintings of Albanus and of Correggio 
which decorate the principal palaces of Italy, even 
those of the Vatican. 
Houses of prostitution were then established in HISTORY. 
97 
the principal cities of Italy. Jane 1., queen of 
Naples, celebrated by her gallant adventures, first 
organized them in France, at Avignon. Our kings, 
Charles VI. and Charles VII., permitted streets of 
prostitution (rues chanties') in Paris, and delivered 
to brothels charters of protection, cited by Astruc. 
Most of the nobles enjoyed the right of premises 
of the young girls of their domains. From the 
twelfth to the fifteenth century, the songs of the 
troubadours, doctors of the gay science, relate in- 
numerable stories to us concerning the debaucheries 
of the grandees and nobles of these times. 
During the reign of the gallant and chivalrous 
Francis 1., the ladies invited to the court brought 
with them luxury, intrigues and their favors, not 
always without danger. Brantome has narrated to 
us the scabrous adventures of the honest women of 
his times. 
Soon Catherine de Medicis appeared, accom- 
panied by all the vices of Italy. She came to 
infect France, in the midst of the naissant troubles 
of Calvinism and the horrors of Saint Bartholomew. 
It is from the time of this queen that date the mon- 
strous corruptions and the disgusting practices which 
enervated the youth of Charles IX. and Henry 111., 
in the midst of their favorites. 
The venereal disease, brought from the siege of 
Naples by the army of Charles VIII., being quickly 
propagated, put a bridle on public lewdness, and 
restrained through fear the general depravity. It is 98 
LIBERTINISM. 
to this cause above all that must be attributed the 
reform of morals towards the end of the sixteenth 
century. 
Whatever were, in fine, the amours of Henry IV. 
and of his court, pleasure was sought there rather 
than debauchery. Love seemed likewise exiled 
under the hypochondriacal Louis XIII. ; and soon 
there were seen to spring up affected women, jansen- 
ists in love, as Ninon de Lenclos has called them. 
It was not until under the regency of Anne of Aus- 
tria, in the midst of the disorders of the Fronde, that 
sensual pleasures reappeared. They captivated the 
youth of Louis XIV. But the reign of this king 
was rather that of gallantry restrained under the 
appearances of decency. 
Libertinism broke through all barriers under Phil- 
ippe d’Orleans, who gave, with his unworthy minis- 
ter, the Cardinal Dubois, an example of the most 
degrading sensualities. During the regency, las- 
civious love reigned in shameless despotism: it 
seized on all hearts, it was every thing, it was every- 
where. There was an actual universal erotic mono- 
mania. Then the gold of France, exhausted by 
the system of Law, was accumulated in the hands 
of a few stock-jobbers, who plunged headlong into 
a luxury and licentiousness worthy of the courts of 
the Roman emperors. 
Louis XV. brought back the reign of woman and 
voluptuousness to the court. The last years of his 
life will be for ever branded with opprobrium for HISTORY. 
99 
having stained the throne of France by the most 
ignoble prostitution. 
What great lessons does this history of human 
corruption in all times contain! Philosophers, 
statesmen, you often seek far off for the causes of 
social overthrows and the fall of nations ! Always 
give a large share to libertinism; for it is the most 
active cause of the dissolution of societies. Study, 
examine the morals at memorable periods of revolu- 
tions. You will always find the people enervated, 
sunken in effeminacy, stupefied in debauchery. 
Having no longer the vital sap, they are unable 
to resist their vigorous enemies. They must suc- 
cumb. Thus have fallen the nations of the Orient, 
Greece, Rome, Constantinople; thus have fallen, 
in Europe, the historic families, the noble and priv- 
ileged castes. 111. 
PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CAUSES OF LIB- 
ERTINISM, OF PROSTITUTION, OF MASTURBA- 
TION, OF PEDERASTY. 
Man finds in himself the primitive cause of his 
disorders. 
King of creation, he is of all beings the one who 
can procure for himself the most pleasures. En- 
dowed with an exquisite physical as well as moral 
sensibility, he has a lively sense of enjoyments, 
and augments them in proportion to his desires. 
Possessing a powerful imagination, he tastes sen- 
sual delights in advance; and prolongs these 
sensations long after the moment when they are 
produced. Making use of a privilege accorded to 
him only, he is at all times apt to taste the pleasures 
of love. If his liberty permits him to abuse them, 
his genius can give him the means of corrupting 
them by unworthy artifices. 
The sexual passion is, perhaps, that which offers 
the most examples of hereditary transmission. The 
poets themselves recognize this : 
“ Scilicet exspectas ut tradat mater honestos 
Aut mores alios quam quos habet.” 
Open history, and behold ! Leona, a celebrated 
courtesan, friend of Epicurus, is the mother of PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CAUSES. 
IOI 
Danae, a courtesan herself and mistress of Soph- 
ron ; Julia, the daughter of Augustus, is the mother 
of a daughter of the same name as her own and 
of the same impudicity; the lascivious Poppaea, 
who made no distinction, says Tacitus, between 
marriages and adulteries, is the daughter of that 
Poppaea whose gallantries caused so much talk; 
Lepida, given to prostitution, accused of incest 
with her brother, is the mother of Messalina. 
Warm climates, the season of spring, contribute 
to voluptuousness. The sanguine and the nervous 
temperaments predispose particularly to the exalta- 
tion of sensual appetites. 
If puberty hurries with violence into the vortex 
of illicit pleasures, it is above all in mature age 
that those erotic tastes are developed which seek 
after the refinements of debauchery, and provoke 
the most shameful extravagances. 
We know the stimulant influence upon the genital 
functions of an alimentation habitually too copious, 
succulent, seasoned with strong spices, heightened 
by truffles, mushrooms, moistened with generous 
wines and spirituous liquors. All libertines are 
great eaters or famous gastronomists. 
Certain morbid conditions lead to salacity. Gall1 
and his followers consider the cerebellum as the 
focus of genital instinct, as the seat of physical 
love; and they assert that differences in the vol- 
ume of this part of the encephalon correspond to 
1 Gall, Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau. Paris, 1825. 102 
LIBERTINISM. 
differences of of the venereal desires. It 
is noticed that diseases of the cerebellum, and also 
those of the entire cerebro-spinal apparatus, often 
cause erotism, priapism, satyriasis, genital or uterine 
furor. Eczematous affections, pruritus of the sexual 
parts, oxyurides in the rectum, hemorrhoids, cer- 
tain neuroses of the uterus and ovaries, leucorrhoea, 
some medicines, &c., induce a morbid excitation 
of the genital organs which may lead to the dis- 
orders of libertinism. 
Besides these physical causes, man finds in so- 
ciety always a renewed source of incitements to 
sensual pleasures. It is in the daily intercourse, 
the keeping company with, the continual bringing 
together of, persons of different sex; it is in the in- 
timate communication of sentiments; it is in the 
incessant care of pleasing one another. Further- 
more, society, with the refinements of civilization, 
it is a painful thing to say, tends only too often 
to pervert human nature. 
Religion that safeguard of the soul, which 
commands us to subdue the feelings could aid 
in maintaining pure morals and causing chastity 
to flourish ; but is it sufficiently listened to, is it 
enough respected? We see those who despise it, 
or regard it with indifference, permit themselves 
most easity to be drawn into libertinism. Education 
could give to youth that robust energy which knows 
how to resist, those strong virtues which triumph 
over temptations; but is it not too often weak and PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CAUSES. 
103 
effeminate, vain and thoughtless? Does it not exalt 
too much the faculties of the mind to the detriment 
of the forces of the body? Does it not enervate 
too much the sentiments of the heart and the habits 
of life? Then, behold the languishing leisures of 
idleness, which give birth to factitious desires, 
vague and incessant aspirations, frivolous and dan- 
gerous pursuits after pleasures; behold the spec- 
tacles, the balls, the intimate intercourse, which 
cause all the senses to aspire after voluptuous en- 
joyments ; see the romances,—a debased, gross, 
flattering, prostitute literature which gives its at- 
tention to bad thoughts. In the midst of so many 
solicitations, of so many reefs, fragile virtue, tossed 
here and there, can but make the most deplorable 
shipwreck. 
At the hour of marriage, man rivets himself to 
woman by an indissoluble chain, with a levity and 
thoughtlessness which are incomprehensible. The 
dowry on one side, and the position on the other, 
are suitable, —it is enough. It is of little importance 
whether or not there is sympathy of character, of 
tastes, of tendencies. The couple are not prepared 
for, nor initiated to, the difficulties of a life in com- 
mon : they have hardly that tact, that delicacy, those 
kind attentions which are necessary. So that the 
flame of love is quickly extinguished in the house- 
hold; and coldness, indifference, repulsion, super- 
vene. The wife finds herself exposed to the perils 
of the flatteries and the gallantries of men : the 104 
LIBERTINISM. 
husband has not learned the difficult science of mas- 
tering his feelings. 
What often takes place? Adultery! And it is 
followed by its sinister cortege, hypocrisy, grief, 
hatred, despair, revenge, suicide. 
Let us mention, furthermore, as a cause of de- 
moralization, that unbridled luxury which consumes 
revenues, and leads to business irregularities in order 
to create resources, or invites concupiscence by the 
provoking coquetries of the toilet. 
The corruption of morals arises also from the 
despotism of governments, from too great a dispro- 
portion in rank, and from extreme inequality of 
fortunes. Deprived of political rights by the sover- 
eignty of an individual, the subjects make amends 
by precipitating themselves into the midst of pleas- 
ures ; and despots favor sensuality, in order to 
reign more easily over an enervated people. We 
shall always notice a great demoralization in the 
countries where men of power possess all; whilst 
the people, attached to the cultivation of the soil, 
have nothing of their own. The slave becomes 
perverted, the master dissolute. The slave has 
the shameful glory of corrupting his master; and 
the latter has in his hand the power to satisfy his 
libidinous caprices, and the fortune to purchase his 
pleasures. 
Commerce is not a source of moral corruption 
in societies, except in consequence of the riches 
which it accumulates in them. Opulence, giving PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CAUSES. 
105 
birth to effeminacy and idleness, excites unlawful 
desires, and is prodigal of riches in order to aug- 
ment enjoyments, even the most extravagant. It 
was the immense wealth of the Roman people 
which permitted Antony and Cleopatra to drink 
pearls costing millions, ground up and dissolved 
in vinegar; Nero, Caligula, Vitellius, to swallow 
up the treasures of several provinces in a single 
one of their orgies. Industry with its establish- 
ments where are associated persons of different 
sex, its workhouses and manufactories where are 
collected numbers of young girls badly brought 
up favors the degradation of morals and provokes 
libertinism. 
Prostitution is most often the refuge of unfortu- 
nate young girls, operatives and domestics dishon- 
ored by a first error. Imprudent parents have 
turned them away, faithless lovers have abandoned 
them, debauched masters have hunted them down. 
Love of finery, of luxury, of idleness, impels a cer- 
tain number of women to debauchery. Others are 
led to it by excess of misery, absolute destitution, 
complete neglect, the loss of parents. 
Too often hateful vixens, by infamous artifices, 
cause fragile and inexperienced innocence to waver 
and succumb ; at other times they favor debauchery 
by facilitating the opportunities for it, by setting 
snares, delivering up their victims, buying, selling, 
trafficking in the luxury as a merchandise. LIBERTINISM. 
The following lamentable story was related to me 
by an honorable magistrate : 
One day Madame B. came to me in tears. Re- 
duced to a condition bordering on indigence by the 
premature death of her husband, she had been 
obliged, with her young daughter, to devote her- 
self to constant labor, in order to make a living. 
A person who gave them employment, Madame 
A., appeared to be much interested in her young 
daughter: she paid her dues generously. Little 
by little, her visits became frequent: mysterious 
conversations took place between them. Finally, 
the young girl became dreamy, depressed, her 
eyes bathed in tears. There was a secret which 
the child did not wish to unfold to her mother. 
"Finally,” says Madame 8., "my daughter has dis- 
appeared this morning; and I tremble for fear lest 
she may have gone to the house of Madame A. 
My poor child struggles against her dishonor. In 
the name of all that you have most sacred on earth, 
hasten to the house of this infamous woman, and 
preserve my daughter from contamination, if there 
is yet time ! ” 
Madame A. was perfectly known to me. She 
kept a house of prostitution. I did not doubt the 
sincerity of the recital of this unfortunate mother. 
I hastened to the house of Madame A., accom- 
panied by two inspectors under my orders. The 
vixen had gone out. I proceeded to visit all the 
rooms of the apartment. In one of the chambers, PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CAUSES. 
107 
I found myself face to face before a young girl, 
who tried to hide herself, and whose toilet for pres- 
entation was not finished. I instantly questioned 
her, and learned what the unhappy mother had 
only too well suspected. It was her daughter, who, 
yielding to the merciless pursuits and the perfidious 
fascinations of Madame A., had escaped the mater- 
nal watchfulness, in order to prostitute herself to a 
rich personage that the vixen had herself gone in 
search of. 
Parent-Duchatelet1 has also noticed, as a deter- 
mining cause, in a few exceptional cases, motives 
very sad to avow. A few women seek in this vile 
occupation means for supporting poor or infirm 
parents, orphan brothers and sisters, to nourish 
their children which the death of the father has left 
in indigence. 
It is, above all, the class of seamstresses, laun- 
dresses, dressmakers, operatives, who furnish the 
most victims to this frightful Circe of debauchery. 
The workshops are the centres of corruption, the 
bad effects of which ought to be deplored whilst 
the products they create are admired. 
We meet with certain libidinous constitutions, the 
prey to hysteria or uterine neuroses, which throw 
themselves into prostitution as an irresistible voca- 
tion, and to satisfy a propensity bordering on mad- 
ness. The following is an example : 
1 Parent-Duchatelet, De la Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris, 
3e edition, Paris, 1857, page 105. LIBERTINISM. 
A young lady of good birth, relates Esquirol,1 
aged nineteen years, tall, strong, is taken with an 
attack of hysteria, with violent and almost continual 
convulsions. After a long and fruitless treatment, 
this young person disappeared one day from the 
paternal mansion; and all search after her being 
useless, nothing more was heard said of her. At 
the end of several months, I was passing one even- 
ing through a very remote quarter in Paris : I am 
stopped by a woman whom I recognize as her whom 
I had treated without success. " What are you doing 
here?” I said to her. "I am cured,” she replies. 
This unhappy victim of too ardent a constitution 
had followed for ten months the occupation of a 
courtesan of the lowest class. She had had two 
miscarriages. Finally, she returned to the paternal 
mansion completely cured. Afterwards, she is mar- 
ried, and becomes the mother of a family, leading 
a regular life. 
Masturbation2 is sometimes due to a disease. 
Thus, it can be occasioned by an eczema of the 
genital parts, by errors of conformation (phymosis, 
paraphymosis), by the accumulation of the seba- 
ceous matter, the existence of worms in the rectum, 
leucorrhoea, priapism, nymphomania, diseases of 
the cerebellum, idiocy, pulmonary phthisis. 
1 Esquirol, Des Maladies Mentales. Paris, 1838. 
2 Deslandes, De I’Onanisme et des Autres Abus Ven&nens, 
consideres dans leurs Rapports avec la Sante. Paris, 1835. PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CAUSES. 
109 
It has been remarked that certain positions while 
awake and during sleep, conditions which require 
the person to be ordinarily seated (tailors, shoe- 
makers, dressmakers, seamstresses), the adminis- 
tration of purgatives, above all of aloes, the use of 
aphrodisiac substances, fish, spices, alcoholic liq- 
ors, especially beer, favor the development of this 
vice. 
However, masturbation is more frequently caused 
by the premature excitement of the genital organs, 
by precocious desires provoked by a disorderly 
imagination brought on by an enervating and sen- 
sual education. 
It is, above all, in boarding-schools that the con- 
tagion of bad example exercises its fatal ravages. 
Sometimes, it is to early childhood that we must go 
back to find the first cause of disgraceful habits. 
Domestics, as stupid as corrupt; masters who ought 
to be the guardians of innocence, do not recoil 
before the infamy of making beings without reason 
subserve their odious lubricity. ' 
Pederasty (from naidbg tQaor/jg, -pueri amator) is 
the last degree of human depravity.1 So it must 
be admitted that, in certain individuals, this shame- 
ful debauchery is due to a morbid perversion of 
sensibility, to a veritable aberration of the moral 
faculties. In others, assuredly, it is unbridled lux- 
r 
1 Vide A. Tardieu, Etude Medico-legale sur les Attentats aux 
Moeurs, 5c edition. Paris, 1866. no 
LIBERTINISM. 
ury; it is a depraved, sickened sensuality, which 
impels to this c}’nical research for new enjoyments. 
In the great cities, this passion is made use of by 
persons without principle, who derive enormous 
profits from this source. They have in their em- 
ployment young boys, corrupted, idle, gathered 
from the filth of the highways or in the houses of 
debauch. They clothe them, they adorn them, they 
paint them, they muffle them up in the garments of 
woman, and every evening launch them forth in 
pursuit of libidinous unfortunates. After having 
enticed the victims into the snare, it is easy to levy 
a tax upon their feebleness. IV. 
CAN MAN REMAIN CONTINENT DURING A CER- 
TAIN TIME, EVEN ALL HIS LIFE ? IS NOT AB- 
SOLUTE CONTINENCE ORDINARILY A CAUSE 
OF DISEASES? 
We have seen how man is led, by his nature 
and by his social relations, to the pleasures of 
sensuality. 
Nevertheless, morality does not permit of sexual 
relations exceptin marriage; and the catholic relig- 
ion enjoins celibacy on the ministers of its worship 
and persons who live in religious orders. 
Is it, then, possible that man can preserve conti- 
nence, at the age in which the genital organs have 
accomplished their entire evolution? Does abso- 
lute continence ordinarily constitute a cause of dis- 
eases? 
These grave questions have often been debated. 
Many men of the world, and even distinguished 
physiologists and physicians, have erroneous opin- 
ions upon this subject, which we are unable to 
admit. 
Supporting themselves, on the one hand, upon 
the imperious nature of the generative instinct, they 
sustain the opinion that man cannot restrain him- 
self by the sole force of his will. On the other 
hand, admitting that God has made the regular 112 
LIBERTINISM. 
accomplishment of the organic functions a condi- 
tion of health and of life, they say that the continent 
man does to himself. 
From this, they conclude, in the name of human 
liberty and the inviolable rights which it claims, in 
the name of Nature and the sacred duties which she 
prescribes, that to wish to impose continence on 
youth and religious celibacy on certain individuals 
is the most odious and the most immoral of tyr- 
annies. 
These, then, are the specious arguments which we 
must have the courage to combat, and to combat 
boldly and vigorously. For, if they were true, we 
should only have to hold our tongue : it would no 
longer be permitted us to raise our voice to stigma- 
tize debauchery, to condemn sexual relations out- 
side of marriage. Is it a fact that all disorders 
should not be tolerated? Is it true that we should 
not also protest against religious celibacy, that sub- 
lime vocation which raises humanity so much in the 
eyes of unprejudiced men? 
The laws of nature are always in harmony with 
the precepts of morality. When scientific researches 
chance to lay down a law contrary to morality and 
to religion, should be distrusted : there is always 
there a concealed error. 
In this discussion, what Science, the inter- 
preter of nature? 
She demonstrates, by experiment and physiology, 
that it is possible for man to be continent during a CONTINENCE. 
certain time, even during his whole life ; that conti- 
nence is not injurious generally to health. 
Man and woman are strongly inclined to sexual 
relations, it is true; and the Creator has thus willed 
it, in order to insure the conservation of our species. 
But, when you tell me that the generative instinct is 
irresistible, assuredly you are only inspired by that 
which is passing around you, by that which you see 
in a narrow horizon, by that which vicious educa- 
tions produce, loose morals, enervated wills, in- 
cessant worldly solicitations. 
Do better, then. Extend the field of your re- 
searches. Go and observe in a calmer and purer 
medium, there where morality is rigid, where the 
spirit knows how to master the flesh, where the agi- 
tations of the age do not enter. Observe in commu- 
nities, in seminaries, in model families : you will see 
that in general the venereal desires are of tardy 
birth, that they are moderated, that they are soon 
quenched, when they are neither satisfied nor 
irritated. 
In society you will find many differences in the 
impulses and desires for sensual pleasure. There 
are individuals of a light and fickle mind who are not 
sensual, except from coquetry or from mere show : 
there is lewdness, but not violent desires. There 
are sentimental souls, romantic, melancholic, full 
of dreams and ideal affections, who may pass their 
lives in sighing languishingly after a love which 
will never be realized for them: continence is still LIBERTINISM. 
possible. There, it is the passion of devotion, of 
abnegation, carried to the point that it is diverted 
from sensuality: sacrificing itself for aged parents, 
for brothers or sisters, generous natures, angels of 
the fireside, they forget themselves, in order to be 
the protection and the consolation of those who are 
dear to them. In others, different passions cause 
the sexual instinct to become dormant: thus it is 
with the ambitious, who have only one thought, 
that of rising in the world; thus, with misers, who 
only dream of hoarding up wealth ; thus, with the 
erudite, who are absorbed in their profound specu- 
lations. Finally, divine love can enrapture, can 
transport to the regions above, can captivate all the 
faculties, heavenly passion !it can cause the flesh 
to be without desires, without longings; or, if the 
senses still assert their rights, the force of the will 
and the love of virtue are there to appease, to sub- 
due, to conquer. 
Assuredly, you will meet with persons of ardent 
temperaments, who, in youth and always, burn with 
all the fires of concupiscence. In them there is no 
restraint. Love consists wholly in physical enjoy- 
ment : they seek it, they desire often, they desire it 
without cessation. 
“ C'est Venus tout enti&re k sa proie attachee! ” 
For these erotic natures marriage is necessary, 
and precocic marriage. Prolonged continence 
would be for them a continual struggle, violent, 
terrible, full of pains, of perils, and of tortures. CONTINENCE. 
”5 
This is what experience teaches. 
Let us question Physiology. She tells us that a 
person can remain healthy without exercising cer- 
tain functions. Does the peasant exercise much 
his intelligence, and the prisoner his organs of 
locomotion? 
She tells us, furthermore, that the inaction of or- 
gans annihilates little by little the instinctive desire 
to exercise the function. Why should it not be the 
same for the genital organs? As to the materials 
of generation, we know that Nature easily rids her- 
self of them, if they are not utilized. In man, 
spontaneous pollutions evacuate the seminal fluid, 
when there is an accumulation of it. In woman, 
the menses, or turns, by their periodical depletions 
of blood, eliminate the ovules which are not fecun- 
dated. These phenomena, purely physiological, 
prevent, then, the plethoric symptoms of which the 
privation from the pleasures of love might be the 
cause. 
Nevertheless, certain diseases have been attrib- 
uted to continence. Hippocrates, Galen, Fernel, 
Riviere, Hoffmann, and many others, report several 
observations where sexual abstinence appears to 
have produced a morbid exaltation of the genital 
organs, and even remarkable intellectual disorders. 
According to these authors, absolute continence 
should expose man to satyriasis, to impotence; 
woman, to uterine furor, or nymphomania, to hys- 
teria, to sterility: finally, both sexes to various LIBERTINISM. 
neuroses, to mental alienation, to a premature 
death. 
Modern medical observation has reduced to its 
just dimensions the list, much too large, of morbid 
affections which may appear under these circum- 
stances, and has exculpated continence from the 
chimerical complaints of which it used to be ac- 
cused. It is easy to demonstrate that the examples 
reported are rare exceptions; that the individuals 
attacked had peculiar predispositions to the disease 
which has afflicted them. 
It is rather to the abuse of sensual pleasures 
than to their virtuous abstention that it is necessary 
to attribute the diseases which we have named. 
Such is the opinion seriously matured by earnest 
men, such as Doctors Max Simon,1 Duffieux,2 
Diday,3 A. Mayer,4 Briquet,5 Fredault,6 who have 
furnished peremptory proofs. More hysterical and 
insane persons are found in houses of prostitution 
than in convents. 
As to the duration of life, if we wish to take into 
account the recent statistical researches, we must 
conclude upon the advantages of religious chastity 
for the prolongation of existence. But we avow 
1 Max Simon, Deontologie Pans, 1855. 
2 Duffieux, Nature et Virginitd. 
3 Diday, Examen de I’Ouvrage du Docteur Duffieux. 
4 Mayer, Des Rapports Conjugaux, 50 edition. Paris, 186 S. 
5 Briquet, Trait 6 Clinique et Therapeutique de I’Hysterie. 
Paris, 1859. 
6 Fredault, Traite d’Anthropologie Philosophique et Physio- 
logique. Paris, 1863. CONTINENCE. 
117 
that this manner of elucidating the question gives 
room for dispute ; for many causes, physical as well 
as social, make the chances of longevity vary on 
one side as on the other. 
However that may be, we can conclude that Na- 
ture does not oppose herself to continence, whether 
temporary or continual. It is an exceptional state, 
it is true ; but it neither injures the health nor the 
longevity of those who take pleasure in it. 
It is necessary to recognize that divine wisdom 
of the Creator, who could not punish us, by an 
immediate suffering, for not making use of the 
function of reproduction. An imperious sensation 
warns us to satisfy hunger, thirst; for these functions 
are necessary for the conservation of the individual: 
but that of reproduction, which demands and en- 
gages two individuals, which imposes serious duties, 
ought not to be irresistible ; and man should be free, 
master of himself, in those relations which do not 
interest him alone. 
Let no one, then, seek to excuse the looseness of 
morals, under the pretext that continence is impos- 
sible, that it is injurious. No : it is not a physio- 
logical necessity : it is unruly desire, it is abuse, 
which leads to bad habits and which compromises 
the health. 
The brain has a powerful influence over the 
functional activity of the genital organs. Salacity 
comes oftener from excitations of a depraved imag- 
ination than from the solicitations of the senses. n8 
LIBERTINISM. 
He who, plunged in effeminacy and indolence, 
pampers his senses, occupies himself with lasciv- 
ious ideas, seeks licentious company and conversa- 
tions, —he it is who will be incessantly driven to 
debauchery, by a more abundant secretion of sem- 
inal fluid. 
On the contrary, a man whose intelligence is 
absorbed by grave thoughts, whose heart is occu- 
pied by noble sentiments, whose body is fatigued 
by severe labors, will elaborate only a small quan- 
tity of sperm, and will be tormented but little by 
the suggestions of the venereal appetite. With a 
will a little energetic he will be able to subdue the 
generative desires. In order to combat spermatic 
plethora, nature will excite in him nocturnal emis- 
sions, which, at rare intervals, will rid the economy 
of the superabundance of vitality. 
As regards woman, it is easier for her to pre- 
serve her chastity; for there is not as in man a 
peculiar secretion which comes to stimulate the 
organs. But if, at the time of puberty, she aban- 
dons herself to voluptuous reveries, if she exalts 
her imagination by the reading of romances, if 
she throws herself into the vortex of pleasures, of 
intrigues, assuredly she will over-excite the genital 
apparatus, she will strongly feel the sexual desire, 
she will be forced to sacrifice herself to it, she will 
contract bad habits ; or, rather, violent desires un- 
satisfied will bring on those nervous perturbations 
which are nearly always avoided by a quiet life and 
good moral habits. V. 
THE COURSE AND ALLUREMENTS OF LIBER- 
TINISM. PORTRAIT OF THE DEBAUCHEE, 
OF THE COURTESAN, OF THE MASTURBATOR. 
We have indicated the principal causes of liber- 
tinism. Let us see in what manner these causes 
act, are related, combine, in order to give birth to 
depraved morals. Let us examine the course and 
attractions of debauchery in the young man, in the 
young girl, in married people. 
A person is not thrown at the first chance into 
the scandals and orgies of libertinism. But he 
glides on the rapid descent of vice : from one fault 
he goes to another fault, and thus from one to an- 
other, until he arrives at the bottom of the abyss. 
A good number of young men commence by the 
shameful manoeuvres of masturbation. A long time 
in advance, they aspire after liberty in order to 
launch themselves forth into the fields of the un- 
known. The hour is come : quickly, profiting by 
the carelessness of the father, from maternal weak- 
ness, they shake off the yoke of authority, they 
forsake the sanctuary of the family. And behold 
them in the midst of the whirl of pleasures, giving 
the purest of their souls to the first courtesan that 
comes, or tasting the first fruit of love with a poor 120 
LIBERTINISM. 
girl whom they abuse. Then, more and more 
greedy, they run from one to another, they deceive 
and are deceived, they dishonor and are dishon- 
ored. In these impure intercourses, soon are with- 
ered all the blossoms of the mind; soon are shaken 
out, one by one, and thrown to the winds, all the 
sentiments of the heart. It does not require a long 
time for these young men to be satiated with ordi- 
nary enjoyments. They seek then for sensual 
pleasures which are less common, and risk the 
greatest scandals. Finally, the inveterate habits 
of debauchery can no more be broken; and you 
see many of them who remain in celibacy, in order 
to continue more at their ease their dissolute life. 
The morals of young girls differ, according as 
they live in a humble condition or as they move in 
a more elevated sphere. 
The female operative is early to become aban- 
doned, without guide, in the manufactories, in the 
workshops, in the warehouses, the centres of cor- 
ruption. There all kinds of seduction await her: 
seduction of the heart and of the senses ; the seduc- 
tion of money; the seduction of vanity, of ambi- 
tion ; seduction at every step, at every moment. 
What do you wish she should do? Must she resist? 
Oh ! for that it would need virtues very firm. She 
would need a more lucrative occupation, which 
could nourish her, support her; an assurance of a 
less precarious position in the future : she would 
need laws protective of her honor, to shelter her COURSE AND ATTRACTIONS. 
121 
from unworthy deceptions. Here or there, sooner 
or later, she succumbs ! it is almost inevitable for 
a certain number of these unfortunate ones. One 
error leads to another. Soon placed under the ban 
of society, they plunge deeper and deeper into the 
mire of debauchery. And you have, in conse- 
quence, the grisette, the woman of the demi-monde, 
and the prostitute, according to their qualities or 
their physical attractions, according to their talents 
for intrigue or their ambitious aspirations, accord- 
ing to the circumstances which favor them. 
The young girl of more elevated rank receives a 
sufficiently brilliant instruction. But her education 
is incomplete, and does not prepare her sufficiently 
for an active and serious life. In our French so- 
ciety, a young lady, under the maternal aegis, is 
kept in confinement: she sees the world only 
through a prism, which always deceives her; she 
feeds upon illusions, she creates for herself a thou- 
sand chimerical ideas, and remains in ignorance 
concerning the deceptive reality of our morals. So 
she only aspires for one thing, for emancipation, 
for liberty; she only dreams of one thing, —of 
marriage, which gives them. For the young girl, 
marriage is not that severe, gloomy life, with its 
austere duties, its heavy burdens : it is liberty in 
actions and pleasures, in toilet and luxury, in read- 
ing and society. How many unseen perils are 
heaped upon her head! 
We know how the greater part of marriages are 122 
LIBERTINISM. 
contracted. It is a matter of business, of interest, 
of convenience, of ambition. Sometimes a mutual 
attraction impels to it for the moment, very rarely 
a profound sympathy. There is little anxiety as 
regards the conformity of ages, of tastes, of char- 
acters, of conditions, of temperament, of health. 
Often a fresh spirit finds itself in contact with a 
withered soul, a heart desirous of exquisite emo- 
tions with a heart icy from the abuse of pleasures, 
an inexperience full of artless candor with the expe- 
rience of an old man that is satiated, and full of 
ennui. The husband and wife, thus at variance, 
are hardly prepared, by their habits, for the man- 
ners of household life. Nor are they at all familiar 
with that tact, that refinement of manners, so neces- 
sary to harmonize the wishes, to lessen the weak- 
nesses, to support the moral infirmities, of each 
other. 
In the midst of so many reefs for either, they 
strike upon them and are stranded. Love dies out, 
lukewarmness replaces it; then comes indifference, 
then repulsion. Each in turn leads a separate 
life. 
The husband is agitated during the entire day in 
the tumult of affairs : at the hour of repose, during 
the evening, not finding sufficient attraction at the 
domestic fireside, he goes to the club, to the cafd, to 
the theatre. There he finds gay compan}', which 
relates its sprightly stories, plots its fine parts, ex- 
alts the men with good fortunes, repeats all the COURSE AND ATTRACTIONS. 
123 
broad jokes of the green-room. No longer being 
restrained by conjugal attachment, he wishes to be 
the hero of adventures ; and behold him as he has- 
tens to conquests, and, having set out, to liber- 
tinism. 
And the young wife, what becomes of her in the 
midst of this neglect? She had dreamed of love 
with its unceasing felicities, and she finds herself 
face to face before the cold reality of deceptions. 
Then, she rushes into coquetry, occupies herself 
with toilets, makes frequent calls, listens to scan- 
dal, reads romances which unfold to her fantastic 
existences which she compares with her own. 
Then she languishes, she sighs, she desires, and 
finishes by lending an ear to the homages and the 
adulations of men. Enervated by an atmosphere 
which causes her to become languid, in the midst 
of snares she feels her heart flutter, her passions 
awaken, and she succumbs. 
For they are numerous and dangerous these Love- 
laces, terrible minotaurs who prey upon these beau- 
tiful forsaken ones, in order to devour them. They 
are there, on the watch, their nose to the wind, in 
order to arrive at the moment of faltering and to 
fascinate more easily their prey. 
Deaf to the groans of their victims, insensible to 
the misfortunes which are sown in their footsteps, 
libertines respect nothing, neither age nor position, 
nor solemn engagements nor the ties of blood. In 
the highest, as well as in the lowest conditions, they LIBERTINISM. 
seek their pleasures. We can apply to them that 
which Alfred de Musset says to his Don Juan : 
“ De la fille du roi jusqu’k la pajsanne 
Tune meprisais rien, mfime la courtisane, 
A qui tu disputais son miserable amant! 
Mineur qui, dans un puits, cherchais un diamant!” 
We easily recognize those whom debauch holds 
beneath her empire, for she impresses upon them 
her withered brand. 
You have noticed that thin, meagre-looking man, 
with bold and provocative address; with wanton 
look, livid tint, leaden or blotchy complexion; with 
premature wrinkles, sardonic smile, infected breath, 
free manners, and indecent language : it is the lib- 
ertine. 
The young man who gives himself up to the soli- 
tary habits of onanism has his head inclined for- 
ward towards the ground, his countenance without 
expression, his complexion pale, his lips without 
color, his look dull, and his eyelids swollen and 
red. He is meagre without apparent disease; his 
appetite is voracious. He experiences an extreme 
feebleness and has an uncertain gait. His voice is 
hoarse and hollow. He loves isolation, idleness; 
he shuns amusements and pleasures. His intellect- 
ual faculties are powerless, his imagination frozen, 
his heart shut against noble sentiments.1 
You will generally find that the prostitute is ca- 
1 See Deslandes, De I’Onanisme et des Autres Abus Vene- 
riens. Paris, 1835, in-8. COURSE AND ATTRACTIONS. 
125 
pricious, turbulent, talkative by nature, deceitful 
from interest, generous without discrimination, sell- 
ing herself coldly to all, but preserving her heart 
for a miserable lover whom she has chosen for 
herself, and of whom she is jealous. She gives 
herself up to gluttony, to intemperance, in order 
to divert herself from long ennuis, to stifle her re- 
morse, to excite her to ignoble compliances. Con- 
vinced of her abjection, she plunges into one vice 
after another, becomes envious, addicted to theft, 
anger, and revenge. Notwithstanding all her ap- 
pearances of thoughtlessness or gaycty, this jille 
de joie does not bear less painfully the burden 'of 
her ignominy, and often melancholy preys on her 
heart. VI. 
SYPHILIS THE PRODUCT OF LIBERTINISM. ITS 
LESIONS AND ITS VARIED SYMPTOMS ; ITS 
MODES OF CONTAGION. SYPHILITIC CA- 
CHEXY. METAMORPHOSES OF SYPHILIS. 
ITS INJURIOUS INFLUENCE ON THE RACE. 
Those who abandon themselves to the disorders 
of sensuality expose themselves to the gravest dan- 
gers ; and great is the number of the diseases which 
may attack them. 
One of the first to contract in intercourse with 
debauched women is syphilis. 
Under the name of syphilis, or venereal disease, 
are comprehended innumerable morbid affections of 
a specific nature produced by a contagious virus.1 
This virus being applied upon a part of the body 
can reproduce itself, multiply, and exercise, after 
having been absorbed, its mischievous action on 
the whole economy. 
Physicians have much discussed the origin and 
antiquity of the venereal disease. A great number 
make it a disease of modern origin, and fix its first 
appearance in Europe in 1494 or 1495. Accord- 
1 See Diday, Exposition des Nouvelles Doctrines sur la Syph- 
ilis, Paris, 1858, 1 vol., sn-iB. Hunter, Traite de la Maladie 
Vencrienne, trad, par G. Richelot, 3c Edition, Paris, 1859. —Lan- 
cereaux, Traitd Ilistorique et Pratique de la Syphilis, Paris, 1566. SYPHILIS; CACHEXY, ETC. 
127 
ing to some, it originated at the siege of Naples; 
according to others, it was imported to us from 
the New World by the companions of Christopher 
Columbus. 
Nevertheless, B. Bell, Cazenave, Reynaud, 
Littre, have supposed that the venereal disease ex- 
isted amongst the ancients. They have collected 
numerous documents from the Leviticus of Moses 
to the authors of the fifteenth century, in which is 
given a sufficiently exact description of the ordinary 
symptoms of syphilis. 
It was not until towards the end of the fifteenth 
century that this disease became general in Europe. 
Syphilis is to-day what it was formerly. If the 
disease has appeared more severe in past centuries, 
we should attribute it rather to the manner of treat- 
ing it than to the greater activity of the virus. 
We may regard the venereal disease as one of 
the scourges of our society. We could wish that 
young men might know all the dangers which 
threaten them when they profane themselves in 
impure intercourse. 
Does it know well what it does, this youth so 
ardent, so full of life, when it throws itself, with 
bowed head and blinded eyes, into those ignoble 
receptacles of vice, in order to taste prematurely 
the gross sensations of the flesh? 
Does it know that it is stifling in their germ the 
generous instincts of the soul, that it is stupefying 
the noble aspirations of the intelligence, that it is 128 
LIBERTINISM. 
consuming the forces, poisoning the blood, shatter- 
ing the health? 
Does it know that later, when it shall seek in 
marriage calm and repose, it will be devoured by 
remorse when it sees its progeny blasted and stained 
with indelible marks, the inevitable results of past 
disorders? 
Young man, learn first what the equivocal pleas- 
ures of debauchery cost! Then risk yourself, if 
you dare ! 
Enter with me into this hospital which receives 
only the unhappy lovers of the impure vice ! It is 
here you will find salutary instruction; for here are 
displayed all the evils that follow in its train, a 
dismal cortege,—syphilis, that destroying scourge, 
born of the many-men {-poly an dr ie) intercourse of 
prostitutes. 
One is affected by a discharge of greenish pus 
from the urethra, a discharge which causes severe 
suffering, which may last many months, and bring 
on incurable strictures of the canal. The other 
complains of chancres, which eat away the genital 
organs, and, becoming serpiginous, reach the neigh- 
boring parts. In this one, profound abscesses burrow 
in the fold of the groin: they open, and discharge 
every day and for a long time a sanious fetid pus; 
then they cause sloughing of the skin ; and they 
only cicatrize in leaving indelible traces, untimely 
witnesses. In that one, the disease has seized upon 
the throat, and obstinate ulcers are an incessant 
cause of pain and inquietude. SYPHILIS, CACHEXY, ETC. 
129 
And then upon other patients are those plaques 
muqueuses, those excrescences of flesh, those pics, 
those condylomata, which affect the genito-anal 
parts; those hideous teigncs, those moist eczemas, 
those interminable ophthalmias, those rodent ulcers 
of the ala of the nose, and of the lips', those enor- 
mous warts, those cases of premature baldness, 
and all that series of cutaneous eruptions so varied, 
rose spots, pustules, coppery crusts, papules, 
horn-like productions. 
In the most unfortunate, the disease being seated 
in the marrow of the bones, swelling and inflam- 
mation of the osseous tissue take place, ostitis, 
exostosis, which provoke those excruciating os- 
teocopic pains, reviving each night, and depriving 
the victims of refreshing sleep. Consequently, an 
inexhaustible suppuration of the diseased bones 
exhausts and wastes the body, necrosis, caries, 
and causes it to rot alive. 
Behold the sad things which you will contemplate 
with a horrible disgust, while visiting these numer- 
ous hosts ! 
But what you will not yet understand are those 
continual torments, those tortures of body and 
soul, those poignant agonies, the violent remorse, 
the concealed despair. 
Nor will you, indeed, see those bloody operations, 
those mutilations with the knife and actual cautery, 
in the midst of lamentations, shrieks, and impre- 
cations. 130 
LIBERTINISM. 
How much more would youth stand in dread of 
this frightful disease, if it comprehended what the 
word syphilis means ! —that is to say, infection of 
the blood, and consequently of the whole economy, 
by a mischievous virus, which works without cessa- 
tion for the destruction of the body, and which a 
veritable Proteus takes on all forms, escapes when 
we wish to seize and annihilate it, escapes to return 
in another shape. 
And do not believe that all is finished when med- 
icine has succeeded in purifying the blood and 
driving from the economy the subtle poison ! No ! 
the unhappy one is not yet at rest. It seems to 
him that his pitiless enemy has not quit him without 
leaving some germ of new affections. Having be- 
come hypochondriac, filled with terrible anxiety, 
he submits himself to new and useless treatment; 
sometimes even he renders himself sick by the in- 
opportune care which he takes of himself, and the 
repeated perturbations which he provokes in his 
organic functions. 
Contracted most ordinarily in sexual commerce, 
the venereal disease is nevertheless susceptible of 
some other modes of transmission. On the one 
hand, it is by inheritance, the principle of the dis- 
ease propagating itself from the infected parents to 
the child contained in the mother’s womb. On the 
other hand, it is by nursing: either immediately 
in consequence of ulcerations of the breast, or 
through the medium of the-'milk coming from a SYPHILIS, CACHEXY, ETC. 
131 
nurse affected with constitutional syphilis. Finally, 
the disease is acquired under all circumstances 
whatsoever kisses, the touch which permit the 
virus to be deposited upon the skin deprived of its 
epidermis, or upon the orifices of the mucous cavities. 
For a long time it was believed that discharges, 
chancres, vegetations, were the only sources from 
which the venereal disease was derived. But new 
observations have demonstrated the possibility of 
contagion by certain eruptions of the skin, which 
have been designated under the name of secondary 
symptoms. 
The special treatment of syphilis often consists 
a consoling thing to say—in arresting the progress 
of the disease and preventing the bad symptoms. 
But, then, many circumstances cause it to fail. 
Sometimes the medication is not followed sufficiently 
long enough. In other cases, the patient falls into 
the hands of charlatanism, which cuts short the 
symptoms without removing the root of the disease. 
Often inexperience, indifference, excesses, chagrin, 
misery, only increase and aggravate the disease. 
Finally, the constitution is undermined, and the 
venereal cachexy appears, most deplorable of 
conditions. Gibert has given us a description of it:1 
“ The principal features of the venereal cachexy are, besides 
the ordinary and characteristic phenomena (syphilides, consecu- 
tive ulcers of the skin), general emaciation, pallor, discoloration 
1 Gibert, Traitb des Maladies de la Peau et de la Syphilis, 3c 
Edition, Paris, iB6O, t. ii. p. 455. 132 
LIBERTINISM. 
ot the complexion, scorbutic stains on the inferior extremities, a 
great disposition to oedema and dropsies. 
“ The moral and physical nature arp equally depressed and 
languishing: the patients are melancholy, they weep at the 
least cause ; or rather they are in a state of indifference and 
apathy, sometimes even reduced to a state of idiocy. 
“ If we add to these sad indications of cachexy the hideous 
ravages of the venereal virus, which have brought on deform- 
ity'- of the nose, alterations of the features, disfigured by cica- 
trices, the presence of fetid ulcers upon the face and upon other 
parts of the body, ... we shall easily conceive all the horror 
that such a picture can inspire.” 
These unhappy victims are then attacked by 
grave diseases, which are added to the diathesis : 
thus, the neuroses, epilepsy, chorea, mental aliena- 
tion, paralysis, phthisis, diarrhoea, &c., can super- 
vene and cause death. 
However, we must truly say that these cases are 
quite rare ; but they are met with, and all specialists 
point them out. 
But what we most often see is those individuals 
previously attacked by and cured of constitutional 
syphilis, who enjoy the appearance of health, but 
who are troubled without cessation by other affec- 
tions which have succeeded the ordinary s}Tmptoms 
of the venereal disease. These affections creep 
surreptitiously into the economy; and their masked 
conduct does not always permit an inattentive ob- 
server to recognize their primitive cause. 
A distinguished physician, P. Yvaren,1 has found 
1 Yvaren, Des Metamorphoses de la Syphilis. Paris, iB6O. SYPHILIS, CACHEXY, ETC. 
I33 
materials to write a voluminous work upon the 
metamorphoses of syphilis. The most common 
manifestations are migraines, headache, neural- 
gias, rheumatism, &c., affections which occasion 
violent sufferings of a desperate obstinacy. 
Not only do debauchees become infected them- 
selves, but they transmit the contagion to their 
progeny. 
The father as well as the mother communicates 
the syphilitic virus to the children ; and then 
“ Dans le germe de vie, jete par I’imprudence, 
Fermente ce levain, le poison de I’enfance.” 
These poor little beings are attacked sometimes at 
their birth : more often it is at the end of a month 
or two, before these morbid symptoms appear. 
I recall the heart-rending anguish of a mother 
whom I assisted at her fifth confinement. She 
related to me her misfortune: "I have already 
brought into the world four children. Alas! they 
all died during the first months of their existence. 
A frightful eruption wasted them away and killed 
them. Save me the one that is about to be born I ” 
cried she, in tears. The child that I delivered was 
sickly and puny. A few days after its birth, it had 
purulent ophthalmia; then, crusted and ulcerated 
pustules, a few at first, numerous afterwards, cov- 
ered the entire surface of the skin. Soon this mis- 
erable little being became as meagre as a skeleton, 
hideous to the sight, and died. Having questioned 134 
LIBERTINISM. 
the husband, he acknowledged to me that he had 
had syphilis, which was badly treated; that his 
wife had acquired it. From that had come the 
whole trouble. I gave them both a careful treat- 
ment; and the following year the woman gave birth 
to a child, which grew up quite healthy. 
The syphilitic condition, says Lugol,1 is one of 
the most common causes of hereditary scrofula. 
How many times the physician, instructed by 
the secret confessions, or in consequence of the 
treatment which he has given to the parents, sees 
this truth confirmed, and traces the sad filiation of 
syphilis and of scrofula ! Astruc, having noticed 
the relations so common of syphilis and of scrofula, 
has advanced assuredly in this case he went too 
far that scrofula should be regarded as having 
its origin in a degenerated syphilis. He was able 
to cause this erroneous opinion to be accepted by 
a great number of practitioners. 
Portal relates the history of a kind of scrofulous 
epidemic, which prevailed at Montmorency amongst 
the nursing children of that country. The evil be- 
came so great that the government sent two mem- 
bers of the Academy of Sciences there, in order to 
find out its cause. The commissioners of this learned 
society recognized that the nurses of that country 
were for the most part syphilitic. 
1 Lugol, Recherches et Observations sur les Causes des Mal- 
adies Scrofuleuses, Paris, 1844, in-8. See H. Lebert, Traite 
Pratique des Maladies Scrofuleuses et Tuberculeuses, Paris, 1849 VII. 
WHY LIBERTINISM IS SO INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
THE DIFFERENT DISEASES ENGENDERED 
BY VENEREAL EXCESSES. SEVERAL OBSER- 
VATIONS. OPINIONS OF THE MOST CELE- 
BRATED PHYSICIANS. —INVOLUNTARY SEM- 
INAL LOSSES. ELOQUENCE OF A FEW 
FIGURES. 
Before making known the numerous ills pro- 
duced by libertinism, it is proper to consider wbat 
causes can render the abuse of sensual pleasures 
so injurious. 
We must recognize two principal causes, 
the exaggerated loss of the seminal secretion, and 
the excessive nervous expenditure occasioned by the 
generative act. 
The sperm is without dispute the most important 
and the most precious secretion of the economy. 
It is the purest extract of the blood; and, according 
to the energetic expression of Fernel, Totus homo 
semen est. Not only is the prolific fluid destined 
to communicate the spark of life, it should besides 
contribute to maintain the life of the individual. It 
is necessary that it should be absorbed again in 
part, that it should enter again into the current of 
the circulation, in order to bring always a new 
vigor to the vital functions, and to contribute in 
that way to the prolongation of existence. The 136 
LIBERTINISM. 
abuse of the genital power hinders this so salutary 
resorption, so necessary even for the health. More- 
over, it provokes so abundant a secretion of semen, 
that it acts to the detriment of the others, and ex- 
hausts the body. 
All the evacuations of the humors are accom- 
plished with ease in a state of perfect health, 
without reaction upon the organism. It is not the 
same with that of the sperm. There is need of 
nothing less than a general shock, a convulsion of 
all the parts, an acceleration of the vital movement, 
in order to give it issue. "It is a very violent action,” 
says Haller, "analogous to a convulsion, which con- 
sequently enfeebles considerably, and injures the 
whole nervous system.” 
We ought not, then, to be surprised that the 
physiological act, requiring so great an expenditure 
of vitality, must be injurious in the highest degree, 
when it is reiterated abusively. 
To engender is to give a portion of one’s life. 
Does not he who is prodigal of himself precipitate 
his own ruin? 
A peculiar character of the diseases which have 
their origin in venereal excesses and masturbation is 
chronicity. These affections have generally a slow 
progressive course. They bear almost all of them 
the stamp of a profound alteration of the organic 
liquids and solids. The digestive and nutritive 
functions are those which are first attacked. Then, 
according to the predispositions, come troubles in WHY IT IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
137 
the circulatory system and the genito-urinary appar- 
atus, or in that of innervation. At the commence- 
ment of genital excesses, the body having need 
of reparation, the appetite augments, is insatiable : 
digestion is easy, rapid. But this condition does 
not last long. The stomach becomes the seat of 
distressing sensations, —of weight, pain, fainting, 
agonizing sufferings. It experiences a distaste for 
different kinds of food, digests them with difficulty, 
ends finally in rejecting them by repeated vomitings 
or obstinate diarrhoeas. 
When the digestive function is disturbed, other 
functions of the organism very soon become altered. 
Nutrition languishes, the humors become impover- 
ished, the constitution is threatened by the gravest 
maladies. 
Emaciation is one of the most constant effects of 
excessive pollutions. This symptom shows itself 
rapidly, and brings sometimes the unfortunate per- 
son to the most complete marasmus. I have seen 
an instance in which the body, reduced to its osse- 
ous framework, presented prematurely the picture 
of the cadaverous condition to which death was soon 
to reduce it. 
Individual predispositions, acquired or hereditary, 
engender for each a series of peculiar ills. 
In some, the debility bears upon the pulmonary 
organs. Hence results the dry cough, prolonged 
hoarseness, stitch in the side, spitting of blood, 
and finally phthisis. 138 
LIBERTINISM, 
How many examples are there of young debau- 
chees who have been devoured by this cruel disease ! 
. . . It is, of all the grave maladies, the one which 
venereal abuses provoke the most frequently. Por- 
tal,1 Bajde,2 Louis,3 say this distinctly. 
In others, symptoms of chlorosis, of anaemia, 
predominate; and, without directly compromising 
the existence, sadden their days by their incessant 
sufferings. The skin of a dull white color, the 
complexion sallow, the lips discolored, the eyes 
surrounded by a bluish circle, announce the im- 
poverishment of the blood. There is depression, 
prostration of the forces, shortness of breath, palpi- 
tations of the heart, painful neuroses. 
In iB6O, I took care of a libidinous young man 
who had arrived at a frightful degree of debility. 
His body, drawn down by the weight of the head 
and chest, was curved as in old age. He could 
not remain in an upright position. At the least 
movement he experienced vertigo, hypochondriasis, 
spasms, prolonged fainting fits. 
In less severe cases, the sensibility of the nervous 
system, which is no longer moderated by the rich- 
ness of the blood,—sanguis moderator nervorum,— 
becomes exalted, and determines violent neuralgias, 
varied, interminable, which only cease at one point 
1 Portal, Observations sur la Nature et le Traitement de la 
Phthisie Pulmonaire. Paris, 1809. 
2 Bayle, Recherches sur la Phthisie Pulmonaire. Paris, 1809. 
8 Louis, Recherches Anatomiques, Pathologiques, et Thera- 
peutiques sur la Phthisie. Paris, 1543. WHY IT IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
139 
to seize upon another, with an intensity always 
greater. The functions of the circulation of the 
blood being made more active by the frequent emo- 
tions and the often-repeated shocks of the generative 
act, the most energetic and most precipitated beat- 
ings of the heart supervene, which determine, in 
individuals who are more or less sanguine in tem- 
perament, organic lesions of this viscus, hyper- 
trophy, dilatation of the cavities, aneurism. On 
the other hand, sanguine congestions of the brain 
predispose to apoplexy, to cerebral softening, to pro- 
gressive general paralysis. Tissot, Pinel, Cruveil- 
hier, Londe, Andral, Serres, have placed excessive 
debauchery amongst the causes of these affections; 
and the greater part of sudden deaths during the 
venereal act are due to effusions of blood in the 
brain, in the lungs, or to the rupture of an aneu- 
rism. It is not rare to have to decide upon facts of 
this kind in houses of prostitution. 
I was called, relates Doctor Bergeret,1 in the 
middle of the night to a young woman who was 
seized with a frightful nervous attack. She had 
never had it before; and her parents were the more 
surprised, inasmuch as they knew of no reason to 
cause it. I knew that this young woman, who was 
poor, passed for the mistress of an old gentleman who 
was known for his fondness of debauchery. I sent 
the parents away under different pretexts ; and, alone 
1 Bergeret, Des Fraudes dans I’Accomplissement des Fonc- 
tions Generatrices, 3c edition, Paris, 1870, p. 107. 140 
LIBERTINISM. 
with the patient, I requested her to inform me what 
had happened to her. Then she related to me that, 
when she had her lover in her arms, all at once the 
movements of this man had ceased, his eyes were 
turned upwards, the sentence which he had com- 
menced expired upon his lips. She calls him, she 
cries out. Not a word ! She sees that in her arms 
she has only a dead body, which she pushes away 
from her precipitously. She hurries away from the 
scene as quick as possible. At her arrival home, 
she was taken with the nervous attack. 
Chronic diseases of the brain, and above all of 
the cerebellum, have often been recognized in libid- 
inous persons. We know that it is in the cerebellum 
that phrenologists place the instinct of reproduction, 
Serrurier2 reports the remarkable case of a young 
soldier, who, exhausted by venereal excesses and 
masturbation, was attacked by a cerebral disease 
with epileptiform convulsions, total loss of vision, 
and imbecility. " I shall always recollect with a 
painful sentiment,” says this author, " the frightful 
picture which this unfortunate one presented to me, 
who, even in the midst of his convulsive attacks, still 
provoked his exhausted organs. He was in a state 
of complete marasmus, his sight was extinguished, 
his intelligence stupefied. Wherever he happened 
to be, he satisfied his natural desires. His body 
exhaled a nauseating odor, his skin was deathly, 
1 Serrurier, Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales, Art. Pollu- 
tion, p. 114. WHY IT IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
14I 
his speech vacillating, his eyes sunken, all his teeth 
were loosened and the gums ulcerated. This con- 
dition was of six months’ duration, when the unfor- 
tunate one succumbed.” 
Diseases of the spinal marrow are so frequent in 
debauched persons that a special name has been 
given to them, that of consumption, of dorsal 
phthisis, of tabes dorsalis, when they come from 
venereal excesses. 
We see progressive general paralysis take place 
sometimes quite rapidly, but more often slowly and 
by degrees. 
The following instance, drawn from my own 
practice, shows well the physiognomy of the 
disease : 
M. D., aged thirty-five years, who had committed 
many excesses with women and wine, commences 
to experience feebleness in his legs, which causes 
him to stagger like a drunken man. Sometimes 
he used to fall down while walking on the level 
ground. Little by little, the paralysis increases; 
he is obliged to remain in his apartment, and pass 
his entire days in his arm-chair. His trembling 
hands do not permit of his writing; his stammering 
speech can only be understood with great difficulty ; 
his enfeebled memory no longer serves him even to 
play at cards. He had a good appetite, slept suffi- 
ciently well, but could no longer turn in his bed. 
Notwithstanding the most assiduous care, the dis- 
ease made progress, but not very rapid; for M. D. 
still lived many years. 142 
LIBERTINISM. 
Some months before his death, he had several 
times a week fearful nervous attacks. His legs and 
arms are convulsively agitated for several hours, as 
if they were under the influence of a powerful 
electric pile; they extend and contract like a 
spring. 
For a long time he could not execute a single 
movement; he had lost the faculty of making him- 
self understood, and his paralyzed arms no longer 
permitted him to make any sign. The patient 
passed the entire day and night in his arm-chair, 
his body bent backwards, his legs extended in a 
chair,— having beside him a person occupied without 
cessation in raising his head, which kept falling, 
changing his position, giving him food, wiping his 
nose, &c. 
At the commencement of his disease, this unfor- 
tunate person had acknowledged to me that, beside 
his venereal excesses, it was to masturbation he 
attributed all his troubles. He had given himself 
up to it without restraint for several years. 
Numerous are the diseases of the genito-urinary 
apparatus which may affect debauchees. 
We observe 
In man, discharges and strictures of the urethra ; 
priapism, or morbid exaltation of the venereal ap- 
petite ; impotence, involuntary seminal losses. 
In woman, leucorrhoea, hemorrhages, ulcers of 
the neck of the womb; polypi, or uterine cancer; 
furor uterinus, or nymphomania; sterility or abor- 
tions. WHY IT IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
143 
In both sexes, inflammation of the kidneys, or 
nephritis; that of the bladder, or cystitis; incon- 
tinence of urine, neuralgia of the neck of the 
bladder, and all the forms of syphilis. 
Finally, in the most degraded, anal fissures, 
prolapsus and cancer of the rectum, abscesses and 
fistulas at the margin of the anus. 
Authors have reported numerous instances which 
demonstrate the influence of the abuse of sexual 
pleasures upon the production of these different 
affections. We have only to make a visit to Saint- 
Lazare in order to judge of the diseases which 
attack prostitutes. 
Nevertheless we should remark that these unfor- 
tunate persons do not practise coitus except as an 
occupation and without pleasure. 
Much more exposed still are women of an ardent 
temperament, of an insatiable lust, or who have 
conjugal relations accompanied by artifices for the 
purpose of avoiding conception: diseases of the 
womb are more frequent with them. 
Certain men, who have abused sexual enjoy- 
ments, perceive their generative organs grow cold 
prematurely and fall into a sort of inertia and 
paralysis, which cannot be overcome; or rather, 
if any remnant of force survives, the semen has 
lost its prolific power, and no longer admits of 
procreation. 
Permanent excitations of the sensibility, inces- 
sant losses of the vital forces, depravation of the I44 
LIBERTINISM. 
nutritive functions, all concur, in the luxurious, 
to shake profoundly the nervous system. Thus 
libertinism produces all sorts of neuroses, ills 
constantly reviving, spasms, tremors, convulsions, 
chorea, epilepsy, hysteria, aberrations of hearing, 
of vision, amaurosis, partial or general paralyses, 
cramps of the extremities. We can here invoke 
the testimony of all the authors who have occupied 
themselves especially with nervous affections,— 
Tissot, Fodere, Georget, Sandras, M. M. Foville, 
Briquet,1 Bouchut.‘~ 
Doctor Oppenheim,3 physician of the Grand 
Vizier, attributes the frequency of hypochondriasis 
and of hysteria amongst the Orientals to their 
abuse of sexual pleasures. Many times I have 
been called to attend young women seized, for 
the first time, with convulsive attacks during the 
first night of their nuptials. 
When we consider the physiological effects of 
the venereal act, we see that they present a striking 
analogy with epilepsy, to such a degree that the 
ancients called coitus cfilejisia brevis. There are 
individuals who have so great a nervous suscepti- 
bility that they experience a veritable convulsive 
attack every time they give themselves up to sensual 
1 Briquet, Traite Clinique et Thdrapeutique de I’Hysterie, 
Paris, 1859, in"B- 
- Bouchut, De I’Etat Nerveux Aigu et Chronique ou Ner- 
vosisme, Paris, IS6O, in-S. 
3 Oppenheim, Essai sur I’Etat de la Medecine en Turquie. 
Hambourg, 1833. WHY IT IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
145 
indulgence. Epilepsy comes on sometimes imme- 
diately after the excesses which cause it. 
Esquirol has related the case of a young woman 
who, three days after her marriage, became epi- 
leptic. But most frequently the abuse of sexual 
pleasures acts more slowly. 
I have seen, relates Zimmermann, a man of 
twenty-three years of age, who became epileptic 
after being enfeebled by frequent masturbations. 
Every time he had pollutions, whether involuntary 
or provoked, he fell into a complete attack of 
convulsions. Nevertheless, having acquired more 
rational habits, the convulsions disappeared, and 
I hoped even to be able to cure the epilepsy. He 
had regained his strength, appetite, sleep, and 
good color, after having resembled a dead person. 
But, having returned to his shameful manoeuvres, 
which were always followed by an attack, he had 
finally attacks even in the street; and he was 
found dead one morning in his chamber, fallen 
from his bed and bathed in his own blood. 
Enfeeblement or the loss of the senses, particularly 
of hearing and of sight, have been pointed out in 
all times as the consequence of venereal excesses. 
Almost always libertines have their eyes red, 
watery, bleared, fatigued, painful. They are un- 
able to devote themselves, above all in the evening, 
to work which exacts fixed attention on an object. 
This condition predisposes to most serious symp- 146 
LIBERTINISM. 
toms. Sanson, Rognetta, Sichel,1 have pointed out 
the abuse of sexual pleasures as a powerful cause 
of blindness by amaurosis. They add that the 
retina and the optic nerve gradually lose their sen- 
sitive faculty, which ends by being extinguished 
in consequence of asthenic debility, the same as in 
old men. 
Where libertinism appears to produce ravages, the 
most deplorable are in the intelligence and the heart 
of man. 
Debauchees lose the vivacity of their imagination, 
the soundness of their judgment, the activity of 
their mind, the power of their memory. Having 
abused all the enjoyments in their orgies, having 
profaned all the humane sentiments in their erotic 
enterprises, they become cold, egotists, sombre, 
hypochondriacal; they fall into ennui and disgust 
of life. 
A certain number of them end by suicide. 
Others lose their reason completely, are attacked 
by mental derangement. Mania, melancholy, im- 
becility, dementia, are the forms which are most 
ordinarily observed. Statistics demonstrate that, 
of one hundred insane men, ten have been led 
to the loss of reason by libertinism. The twentieth 
part of the insane of La Salpetriere is composed of 
public women, for the most part fallen into dementia 
and paralysis. 
1 Sichel, Iconographie Ophthalmologique. Paris, 1852-1859. 
Galezowski, Traits des Maladies des Yeux. Paris, 1871. WHY IT IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
147 
How many times in visiting the asylums of the 
insane,—Charenton, Bicetre, La Salpetriere, Saint- 
Lazare, how many times have I meditated upon 
the deplorable consequences of debauchery, upon 
the terrible but just chastisements inflicted in con- 
sequence of outraged hygiene and morality! O 
golden youth ! said I to myself, at this hour so bril- 
liant of health, so thoughtless, you who are in- 
toxicated with pleasures, who taste one by one the 
thousand enjoyments of the senses, who lavish your 
gold and the luxuriant forces of your life, may you 
never, like me, be present at these touching specta- 
cles of intellectual decay and of moral degradation ! 
“ De I’homme, 6tre peasant, affreuse parodie ! ” 
Oh that you may not hear the lamentable histories of 
these brutish beings, these blasted heroines, who 
erewhile, like you, hastened from festival to festival, 
like you sacrificing themselves to idols of flesh and 
bone ! . . . Now behold them, these sad victims, 
such as debauchery has made them ! . . . Behold 
them with wasted body, stupid countenance, an 
eye without fire, a face without thought! They 
are there, filthy, ragged, infected, their hair dis- 
ordered, with drivelling mouth, flabby arms, and 
trembling limbs. One passes his days crouched 
in a corner, immovable and mute, soiled by his 
excremental ordures which he evacuates uncon- 
ciously. The other, beset by the salacity of a 
satyr, has the insatiable madness to seek in his 148 
LIBERTINISM. 
withered organs the enjoyments which they can no 
longer give. This woman, bound by a straight 
jacket, with red face, haggard eye, who vociferates 
injury, is tormented by furor uterinus. By means 
of automatic movements of the body, renewed with- 
out cessation, she excites unceasingly her sensations 
always greedy for gross, sensual pleasures. 
If we did not see these hideous spectacles, we 
could not believe that human nature could ever 
descend to such a degradation of body and soul. . . . 
From the most remote ages to the present day, 
ph}'sicians have been occupied in studying the 
diseases produced by venereal excesses and mastur- 
bation. 
Listen to the wise old man of Cos, Hippocrates,l 
who describes the disorders engendered by the 
abuse of coition under the name of dorsal con- 
sumption : 
“ It attacks chiefly the newly married and people given to 
venereal pleasures. They are without fever, have a good appe- 
tite, but grow thin. If you question them, they will tell you 
that a kind of creeping sensation seems to them to descend from 
the head along the spine ; after micturition or defecation, they 
discharge abundant and watery sperm ; they do not procreate ; 
they have nocturnal pollutions whether they sleep or not with a 
woman. In walking or running, above all in going up hill, they 
are taken with difficulty in respiration and weakness. The head 
is heavy, there is a ringing in the ears. At the end of a certain 
time, violent fevers come on; and the patient dies of remittant 
fever.” 
1 Hippocrates, CEuvres, trad. E. Littrd, Des Maladies, livre 
ii. 51, Paris, ISSI, t. vii. p. 79. WHY IT IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
149 
Somewhat later, Celsus writes : 
“ The pleasures of love are always injurious to delicate per- 
sons : their frequent use enfeebles the strength, and produces 
numerous ills, apoplexies, epilepsies, convulsions, blindness, 
tremblings, paralyses, and all kinds of most painful gout.” 
And Aretmus: 
“Young men acquire the air and the infirmities of old age: 
they become pale, effeminated, imbecile; their body is curved, 
their legs bend under them, their hair falls out, their eyes be- 
come hollow. They dry up in marasmus : some of them are 
seized with paralysis.” 
Hoffmann says : 
“ After numerous pollutions, not only is the strength lost, the 
body becomes thin, the countenance pale, but, more than all 
this, the memory becomes enfeebled, a continual sensation of 
cold seizes on the extremities, the vision becomes obscure, the 
voice hoarse, the entire body falls into ruins.” 
Boerhaave speaks of these diseases with the 
force and the precision which characterize his de- 
scriptions. 
Tissot1 paints pictures which make us tremble. 
Lallemand has produced a work of great impor- 
tance on involuntary seminal losses, which abounds 
in observations, practical facts, generous and emi- 
nently philosophical thoughts.2 
Involuntary seminal losses are observed very 
often in the libidinous. It is this disease which 
the celebrated physicians cited above have had, 
above all, in view in their descriptions. 
1 Tissot, Dissertation sur I’Onanisme. Paris, 1840. 
2 Lallemand, Des Pertes Sdminales Involontaires. Paris, 
1836-1842. I5° 
LIBERTINISM. 
We know that there are useful pollutions. They 
are those which manifest themselves from time to 
time during the night in lascivious dreams, in 
youths or adults who live in continence. They 
remedy then a spermatic plethora, and are followed 
by comfort and health. 
But if these pollutions are frequent, repeated 
nearly every night, without being accompanied by 
excitation ; if the prolific fluid escapes by dribbling, 
without giving rise to the least pleasure, then it is 
a state of disease, and the disease is one of the 
gravest character. 
The unfortunate patients grow rapidly pale and 
become emaciated. They lose their strength, have 
frequent chills, tremble in their limbs, complain 
of weight in the head, vertigo, dimness of vision, 
ringing in the ears. They are subjects for cere- 
bral congestion. 
Their digestion is painful, slow, accompanied by 
acidity, flatulence. Their sight is obscured, their 
voice feeble, hoarse. They are out of breath, asth- 
matic, tormented by violent palpitations. 
A deep melancholy seizes upon their soul. They 
take an aversion to all pleasures, are incapable of 
becoming occupied with serious things. Feeling 
their degradation, they have the bitter regret of 
having been the authors of their own misfortune. 
Some experience convulsions, frequent attacks 
of epilepsy. Others have rigidity of their limbs, 
cramps, paralysis. WHY IT IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
151 
The disease has an irregular course, presents 
periods of intermission. But, far from having 
the tendency to become cured spontaneously, it is 
always aggravated, passes into the chronic state, 
and the tabescents languish during long years. 
In proportion as the disease makes progress, the 
seminal evacuations take place without the patient 
being conscious of them, in consequence of the 
least muscular efforts, during defecation or evac- 
uation of the urine. 
Little by little the patients fall into a state of con- 
sumption. Sustaining themselves with difficulty, 
exhausted in -physique as well as in morals, they 
resemble the walking dead. Their hair falls out, 
their feet become swollen, their senses, and above 
all the sight, become blunted. They have diar- 
rhoea, alternating with constipation. 
Finally, they succumb without fever in the last 
stage of marasmus. Sometimes an intercurrent dis- 
ease takes them away more promptly. 
Venereal excesses produce not only languishing 
diseases, but also sometimes affections of rapid and 
acute course. 
Hippocrates1 has left us the account of a young 
man who, after a night of debauch, was attacked 
by a violent fever, accompanied by malignant 
symptoms, which terminated in a few days by 
death. 
/ 
1 Hippocrates, In Maladies Epidemiques, CEuvres Completes. 
Paris, 1851. I52 
LIBERTINISM. 
Other authors have reported similar cases, and 
Sauvages has even described this disease under the 
name of burning fever of the exhausted {JiZvre ar- 
dcnte des dpuises). 
There have besides been observed cerebral fever, 
apoplexy, inflammatory diseases, inflammation of 
the chest, pleurisy, and finally sudden deaths. 
The accidental diseases which come on in de- 
bauchees are very dangerous. Their course is 
irregular, their symptoms strange, their stages 
disordered. 
Hardly do we find any resources in the debilitated 
constitution: art must do all. When death does 
not take place, there remains a state of languor 
which is not convalescence, and which demands 
prolonged care, in order not to pass into the 
chronic state. This important fact, pointed out 
above all by Tissot and Georget, is one of those 
concerning which practitioners should be on their 
guard in the future. 
Lut us finish by eliciting, by means of a few 
figures, drawn in part from Parent-Duchatelet,1 
information full of eloquence on the ravages of 
debauchery in society. 
1 Parent-Duchatelet, De la Prostitution dans laVille de Paris, 
considered sous la Rapport de I’Hygi&ne Publique, de la Morale 
et de I’Administration, Paris, 1857, t. i. p. 107. WHY IT IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
153 
The Determining Causes of Prostitution in 
5,183 Girls. 
Excess of misery, absolute destitution in consequence 
of idleness, or other motives . . 1,441 
Abandoned concubines 1,425 
Loss of parents, expulsion from the paternal mansion, 
utter neglect 1,255 
Brought to Paris, and abandoned by their lovers, sol- 
diers, clerks, or students 404 
Domestics who have been seduced and turned away by 
their masters 289 
Come from the province to Paris for concealment or to 
find resources 280 
In order to sustain poor and infirm parents 37 
The eldest of families, in order to sustain their brothers 
and sisters, nephews and nieces 29 
Widows, to sustain their families 23 
Total 5,183 
Occupations pursued by Prostitutes before their 
Inscription. 
Of 3,120 girls inscribed at Paris, Parent has found: 
Seamstresses, saleswomen, milliners, and other analo- . 
gous conditions 1,559 
Dealers in vegetables, flowers, fruits 859 
Weavers, and analogous conditions 285 
Hatters, and analogous conditions 283 
Jewellers, and analogous conditions 98 
Actresses 23 
Midwives 7 
Set up in a shop 3 
Tenants 3 
Total 3,120 LIBERTINISM. 
Increase of Prostitutes inscribed in Paris. 
Before 1830, 2,800. 
In 1831, 3,517. 
In 1840, 3,906. 
In 1850, 4,750. 
In iB6O, 7,280. 
Venereal Patients admitted into the Hospitals of 
Paris. 
From 1804 to 1814, that is to say during the space of ten 
years, 27,576 patients entered the hospital for venereal diseases ; 
of whom, for adults, there were 13,638 men, 12,163 women; 
and for children, 794 boys and 981 girls. 
The number of deaths during these ten years has been 1,170, 
that is to say 1 in 24 cases of venereal diseases. 
From 1814 to 1842, there have been admitted 112,233 patients. 
From 1842 to 1852, „ „ „ „ 38,435 „ 
From 1812 to 1832, there were in Paris, according to Parent- 
Duchatelet, 20,626 prostitutes attacked by syphilis. 
From 1814 to 1834, that is to say, during the period of twenty 
years, the administration of the hospitals expended 4,940,226 
francs for the care given to venereal patients. 
Relations of Libertinism with Criminality. 
The following are the mean annual statistics, from 1850 to iB6O, 
of the consequences of libertinism in France, the most civilized 
country of the globe : 
Illegitimate children 75,24.5 
Public outrages against modesty ... .... 842 
Rapes and outrages upon children 439 
Outrages upon morals 286 
Exposures of children 148 
Violation of adults 225 
Infanticides and attempts at infanticide 192 
Murders, incendiarisms 68 
Abortions and attempts at abortion 42 
From year to year, the crimes coming from libertinism aug- 
ment more and more. WHY IT IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. 
155 
It has been calculated that 25 in 100 of the women accused 
of crimes have had illegitimate children ; that nearly one-third 
of the women accused have had depraved morals ; that one- 
twelfth of the men accused are illegitimate children, or live in 
concubinage, or are of notorious immorality. 
Many statistics made at Sainte-Pelagie have shown that of 
100 individuals confined in this establishment for misdemeanors, 
80 lived in concubinage ; that of 100 committed to prison for 
abuse of confidence, theft or swindling, 75 had kept-women, who 
occasioned them excessive expenses. 
Morality of the Accused. VIII. 
VERY GREAT DANGERS OF LIBERTINISM IN 
YOUNG PEOPLE, IN OLD MEN, IN DELICATE 
PERSONS, IN THE SICK. 
Much more pernicious are the consequences of 
debauchery in those whose age and health do not 
permit them to be prodigal of their vital forces. 
In these times, in which we seek only to live 
quickly, to devour existence, it is deplorable to see 
such precocious perverseness in youth. Surely 
“ Le vice n’attend pas le nombre des annees.” 
If the ancients were stronger, more robust than 
ourselves, it is because they did not become initiated 
so young in the mysteries of libertinism. That fine 
race of Germans owed its superiority, according to 
Tacitus, only to the wise reservation of youth until 
perfect maturity. ” The ancient Gauls,” says Mon- 
taigne, " held it in extreme reproach to have had 
knowledge of woman before the age of twenty-five 
years.” 
Young men, remember this well: it is necessary 
that man should possess the plenitude of life to 
be able, without injury to himself, to communicate 
life. It is necessary, then, that the work of organ- 
ization of the body should be finished. Indeed, DANGERS IN YOUNG PEOPLE, ETC. 
157 
Flourens has demonstrated1 " that the growth of 
man is not completed until twenty years; that it is 
not until twenty-five years that the economy has 
reached the state of perfect maturity, and the body 
has acquired the greater part of its weight.” 
But what do we see? 
At first masturbation seizes, at different ages, on 
nearly all individuals. With its tyrannic habits, its 
convulsive excitements, its premature pollutions, it 
comes in the midst of the work of growth, to dis- 
turb, to arrest sometimes, the powerful efforts of 
nature. Later, at the epoch of puberty, the unruly 
imagination excites precocious desires, and behold 
young men who throw themselves inconsiderately 
into the midst of venereal pleasures, who are prod- 
igal of their nascent forces at the age when these 
forces are so useful to form virility, to fortify the 
organs, to perfect the functions, to develop the moral 
and intellectual faculties. 
They do not know, imprudent ones, that they 
compromise the present and the future ! If they 
escape disease in youth, their constitution is bur- 
dened with a debt of ills which they will pay for 
later. Let them recall this sentiment of Bacon : 
"The debauches of youth are conjurations against 
age, and we must pay dear in the evening for the 
follies of the morning.” 
You see these young Lovelaces at twenty-five 
years pale, etiolated, blasted, without moral power, 
1 Flourens, De la Longevite Humaine. Paris, 1855. 158 
LIBERTINISM. 
without intellectual activity: they are the abortions 
of men. Enervated by idleness, exhausted by the 
prodigality of their vital sap, they are unable to 
attain their destinies, and are condemned to vege- 
tate disgracefully, to bear along with them the sad 
cortege of ills of decrepitude. This is the history 
of so many young men who do not know what to do 
and where to go, in the midst of social activity. 
Just as pleasures taken before virile maturity 
hinder the development of the organism, so like- 
wise, if continued with excess at the age when the 
forces decline, they hasten its ruin and precipitate it 
towards the grave. 
And, first, let us see what modifications age im- 
presses on either sex, as regards the genital func- 
tions and the passions which are related to them. 
The faculty to procreate becomes extinguished 
in woman with menstruation. It is at the epoch of 
forty-five to fifty years that the menstrual flux is 
suppressed, that the bosoms wither, and the womb 
loses its functional activity.1 In man, we observe 
the diminution of the procreative faculty towards the 
fiftieth year; and this diminution increases until the 
age of seventy years, the ultimate period of exercise 
of the generative sense. As the spermatozoa have 
still been found in the seminal fluid of old men, as 
has been demonstrated by Dr. Duplay,2 we should 
1 See Raciborski, Traite de la Menstruation. Paris, 1867. 
2 Duplay, Archives Generates de Me'decine, De'cembre, 1852, 
p. 403. DANGERS IN YOUNG PEOPLE, ETC. 
159 
rather attribute the iufecundity of advanced age to a 
notable diminution of the functional powers. Nev- 
ertheless, love survives in man the enfeeblement of 
the genital sense. But it is calm, reflective, tena- 
cious love, love which suffers itself to be sacrificed 
without complaint, which is no longer capable of 
great follies, but of great weaknesses. So, also, the 
genital sense can survive the generative faculty. 
How many old men there are who do not know 
any more than young men how to resist the perilous 
enjoyments of sexual pleasure ! They should reflect 
upon the fatal consequences of their misconduct, 
these cynical men who do not cease to abandon 
themselves to their erotic salacity. Decayed Don 
Juans, they are always in search of new objects, 
more attractive, in order to excite their impure 
desires. To better excite their blunted senses, they 
have need of powerful stimuli; and they demand 
them from youth, from freshness, from beauty, from 
the graces, from variety. In order to stir up a fire 
almost extinguished, there are no manoeuvres which 
they do not employ, however culpable they may be. 
Time, which whitens their heads, has not been able 
to disenchant their minds. The evil has taken root 
in their habits. It is quite true to say, with a thinker 
of our epoch : "The punishment of those who have 
too much loved the women is to love them always.” 
And, nevertheless, how debasing is the role of 
these superannuated fops ! How ridiculous are their 
successes, how contemptible their- misfortunes! LIBERTINISM. 
Besides the formidable diseases and early and pre- 
cipitated course to old age, they have to fear sudden 
death, provoked by cerebral or pulmonary apoplexy, 
by rupture of blood-vessels, the results of disordered 
emotions and of considerable efforts. 
At every age, there are individuals who feel more 
profoundly than others the pernicious influences of 
libertinism. 
They are those who are predisposed to hereditary 
diseases, —to scrofula, to phthisis, to neuroses, to 
asthma, to gout, to calculi, to eczemas, to mental de- 
rangement, having had a parent attacked by one 
of these diseases. Let them know well that each 
act of their debauches bears a rude attack upon 
their health, and hastens the development of the 
disease of which they stand in dread. 
Delicate constitutions, in proportion to their ex- 
cesses, are threatened much more with diseases 
than persons of vigorous health. And, a thing 
worthy of remark, feeble, puny, phthisical creatures 
are often the most ardent in debauchery ! 
Sick persons and the wounded, who must preserve 
their strength with care, in order to resist the debil- 
itating action of disease, are obliged, in general, to 
deny themselves sexual pleasures. For a much 
more potent reason, they cannot give themselves up 
to excesses without compromising their health, and 
even their life. 
Many observations recorded in the annals of sci- 
ence have signalized the fatal consequences of these DANGERS IN YOUNG PEOPLE, ETC. 
l6l 
untimely excesses. Fabricius Hildanus speaks of a 
patient attacked by pleurisy, who at the tenth day, 
being convalescent, had intercourse with a woman, 
and was, immediately after the act, attacked with 
trembling, with fever : he died two days afterwards. 
" Scrofula, rachitis, gout, calculus,” says Saint- 
Marc, "are so many diseases which, when they 
have arrived to a certain degree, are exasperated 
by the venereal act.” It is the same with insanity : 
J. P. Falret1 has cited remarkable examples of it. 
"Each time a gouty person sees a woman,” writes 
Castel,2 "he adds, if he is young, a new root to his 
disease; and, if he is old, he digs a foot square of 
his grave.” 
The empire of habit has so much force that de- 
bauchees, when sick, continue their excesses, not- 
withstanding the warnings of science and of nature. 
O O 
I have treated a libidinous patient who never gave 
himself up to sensual pleasures without having a 
violent fever for several days. One of these attacks 
ended by carrying him off. 
An analogous case is reported by Plater. A man, 
having abused sensual pleasures until the fiftieth 
year, married at this age. Wishing to celebrate his 
nuptials, he is seized with such a violent suffocation 
that he is obliged to give it up. The same symptom 
seizes him every time he makes the same attempt. 
IJ. P. Falret, Des Maladies Mentales. Paris, 1864. 
2 Castel, Traite' de la Goutte. Paris, 1811. i62 
LIBERTINISM. 
He abstains for a long time: different kinds of 
treatment are prescribed for him. Finally he wishes 
to hazard a new attempt. The suffocation returns 
again. He is desirous of accomplishing the act; 
he dies then in the arms of his wife. IX. 
CONJUGAL ONANISM, OR THE ARTIFICIAL RE- 
LATIONS BETWEEN MAN AND WIFE IN ORDER 
TO AVOID CONCEPTION. IMMORALITY, DAN- 
GERS TO THE HEALTH. 
We must raise our voice against the dangerous 
abuses which soil the conjugal bed, against onanism 
of man and wife. 
We do not enter upon this subject without regret. 
But this vice is so widely spread that science should 
take cognizance of it. It should make known the 
real dangers of these artificial relations, invented 
by a culpable fraud, to prevent fecundation, and to 
annihilate the natural consequences of the conjugal 
relations. 
It is painful to avow how much, in our age, this 
vice is propagated ; and how much it propagates 
itself still, from day to day, in all classes of society. 
It seems, in this respect, as if the moral sense were 
lost, a condition of things which permits of disorder 
without any scruple. 
There then, assuredly, is a shameful social wound. 
How, then, has it come to us? 
Fatal maxims have been scattered in society. In 
the name of a false science, it has been maintained 
that populations cannot continue to increase, because 164 
LIBERTINISM. 
the alimentary substances do not increase in the 
same proportions ; that it is necessary, consequently, 
to restrain generation, to limit the family, to hinder 
above all or retard the marriages of poor persons, in 
order not to arrive at a dearth, and not to augment 
pauperism. On the other hand, luxury increasing 
more and more and beyond the limits of fortunes, 
individuals looking too much to the future have 
wished to limit their progeny to their resources, in 
order not to divide up their revenues too much and 
scatter their riches. 
Let us add to these causes the weakening of 
religious beliefs and practices. Religion, whose 
moral prescriptions are in perfect harmony with the 
laws of nature, with the teachings of physiology, 
with the rules of hygiene, proscribes severely every 
species of fraud in the accomplishment of the gener- 
ative functions. Indeed, this precept is not listened 
to. The vacillating reason of man seeks to substi- 
tute itself for the views of Providence : setting itself 
in dt - lance of the immutable wisdom of God, does it 
not imagine that it must reconstruct the grand laws 
which rule the universe ? 
Ridiculous presumption, which gives birth only to 
error, which sows only the seeds of ruin and death ! 
The man who would by his ingenuity derange 
the admirable combinations of the Creator, who 
would disturb the law which presides over the 
conservation and propagation of the species, does 
not do it with impunity : he must bear the penalty. CONJUGAL ONANISM. 
i65 
Observation confirms this : 
In the first place, the culpable end is not always 
attained. Certain married couples know that nature 
baffles sometimes the most adroit calculations of 
their ingenuity, that she regains the rights of which 
they wished to frustrate her. It is remarked that 
the children, the unexpected products of these 
unforeseen procreations, feel profoundly the strange 
perturbations of their conception. They are, in 
general, feeble, cacochymic, scrofulous, and even 
monstrous. 
Furthermore, physicians have observed that the 
venereal act exercised otherwise than under the in- 
spiration of instinct is a frequent cause of diseases 
for both sexes. 
In man, the conjugal duty accomplished physio- 
logically, completely, leaves after it a state of com- 
fort which always results from the satisfaction of an 
imperious desire. But when the function has been 
disturbed by culpable preoccupations, the nervous 
erethism is exalted, persists, is accompanied by 
depression, prostration, fatigue, and above all by 
a shade of sadness analogous to a remorse of 
conscience. 
By the repetition of these unnatural acts, de- 
rangements in the health may supervene, diseases 
similar to those produced by solitary onanism,— 
different neuroses, hypochondria, emaciation, im- 
potence, involuntary seminal losses, &c. 
Dr. A. Mayer, who has given his attention to 166 
LIBERTINISM. 
this delicate subject,1 has reported several obser- 
vations. The following is one of them: 
“ A man came to consult me, saying to me that he felt as if 
he was going day by day, such was his expression, and that 
his forces were exhausted, although he had his ordinary appetite, 
digested his food easily, and gave himself sufficient nourish- 
ment. He immediately added that he was in no suffering, and 
that he did not know to what to attribute his condition. See 
elsewhere the circumstantial history of this patient. 
“M.B. is aged thirty-six years. He exercises the profession 
of draughtsman. Of a nervous temperament, and of a constitu- 
tion originally robust, but now deteriorated, he has been mar- 
ried seven years, and is already the father of five children, all 
living. My attention is immediately turned towards the probable 
cause of a nervous disorder of which this man bears the impres- 
sion upon his physiognomy. To my interrogations directed to this 
end, he replied to me that his wife having had her health se- 
verely shaken in consequence of an uninterrupted succession of 
pregnancies, and having run the risk of dying during the labor 
of her last confinement, he had resolved with her to surround 
their sexual relations with the most minute precautions, in order 
to prevent a new conception. This man put in play the best 
calculated refinements of conjugal onanism. There happened in 
consequence of these manoeuvres a prolapsus which held the hus- 
band in a state of semi-syncope, the duration of which extended 
sometimes even to an hour. The wife herself was the prey to 
nervous symptoms and to a manifest decline. My prescription 
was this : to renounce completely conjugal relations, or to prac- 
tise them normally, under the penalty of the gravest conse- 
quences for both. Moreover, I believed myself authorized, by 
way of precaution, to advise him not to approach his wife until 
after the twelfth day, to date from the end of the menstrual 
epochs. Science proves that, from the twelfth day after the 
1 Mayer, Des Rapports Conjugaux consideres sous le Triple 
Point de Vue de la Population, de la Santd, et de la Morale Pub- 
lique, 5e edition, Paris, 1868, p. 160, et suiv. CONJUGAL ONANISM. 
167 
menstrual epoch until a new menstruation, there is little proba- 
bility of conception. 
“ I saw this patient six months later, and found him literally 
transformed. His health had returned completely under the 
influence of a more regular conduct.” 
Practice has likewise permitted me to collect a 
certain number of important facts. 
M. L. has practised the conjugal duty normally 
since his marriage until 1850; that is to say, dur- 
ing nine years. Then, having four children, not 
wishing to increase his family he gives himself up 
to the culpable manoeuvres of conjugal onanism. 
Endowed with excellent health, of a nervous san- 
guine temperament, he had always possessed great 
physical and moral vigor. 
He noticed, at the end of a year of this practice, 
a more marked excitability during the act, followed 
by prostration and exhaustion more and more pro- 
longed. 
He could not account for the cause of these phe- 
nomena. Notwithstanding a succulent and copious 
alimentation, he felt little by little his forces dimin- 
ishing, his vital energy becoming feeble. When, 
he was much fatigued, slight tremors agitated his 
limbs. He often had dimness of vision, vertigo, 
which passed off rapidly. A melancholy seized 
upon him. 
Consulted by the wife of M. L. for this patient 
without well-defined disease, but whose nervous 
system was severely shaken, I passed in review all 168 
LIBERTINISM. 
of the probable causes of his condition, and was led 
to recognize in conjugal onanism the cause of the 
whole trouble. M. L. shared in my opinion, and 
resumed from that time his good conjugal habits. It 
required less than six months to confirm my diag- 
nosis by the cure. M. L. regained his strength 
completely, and his health was re-established. 
Nevertheless, two years passed before his wife 
became pregnant. Was it to the man or to the 
woman that the default of generation must be at- 
tributed? Was it to both? They had always had 
for a long time disorder in the act, and from it per- 
turbation in the procreative faculty. 
In the following observation, onanism is seen to 
bring on involuntary seminal losses. 
M. P., aged twenty-six years, in mercantile em- 
ployment, of good health, leading a regular life, 
makes the acquaintance of a young girl, his neigh- 
bor ; and passion soon leads the young people to 
intimate relations, which produce their illegitimate 
fruit. The birth of this child did not satiate their 
passion: their intimate relations continued. But, 
in order to prevent conception, they surrounded 
them with all of the artifices capable of cheating 
nature. At the end of eight months of these ab- 
normal relations, renewed very frequentty, the 
young man began to feel feeble; his nervous im- 
pressionability becomes exaggerated ; he perceives 
that the excessive labors at the desk, prolonged 
walks, bring on pruritus of the genital organs, then CONJUGAL ONANISM. 
169 
an escape of semen with a voluptuous sensation. 
These seminal losses are renewed more and more 
frequently, even every day in going to stool. They 
bring on a progressive feebleness, pallor, and ema- 
ciation of the body, neuralgias of the head, of the 
stomach. 
M. P. consults me. I advise him to abandon his 
sexual relations immediately or get married. Hav- 
ing overcome the obstacles which were opposed to 
their union, these young persons became united in 
the bonds of matrimony. From that time the con- 
jugal relations become normal and regular. 
The health of M. P. improved immediately. 
At the end of six weeks, the seminal losses had 
completely ceased ; strength returned little by little. 
It was not until eighteen months afterwards that 
his wife became pregnant again. 
By provoking unsatisfied desires and incomplete 
sensations, the artifices introduced into the conjugal 
act often lead to a profound perturbation in the gen- 
ital apparatus of woman. The womb enters into 
a state of excitation and congestion which is not 
appeased by the natural crisis, by the contact and 
lubrification of the seminal fluid: the super-excita- 
tion persists and is perverted. There comes to pass 
then just what will take place if, after having pre- 
sented food to a starving man, it is suddenly with- 
drawn from his mouth after having excited his 
appetite. These super-excitations not being calmed 
determine little by little grave disorders in the uter- 170 
LIBERTINISM. 
ine innervation, the starting point of varied, multiple 
neuroses, of cramps, strange hysterical affections, 
which torment in a cruel manner and without re- 
laxation so many married women. 
Among forty women, I have been able to attribute 
to onanism the nervous condition which was the 
cause of their suffering. 
In six of them I have observed violent uterine 
cramps, tenacious hysteralgias, in consequence of 
each generative act. The venereal erethism was 
powerfully exalted, and caused profound disturbance 
in the health. 
The following is an example : Madame X., aged 
thirty-two years, of a nervous lymphatic tempera- 
ment, had, while a young girl, attacks of hysteria. 
Married at twenty-one years of age, she had had 
three children at intervals of eighteen months, and 
had nursed them. Her health was well fortified, 
her nervous sensibility was not very great; and it 
required very lively emotions in order to bring on, 
and then rarely, a convulsive attack of hysteria. 
Mr. X., not wishing to increase his family, began 
at the eighth year of his marriage to practise the 
conjugal duty in an abnormal manner. His wife had 
to submit in spite of herself to his wishes. Mr. X., of 
a good constitution, did not experience any alteration 
in his habitual health. It was not the same with his 
wife. At the end of six months she began to ex- 
perience, from time to time, and by attacks, violent 
pains in the lower part of the bowels, which resem- CONJUGAL ONANISM. 
171 
bled uterine cramps. These sufferings obliged her 
to go to bed immediately, and they lasted several 
hours. There was increased sensibility over the 
pubis and in the left ovarian region. These attacks 
manifested themselves three times during the day 
following conjugal relation. At the same time, 
the hysteric attacks were repeated quite frequently ; 
there also came on gastralgia, with acidity, dis- 
tension of the stomach, constipation. During the 
venereal act, Madame X.,who had always showed 
herself sufficiently passionate, now experienced a 
very painful super-excitation, a kind of nervous irri- 
tation which caused her suffering. 
Consulted by the couple, I recognized that con- 
jugal onanism was the sole cause of this nervous 
condition. In fact, Madame X. had not experienced 
any vivid emotion, any annoyance, any pain : she 
remained in her ordinary condition. One function 
only had been disturbed, the genital function. 
In accordance with my advice, the husband de- 
cided to return to more rational habits. Madame 
X. still had, during the month following my consul- 
tation, three uterine attacks which I endeavored to 
control. Then every thing became orderly, the 
health became good again. 
In certain women, conjugal onanism, by uselessly 
exciting the procreative faculty without satisfying the 
function, without completing it physiologically, pro- 
vokes congestions, inflammatory or atonic engorge- 
ments of the uterus, metritis, leucorrhoea, then 
granulations, ulcerations of the organ; and finally, 172 
LIBERTINISM. 
according as there is a predisposition, organic affec- 
tions, grave diseases which are much more com- 
mon in cities than in the country, where the morals 
are better preserved. The affections of the organ 
of gestation have become so frequent in our day 
that a writer, unacquainted with medical matters, 
has felt justified in calling this age the age of 
womb diseases. 
Dr. L. F. Bergeret has published a remarkable 
work1 on this interesting chapter of libertinism. 
He has reported one hundred and twenty-eight ob- 
servations, set forth with details, and of which many 
are conclusive, to demonstrate the numerous ills 
produced by frauds in the accomplishment of the 
generative functions. These observations concord 
perfectly with our own studies. 
Artificial conjugal relations have still other serious 
consequences, which ought to be noticed. 
Copulation has not alone for its end the genera- 
tion of beings : it tends also to bring about unifica- 
tion in the nature of the couple, to facilitate the 
assimilation of the physical and moral qualities of 
both. The sperm, in fact, has a fecundating action 
which exercises itself over the entire organism of 
the woman. This opinion is one of science, it is 
that of our venerable master J. P. Tessier, that of 
our honorable friend M. Fredault, who expresses 
himself thus; "The sperm does not only fecundate 
the ovum of the woman, it fecundates the woman 
1 L. F. Bergeret, Des Fraudes dans I’Accomplissement des 
Fonctions Generatrices. Paris, IS7O. CONJUGAL ONANISM. 
17 3 
herself, and exercises its action over the entire for- 
mative disposition. It is thus that the wife derives 
many of the qualities of character that she did not 
possess before her marriage, that her temperament 
changes, that new habits of nutrition show them- 
selves.” 1 
If, then, man neglects this general fecundation 
of woman, he will fail of a powerful means fur- 
nished by nature to produce the most intimate 
unification of man and wife, to give birth to 
physical and moral sympathies, that indissoluble 
alliance by reciprocal attachment, those concord- 
ances so happy and so desirable in the tastes and 
aspirations, in the habits and morals. In place of 
the antique virtues of the family, do we not see too 
often, alas! only coldness, indifference, disunion? 
Let us go to the bottom of things, and we will dis- 
cover ordinarily this wound hidden in onanism. 
When the husband and wife violate the sanctity of 
the conjugal alliance, when they profane chastity 
by their intimate acts, they are seriously wanting 
in respect for one another: the husband loses his 
prestige of honor, the woman her purity of heart. 
Hence, pernicious changes are not slow in showing 
themselves in their moral relations. Little by little 
come on disaffection, indifference, contempt, then 
bitterness, resentments, which, increasing one upon 
another, bring about those scandalous ruptures, 
those dramas of adultery, so frequent in our age. 
1 Fredault, Traite d’Anthropologie Phjsiologique et Philoso- 
phique, Paris, 1563, p. 560. 174 
LIBERTINISM. 
Yes, there is danger in this for the honor of the 
family, danger for the public morals. This young 
wife, but lately so innocent and so chaste, who has 
been polluted by the immorality of her husband, 
will know the ingenious stratagems invented by 
debauchery. Then if seduction seizes upon her 
heart, if her virtue fails, she will know that she 
will be able with impunity to violate the conjugal 
faith. What have you to say, imprudent husband? 
You have taught her the art of cheating nature and 
O O 
of cheating yourself. 
One word upon the social consequences of liber- 
tinism between husband and wife. 
Conjugal onanism is a veritable social wound. 
Each fraud is an indirect infanticide, a stifled germ 
rendered unproductive. Must we be astonished that 
the population in France is subjected in our days 
to a period of arrest in its progressive increase? 
At the end of the last century, the mean number of 
children by marriage was from 4 to 5 ; from 1850 
to iB6O, it is no more than 3, and in Paris only 
2.65. In a recent discussion at the Academy of 
Medicine, M. Broca 1 made the remark that mar- 
riages were less fruitful and woman more sickly for 
a number of past. Is it not because libertin- 
ism enters more and more into the sexual relations, 
not only in cities, but even in country places? 
1 Broca, Discussion sur la Mortality des Enfants (Bulletin de 
I’Acad. de Me'decine, Paris, 1866, t. xxxii. p. 351). X. 
SOLITARY ONANISM. ITS BAD CONSEQUENCES 
FOR THE SOUL AND FOR THE BODY. OBSER- 
VATIONS. SEVERAL EXAMPLES OF RAPID 
DEATH OCCASIONED BY THIS VICE. 
The criminal habit of solitary onanism is the 
most pernicious kind of debauchery, on account of 
its frightful results. 
"In my opinion,” says Reveille-Parise,1 "neither 
pestilence, nor war, nor variola, nor a host of simi- 
lar ills, has results more disastrous for humanity. 
It is the destructive element of civilized societies; 
and it is much the more active, inasmuch as it acts 
constantly, and ruins populations little by little.” 
On this point there exists an unanimous accord 
amongst all physicians. And let it not be supposed 
that physicians wish to exaggerate the dangers 
attributed to solitary pleasures. I know that indi- 
viduals are met with addicted to masturbation from 
infancy, and who arrive, full of health and vigor, 
at an advanced age, without feeling the burden of 
infirmities. These cases are exceptions. On the 
other hand, before observing the grave diseases 
resulting from onanism, how many affections are 
there, more or less painful, without determined 
character, which practitioners let pass by without 
recognizing the primitive cause. 
1 Reveille-Parise, Revue Medicale, 1823, p. 98. 176 
LIBERTINISM. 
Of all venereal excesses, masturbation presents 
the most dangerous. Let us see why. 
A great number of circumstances render difficult 
or prevent intercourse with women ; but this impu- 
dicity never finds any obstacle. So also it has no 
bounds : as soon as it has subjugated the heart, it 
holds an odious empire over the senses ; everywhere 
it pursues, without cessation it harasses, provoking 
lascivious ideas and desires, even in the midst of 
most serious occupations. Hence results the so 
frequent repetition of its acts. 
The mind and the body concur in soliciting to 
evil. The imagination, beset by immodest thoughts, 
excites to unruly acts. The genital organs, excited 
by the morbid activity of the function, secrete the 
prolific fluid more abundantly, and require more 
and more often to be relieved. The habit becomes 
then so powerful that it enchains its victim and 
reigns despotically, holding him under the yoke of 
servitude. And, as the will becomes progressively 
enervated, as well as the body, there comes a time 
when the unfortunate one, feeling the cruel con- 
straints of the evil, wishes to correct himself, but is 
unable : he has neither sufficient force nor courage. 
" I have within me two desires,” said a young man 
to me, endowed with the finest qualities of mind, 
but who used himself up in consequence of his 
passion, "one which resists, and the other which 
leads me on. This latter, in order to seduce me, 
makes use of the most adroit subterfuge, and always SOLITARY ONANISM. 
177 
says to me, 'This will be the last time.’” The un- 
fortunate young man died of pulmonary disease. 
To the sufferings which weigh down the body are 
added the pains which torture the soul. 
In the pleasures of love, the heart partakes of the 
enjoyment of the senses; and this joy, by favoring 
digestion, by animating the circulation, by provoking 
all of the functions, contributes, to a certain extent, 
to repair the losses of the organism. 
But in onanism, in this odious theft made against 
nature, in this strange perturbation of the genital 
sense, there is found nothing but regrets, sadness, 
shame, and remorse. The crime is so infamous, 
even in the eyes of him who commits it, that he will 
never dare to acknowledge his licentiousness, and 
that he will envelope himself in the shadows of mys- 
tery in order to give himself up to his fornication. 
How many even have perished from never having 
dared to declare the cause of their ills ! 
We could excuse him who, seduced by a desire 
that nature has imprinted in the heart, and which 
he makes use of for the propagation of the species, 
has only done wrong in abusing it, and injuring 
himself. But for him, unfortunate one, he sins 
against all laws, he corrupts all the sentiments, he 
deranges the most admirable designs of the Creator ! 
So it seems to him that every one reads upon 
his countenance the cause of his degradation. You 
see him shun society, forsake pleasures, plunge 
himself in the most profound isolation. A prey to iy8 
LIBERTINISM. 
a sombre melancholy, tormented by the remorse of 
having been himself the artificer of his own physical 
and moral ruin, he cannot sometimes even more 
aspire to the sweet consolation of marriage : he dares 
not, and he cannot, for all women are to him a 
horror. 
Such are the peculiar characters which must be 
assigned to the vice of masturbation. 
As to the diseases, we have pointed them out 
while speaking of libertinism in general. Never- 
theless, we must observe that the attacks of the 
disease are more rapid and more violent, for the 
excesses of onanism are easier, and often the victims 
are younger. 
A few observations will complete this picture. 
Let us listen to the complaints of a patient writing 
to his physician : 
“ I have had the misfortune, like many other young men,” 
it is at mature age he writes to me, —“ to give myself up to a 
habit as pernicious for the body as for the soul. Age, aided by 
reason, has long since corrected this miserable propensity. 
“ But the evil is done. To the extreme sensibility of the ner- 
vous system and the symptoms which result from it are joined a 
feebleness, a discomfort, a weariness, which seem to vie with 
each other in besetting me. 
“ I am ruined by an almost continual loss of semen, my coun- 
tenance becomes deathly, so pale and dusky is it. The feebleness 
of my body renders all movements difficult; that of my limbs is 
such that I have much difficulty in holding myself upright, and 
I dare not go out of my chamber. 
“ Digestion is so badly performed that the food presents itself 
unaltered, as if I had just put it into my stomach, three or foui 
hours after having taken it. SOLITARY ONANISM. 
179 
“ My lungs are filled with slime, the presence of which throws 
me into a state of agony, and the expectoration into a state of 
exhaustion. 
“ Behold, sir, a short sketch of my miseries, which are still 
augmented by the sad certainty which I have acquired that the 
day which follows will be worse than that which preceded. In 
one word, I do not believe that any human creature has been 
afflicted with so many sufferings as I have been. If religion had 
not restrained me, I should have already terminated a life so 
much the more burdened because it is my own fault.” 
Tissot reports, in his dissertation, an observation 
the picture of which is most frightful: " I was fright- 
ened myself,” writes he, "when I saw the unfortu- 
nate person who is the subject of it. I felt then more 
than I had done the necessity of showing to young 
men the horrors of the abyss into which they volun- 
tarily throw themselves.” 
L. D., clock-maker, had been of good habits, and 
had enjoyed .good health until seventeen years of 
age. At this time he gave himself up to mastur- 
bation, which he repeated three times a day even. 
The ejaculation was always preceded and accompa- 
nied by a slight loss of consciousness and a convulsive 
movement in the muscles of the head, which held it 
strongly backwards whilst the neck became extraor- 
dinarily swollen. 
A year had not passed when he began to feel a 
great feebleness after each act. This warning was 
not sufficient to keep him out of trouble. His mind, 
already entirely given up to his infamous habit, was 
no longer capable of other ideas, and the reiterations i8o 
LIBERTINISM. 
of his crime became every day more frequent, until 
he found himself in a state which made him fear 
death. 
Sensible too- late, the evil had made so much 
progress that he could no longer be cured. The 
genital parts were so irritable and so feeble, that there 
was no need of a new act of this unfortunate one to 
cause the semen to escape. The spasm which he 
experienced at first only during the consummation 
of the act, and which ceased with it, had become 
habitual, lasted several hours, and occasioned him 
such violent pains that he ordinarily uttered not 
cries, but shrieks, and it was impossible for him to 
swallow during all this time either liquid or solid. 
His voice had become hoarse. He lost his strength. 
Obliged to relinquish his position, incapable of 
every thing, borne down by miseries, he languishes 
without help during several months, the more to 
complain that the relic of his memory, which was 
not slow to vanish, only served to recall to him 
without cessation the causes of his woe, and to 
augment with every horror his remorse. 
I learned his condition, and visited him. I found 
less a living being than a dead body lying on the 
straw, meagre, pale, filthy, spreading an infectious 
odor, almost incapable of any movement. Pale and 
watery blood often escaped from his nose, the saliva 
ran incessantly from his mouth. Attacked by diar- 
rhoea, his excrements were passed in bed without 
his consciousness; the flow of semen was continu- SOLITARY ONANISM. 
181 
ous ; his eyes bleared, dim, extinguished, no longer 
had the faculty of moving ; the pulse was extremely 
small and frequent, the respiration difficult. The 
disorder of the mind was not less, without mem- 
ory, without ideas, incapable of connecting together 
two phrases, without any other sentiment than that 
of pain, which returned with the attacks at least 
every three days. 
I gave him some tonic remedies. He died some 
weeks later, his body entirely oedematous. 
We may judge by the following examples how far 
the tyranny of habit can go. 
"I have seen,” relates Pinel,”1 "a young man 
attacked with ataxic fever (typhoid), entirely ex- 
hausted, and the furor of whose onanism was carried 
so far that, on the sixteenth day of his disease, he 
still provoked his exhausted organs, while death was 
announced by the most sinister omens.” 
A girl2 aged eighteen years of age, of a strong 
constitution, a sanguine temperament, having plump- 
ness and freshness, contracted the habit of mastur- 
bation. Six weeks had hardly elapsed since the 
beginning of her pernicious manoeuvres when the 
features of her countenance are altered, she grows 
sensibly meagre, her skin becomes discolored. She 
suffered from palpitations, with a spasmodic con- 
striction of the chest and a dry cough, which was 
soon followed by spitting of blood. She was sad, 
1 Pinel, Dictionnaire des Sciences Me'dicales, t. xlvi. p. 55. 
2 Martin (de Lyon), Mem. de Medecine Pratique. Lyon, 1835. 182 
LIBERTINISM. 
depressed, she shed involuntary tears. Several 
remedies were employed without success. The 
menses were suppressed. The disease increased. 
I suspected onanism as the primitive cause of all the 
symptoms. The mother, to whom I confessed my 
suspicions, firmly denied it, protesting to me the 
innocence of her daughter, who received then the 
attentions of a young man to whom she was to be 
married at some future period. She was made to 
pass several months of the summer in the country, 
where she suffered cruelly from a white swelling 
of the knee, which much enfeebled her. She was 
still under treatment for this disease, when all 
at once violent headaches manifested themselves, 
accompanied by vomiting, fever, then delirium and 
convulsive movements. She was in danger. During 
one night the patient was detected in the practice 
of onanism. I was informed of it at m}'- visit, and 
became shortly after the witness of this frightful 
habit. 1 questioned this unfortunate young woman : 
she informed me that she had given herself up to 
masturbation for the last ten months, and that she 
had never been able to keep herself from it during 
her diseases. 
I remonstrated with her, and promised that I would 
engage with her parents that she should be married 
as soon as her health was re-established. My re- 
monstrances and my promises were useless. She 
gave herself up with fury to her passions before her 
parents, before the assistants, who were occupied SOLITARY ONANISM. 
183 
without cessation in holding .her hands. I gave 
orders that they should be tied. She then made 
movements of the body in order to supply the place 
of her hands. She was restrained. She became 
frantic, made obscene proposals to those around 
her, and abandoned herself to the most vile im- 
precations. 
' During the day her bowels became swollen: at 
night delirium was complete, the convulsions be- 
came frightful, and the patient soon expired in 
coma. 
Oh, the heart of the physician bleeds very often 
at the aspect of so many ravages produced by mas- 
turbation ! But nothing is more painful than to see 
subjects attacked who are still in their infancy. It 
is distressing, above all, to know that corrupted do- 
mestics or older companions are not ashamed to 
teach these evil practices to so many young children, 
who, once led away, abandon themselves to excesses 
which sometimes destroy them in a frightful manner. 
In early youth, nervous super-excitation, deter- 
mined by the genital organism, reacts easily upon 
the brain, and produces fatal results. It needs an 
attentive physician to seize upon the cause of the 
ill; for the parents, ignorant always of the vicious 
habits of the child, do not put him on the track. 
Deslandes 1 and Martin (de Lyon) have called 
attention to this subject. I borrow from the latter 
the following observation: 
1 Deslandes, De I’Onanisme. Paris, 1835. 184 
LIBERTINISM. 
“ I was called the 12th of May, 1835, to attend Josephine 
L., aged four years. This child, whose intelligence was preco- 
cious, and whose body was very well developed, presented an 
inflammation of the genital parts, accompanied by an abundant 
puriform discharge. At my visit, I found the child drowsy, 
with uncertain look, the pupils contracted, the face pale, with 
occasional patches of red at intervals, the belly distended, the 
pulse small ; in fine, the evident symptoms of cerebral fever. 
“ The examination of the genital parts caused to be discovered 
so considerable a dilatation of the vagina that it was impossible 
to mistake the direct cause of it; and the domestic informed me 
that the child had for a short time past given herself up to onan- 
ism as by an automatic movement. 
“ Rational means were employed to combat the affection of 
the brain, and, as a compulsory measure, gloves woven of metal- 
lic material were put on the child’s hands. The disease increased, 
nevertheless ; and the little patient died a few days afterwards. 
Up to the last moment, the intervals in which her hands were 
left at liberty were employed in repeating the act which carried 
her to the grave. 
“ It was a pruriginous affection of the genital parts which had 
provoked the masturbation in this little girl.” XI. 
TREATMENT OF ONANISM BY MORAL, HYGI- 
ENIC, AND COERCIVE MEASURES. 
The family and society being directly attacked in 
their elements by the ravages of masturbation, it is 
of the utmost importance to anticipate this formid- 
able scourge and to repress its disorders. 
We should always have an unlimited respect for 
the innocence of childhood. There should be no 
loose conversations., no levity in manners, in presence 
of children. 
Parents should give great attention to the choice of 
domestics. They should watch over their morals with 
that vigilance of the father of the family of whom 
Phasdrus speaks, who discovers whatever is being 
done in the most obscure corner of his house : 
“ Docuit enim fabula videre plurimum in rebus suis.” 
They should endeavor to remove the physical and 
moral causes of the premature corruption of morals. 
A general state of languor, want of color in the 
face, emaciation of the body with a voracious ap- 
petite, fetor of the breath, the presence of a bluish 
circle around the eyes, make them presume that the 
child or the young man gives himself up to some 
secret practice. It is necessary to seek to surprise 
him, and convince themselves of the existence of 
the vice. 186 
LIBERTINISM. 
Immediately, the evil being recognized, the most 
proper means to destroy it should be put in use. 
Do not give yourselves over to vain declamations 
on the infamy of your child’s conduct, on the enor- 
mity of the crime of which he renders himself 
guilty; for these exaggerations amount to nothing. 
But acquaint the physician; and, under some 
pretext or other, bring him into the presence of 
the patient. He will examine him, will show him 
that his health is becoming altered, will make known 
to him the cause of his weakness, will picture to 
him the ills which threaten him, and will give him 
proper advice. 
It is indispensable to change the habits of the 
unfortunate one who hastens to his ruin. There is 
nothing more salutary than diversions, journeys on 
foot, distant excursions, sustained gymnastic exer- 
cises, forced, pushed even to fatigue; above all, 
in the evening, so that the body has an urgent need 
for repose, and that the spermatic secretion be 
diminished. 
The diet should be suited to the condition of the 
digestive organs, rather mild and coarse than 
heating and succulent. Exciting, highly seasoned 
meats, wine pure, coffee, alcoholic liquors, should be 
interdicted. Sleep should be of short duration, from 
seven to eight hours, upon a hard bed of hair or 
straw, the position on one of the sides, never on 
the back ; for the concentration of the heat upon the 
lumbar region developes the excitability of the sex- 
ual organs. TREATMENT OF ONANISM. 
187 
If the shameful practices are due to any morbid 
affection whatever, it will suffice to cure the disease 
which is the primitive cause of the vice. Thus, 
to expel worms from the rectum, to cause hemor- 
rhoids to disappear, to cure a pruriginous affection 
of the genital parts. 
Let great attention be given to this: persons of a 
feeble temperament, delicate, nervous, those suffer- 
ing from a constitutional disease or diathesis, are 
very much given to masturbation. Herein is a source 
of valuable indications for therapeutics. By fortify- 
ing the constitution, by destroying the original or 
acquired vice, we shall uproot the unnatural habits, 
we shall re-establish the moral harmony at the same 
time with the physical harmony. 
In all cases we should remove the patient from 
the society of persons of the opposite sex, from 
associations which have been pernicious. We should 
cause to be renounced the reading of romances, 
poetry, sentimental music; removing from the 
senses, from the thoughts, every thing that can 
awaken erotic desires. Sedentary studies should be 
suspended or of short duration each day, because 
by exalting the mind, and leaving to the body all its 
forces, they favor bad habits. It is necessary, never- 
theless, that the body and mind should be contin- 
ually occupied: it matters not, however, whether 
the exercises are chosen outside of those that we 
prescribe. 
We shall always find it good for children, and even 188 
LIBERTINISM. 
for young men, if it is possible, to have recourse to 
the advice of an enlightened director and to relig- 
ious practices. Prompt confession has often been a 
radical cure. 
It is well understood that the most assiduous, the 
most intelligent supervision shall be so directed as 
to have an eye on all of the actions of the young 
people, and to surprise them at a moment they least 
expect. In establishments for education, it is in- 
dispensable that the dormitories be lighted during 
the entire night, and a watcher should pass through 
them continually. 
Finally, when the moral and hygienic means em- 
ployed at the same time as the special medicines 
which we shall make known farther on keep us 
waiting for their salutary effects, it is necessary in 
young children to have recourse to apparatus which 
makes it impossible for them to abuse themselves. 
I have advised, and always with success, gloves 
made of woven metallic material or of hair. The 
compulsory apparatus should be employed at night 
during several months. 
What shall we do as a last resource, when regi- 
men, medicine, moral and religious counsels, 
every thing, have failed? What shall be done 
with a youth who, eluding constant surveillance, 
gives himself up with fury to his shameful practice, 
and threatens his constitution with ruin? 
In this peril, certain experienced physicians ad- 
vise the adoption of a plan which without doubt is TREATMENT OF ONANISM. 
189 
an evil, but a less evil than that which it is desirable 
to overcome. It is that which J-J- Rousseau has 
expressed in the following lines : 
“ Set instinct at defiance : he would be dangerous who should 
teach your pupil to give himself up to his inclinations and sup- 
ply occasions for satisfying them; if he once knows this deplor- 
able supplement, he is lost. Without doubt, it would be better 
still. . . . 
“ If the passions of an ardent temperament become invincible, 
my dear Emile, I pity thee; but I do not hesitate an instant, I 
will not suffer the end of nature to be eluded. If a tyrant must 
subjugate thee, I give thee up by preference to him from whom 
I wish to redeem thee. Whatever may happen, I shall snatch 
thee more easily from women than from thyself.” 
Recognizing fully the necessity of making the 
unfortunate one who has strayed return to the ways 
of nature, we do not admit that the physician 
should give an immoral advice. Finally, we shall 
content ourselves in engaging our patient in mar- 
riage, if the thing is possible. The pleasures of 
love have often caused solitary habits to disappear. 
But there comes a time when this powerful resource 
itself fails ; for the perversion of the genital instinct 
is carried to such a degree that every woman is held 
in aversion. XII. 
HOW THE EDUCATION OF THE FAMILY SHOULD 
FAVOR GOOD MORALS. - SOME ADVICE TO 
YOUNG MEN. THE LAWS SHOULD PROTECT 
WOMAN. 
It is the family which perfects the education of 
the school-master. 
The education of the family is of the highest im- 
portance, in order to instil good habits, to moderate 
the ardor of the passions, and to remove youth from 
the perils which threaten it. 
The father and the mother should direct the first 
steps of their children in the world. 
For each there is a duty. 
The father forms the character of the child by 
means of the skilful employment, and a discreet 
mixture, of authority and reason : it is the authority 
which imposes itself and causes itself to be obeyed; 
but it is also the authority which demonstrates duty, 
which is reasonable. The father instils into the 
mind of the child, to conduct him in life, the idea 
of duty which enfranchises from the of 
self, from his passions, and procures true liberty. 
He gives strong, manly virtues. 
It is by gentleness and love that the mother forms 
the character of the child : it is in charming it, in COUNSELS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 
!9I 
persuading it by soft caresses, tender counsels, that 
she curbs its indocile nature, that she favors the pa- 
ternal action, that she tempers its severity. The' 
mother inspires the gentle, chaste, amiable virtues. 
"The hither,” a charming philosopher1 has said, 
" rough-hews energetically the statue of the man : 
the mother adds to it perfection and beauty.” 
Scarcely entered into society, than the young 
man is obliged to contend against the temptations 
which entice him from the domestic fireside. The 
desire for independence,—that desire to act for 
himself, to be himself, to taste the liberty, the nov- 
elty of life, —that love of the new, of the unknown, 
have for him irresistible attractions. 
The father must know how to temper these so 
natural desires: not in contending against them 
with a pitiless severity; not in cutting their wings, 
in making martyrs of these inclinations; but in di- 
recting them properly, in directing them towards 
the beautiful, the good, the true. The young man 
must serve an apprenticeship to life, and we do not 
know how many perils there are in liberty. Let 
him know them, then, in order to shun them ; let 
him feel, let him see, let him experience, by him- 
self,— for he has need of experience, in order to 
become himself the head of the family. But let the 
eye of the father watch, let his hand be extended, 
in order to save him. 
Seek to be the watchful and not too severe guide, 
1 P. Janet, Lemons de Philosophic, la Famille. Paris, 1857. 192 
LIBERTINISM. 
the indulgent friend and not the rigid Mentor, and 
in that way become the chosen confidant of the 
son,—such is the truly salutary office of the fa- 
ther. The disorders of our times arise from the 
fact that the family is no more. Let him endeav- 
or to retain him at the domestic fireside. Acting 
thus, he will preserve him from easily acquired, 
baneful, dangerous friendships; he will keep him 
away from withering passions. The young man 
who loves his family respects himself, for he fears 
to make them blush or weep. "What son,” says 
Silvio Pellico, "will sleep in the drunkenness of his 
culpable enjoyments, if he thinks of his mother 
who follows his footsteps trembling, prays in secret 
for him, and is afflicted?” 
The direction of the young daughter is not less 
difficult nor less important than that of the son. 
We ought to prepare her for an active and serious 
life, without too much constraint upon the scope of 
her imagination ; to cultivate her mind and accus- 
tom it to beautiful things, without favoring pedantic 
enthusiasm ; to bring her up at the domestic fire- 
side, without rendering her a stranger to the usages 
and the elegance of society. 
We should inspire her with simplicity in her dress. 
Luxury is always out of place in her: good taste 
and virtue reveal themselves in the art of dress. 
It is not forbidden to a young girl to seek to 
please, but let her avoid that perfidious coquetry that 
counts its exploits by the number of its victims. COUNSELS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 
193 
It is by the charms of the mind and the qualities 
of the heart that she wins esteem, that she gains 
the friendship of those who surround her. 
In order to preserve her innocence, that secret 
and innate grace, the peculiar property of woman, 
the mother enlightens and instructs her little by 
little, avoiding to leave her in simple ignorance of 
all things. She gives her prudent lessons, serious 
warnings, in order to prepare her for the part she 
will fill later in a new family. She allows her the 
discreet use of society, accords to her a prudent, 
enlightened liberty, which fortifies her virtue. Con- 
fiding in her natural candor, she leaves her to act 
for herself, govern herself; but she watches her. 
She permits her to walk without support, but she 
foresees constantly, she is present at the least 
false step. 
Nevertheless, the confidence of the mother calls 
for confidence from the daughter. If the mother 
relaxes her rights, the daughter ought in return not 
to have any reserve, any after-thought: she should 
open herself to the maternal tenderness, let herself 
be seen entirely. 
Very often young people do not give themselves 
up to debauchery except from impulse, thoughtless- 
ness, without reflecting upon the disastrous conse- 
quences of their actions. We should appeal to their 
reason. 
Without setting myself up for an august censor, 
I can say to these erring but generous spirits, who 
so well comprehend the noble sentiments : LIBERTINISM. 
You have honor. Well, then, do you 
see what you do? You give as food for your amuse- 
ments the body and the soul of poor young girls; 
and after having ravished them of their inno- 
cence, after having destroyed their happiness, you 
cast them off from you, because your libidinous 
desires are satisfied. Does probity permit you thus 
to steal precious treasures by means of infamous 
deceptions? Does then honor tolerate these cruel 
games which carry in their train, for your victims, 
shame, despair, and crime? 
When you profane woman in a manner so odious, 
when you dishonor her noble character, do you 
reflect that you are united by sacred ties to woman, 
—to your mother, to your sisters? Truly you have 
in your heart that your mother, that your sisters, 
are to be respected. 
Know also, young man, that in these iniquitous 
intercourses you blast for ever the most tender sen- 
timents of your soul. No, there will no longer re- 
main to you enough candor and virtue to feel later 
the sweet emotions of pure love, to taste the ineffable 
joys of the family. He who is satiated in the gross 
pleasures of seduction can no more enjoy the sweet 
poetry of the soul : he knows no longer how to 
love. He only finds in the depths of his exhausted 
nature bitter disgust, cold indifference. This is 
assuredly one of the most powerful causes of so 
many unmarried men, without reason for being so; 
of so many marriages without love, which conceal 
the adulterer in their flanks. COUNSELS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 
T95 
Fear, then, these deceitful pleasures ! Fly from 
them ; for under seducing appearances are hidden 
inevitable dangers ! 
“ Sur un mince cristal I’hiver conduit vos pas, 
Telle de nos plaisirs la legere surface, 
Le precipice est sous la glace, 
Glissez, mortels, n’appuyez pas.” 
Be better penetrated with the respect due to 
woman ! for that alone because she is woman. 
Elevate your thoughts, purify your sentiments. 
Uplift yourselves into regions more pure : stir sum 
corda. Higher still! I will say to }mu with the 
inspired poet:1 
“Plus haut, toujours plus haut, vers ces hauteurs sereines 
Oil les bruits de la terre, oil le chant dcs sirenes, 
Ou les doutes railleurs ne nous parviennent plus; 
Plus haut dans le mepris des faux biens qu’on adore, 
Plus haut dans ces combats dont le ciel est I’enjeu, 
Plus haut dans vos amours, montez, montez encore 
Sur cette echelle d’or qui vase perdre en Dieu.” 
We have seen how disorders and adulteries easily 
have birth in conjugal unions badly chosen. Let 
young men, before they become engaged, surround 
themselves with the counsels of friendship, of ex- 
perience ; let preoccupy themselves above all 
with the qualities of mind and of heart; let them 
endeavor to appreciate the character, the morals, 
the inclinations, the sympathies, of the person of 
their choice. 
We claim loudly for a more real protection of 
1 V. De Laprade, Idjlles Ileroiques. 196 
LIBERTINISM. 
woman ! It is shameful for our age of progress to 
see the fate of woman so precarious, so sad. Should 
not society occupy itself with more solicitude for the 
young girl, procure for her more certain employ- 
ment, more remunerative; create for her resources 
for the future? And this unhappy woman, who 
has been deceived, dishonored, degraded, betrayed 
by an adroit seducer, or a Lovelace debauchee, 
should she not have the power to obtain justice, to 
indemnify herself for the injuries which have been 
caused to her? Why not admit in France the 
search into the paternity, the recovery of dam- 
ages, as in England, as in America? Oh ! we should 
very soon make great progress in morality. We 
should see our adventurers more reserved, and 
woman more respected. v XIII. 
MEANS OF COMBATING LIBERTINISM IN ACT- 
ING ON THE INTELLIGENCE, THE HEART, 
THE SENSES. MEDICAL TREATMENT. 
A distinguished physician who, in obscurity at 
La Trappe, makes a happy use of his vast stores 
of medical knowledge in his theological works, 
R. P. Debreyne, gives the following counsels in 
order to prevent improper thoughts : 1 
“If these kinds of thought become very importune, are the 
product of a fickle and lively imagination, or of certain recollec- 
tions which are vividly impressed upon the memory, diversion 
must be sought after, in exercising the mind by some intellectual, 
serious labor requiring application, or a difficult and complicated 
calculation which absorbs the entire attention. 
“ If bad thoughts proceed from an erotic temperament, or 
from a spermatic plethora, the best means will be those derived 
from physical and moral hygiene; the practice of temperance, 
of an exact sobriety, of manual labor, bodily exercise, an inces- 
sant material occupation, fatigue, sometimes hunting, which in 
certain cases has produced the best and the most astonishing 
effects. 
“ Diana, as we know, is the born and natural enemy of Venus. 
Violent exercise stifles erotic sentiments, by giving birth to still 
more imperious sensations, such as excessive hunger, with an 
irresistible inclination for physical repose.” 
You who wish to remain continent or to return to 
1 Debreyne, Moechialogie, Traite centre les Sixieme et Neuv- 
ifeme Commandements du Decalogue, p. 160. 19B 
LIBERTINISM. 
pure morals, engrave these wise counsels on your 
mind, and know well that labor, sobriety, and the 
avoidance of occasions are the most proper means 
of turning aside from the habits of libertinism. 
Labor impresses a happy diversion upon unruly 
thoughts, it diverts the activity from evil by the 
activity for good, it occupies the mind, it strengthens 
the will, it fatigues the body. But it must be ear- 
nest, regular, exercised during the most important 
hours of the day: the mind should be entirely de- 
voted to it. 
Away, then, with these long leisures, these lan- 
guishing periods of idleness, these indolent uncon- 
cerns of life, which bring on the moral degradation 
of man ! Give yourselves up to work with ardor, 
with love, and passion will soon be overthrown ! 
In order to sustain your efforts, how many powerful 
motives are there to invoke ! Self-love, emulation, 
glory, wealth, are there to solicit and attract thee ! 
Intemperance is the mother of debauchery. It 
is in the midst of the fumes of exciting wines and 
succulent meats that the erotic desires become 
exalted and sustained; it is in consequence of the 
drunken revelries that one is thrown into the arms of 
voluptuousness. In order to overcome your pro- 
pensity for concupiscence, you must have the habits 
of sober life : none of those gastronomic shocks, 
none of those famous libations, which sully the table 
of high livers; but a severe, simple regimen, a just 
and regular satisfaction of the nutritive wants. MEANS OF PREVENTION. 
199 
Sobriety in eating and drinking, activity in labor, 
will not appease the venereal appetite, except on 
the express condition that you fly from occasions 
which provoke evil. Avoid reunions, evening par- 
ties, balls, theatrical exhibitions, where the sensual 
excitations must shake your wavering determination ; 
abandon the culture of sentimental music, of poetry, 
the reading of immoral romances which excite dan- 
gerous emotions for a sensible mind; break off sud- 
denly, break off entirely, from bad company, above 
all from persons who are the objects of illicit attach- 
ment, who by their irresistible attractions are in- 
cessant solicitations to sensuality. These are the 
obligations of which experience has demonstrated 
the necessity. The diversions of travel, the sweet 
monotonies of the country, will be advantageous in 
order to turn aside from bad habits. 
You will choose pure enjoyments, quiet friends; 
you shall put your confidence in some sedate per- 
son, in order that she may sustain you in your 
struggles, that she may counsel you in your hesita- 
tions, that she may support you in your weakness. 
If you have the happiness to enjoy the sublime 
teachings of Religion, if you have Christian faith, 
make an heroic effort for yourself, return to the 
practices which it prescribes, and you shall be 
more assured of conquering yourself, of triumphing 
over your senses, of strengthening your virtue. 
Never have morality and practice produced more 
chastity and purity in manners. 200 
LIBERTINISM. 
It remains for us to set forth the medical treatment 
that experience has demonstrated to us to be effica- 
cious in order to combat the morbid super-excitation 
of the genital organs and of the venereal appetite. 
When the practice of masturbation or venereal 
excesses are due to a symptomatic irritation of the 
organs, it will suffice to cure the disease which is 
the primitive cause of the vice. Thus, to expel 
worms from the rectum by semen contra (worm- 
seed), shigella, calomel; to cause hagmorrhoids to 
disappear by mix vomica, Cayenne pepper (cap- 
sicum), sulphur, mercurials, sdpia, the preparations 
containing sulphur. 
In order to combat the vice likewise of masturba- 
tion, one of the most powerful medicines is sulphur, 
followed at the end of six weeks by carbonate of 
lime. These therapeutic agents may be replaced 
by a stay at a sulphurous mineral spring, then at a 
calcareous mineral spring. Dr. Gallavardin has 
reported several cases of the cure of the vice ob- 
tained by origanum in boys, and by sepia in girls. 
Against the bad consequences of masturbation, 
we shall administer: quinia, when there is exhaus- 
tion from excesses, decided feebleness of the or- 
ganism, emaciation, easily excited perspirations; 
iron, after quinia; phosphoric acid, when we shall 
observe great nervous feebleness in young men 
whose constitution, previously strong, has been rap- 
idly undermined by the loss of seminal fluid. 
Against the exaltation of the venereal appetite, MEANS OF PREVENTION 
we shall prescribe : in extremely minute 
doses, in persons of feeble constitution, fallen into 
depression and debility, having constant erotic de- 
sires and great salacity, with frequent pollutions; 
cantharis, equally in extremely minute doses, 
against the symptoms of priapism, that is to say 
against over-excited desires in the highest degree, 
with painful, incessant erections, of long duration, 
involuntary seminal losses; vegetable charcoal, 
when there is prostration of the strength, diffi- 
cult digestions with gastric catarrh and burning 
heat in the epigastrium, affluence of voluptuous 
thoughts, frequent pollutions; quinta, when we 
shall observe, notwithstanding great feebleness of 
the constitution, lascivious ideas, imperious desires 
and pollutions, followed by extreme prostration. 
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“ It is good, lively, and full of matter interesting both to the profession and to the 
public.” Scotsman. 
LESSONS IN ELEMENTARY BOTANY. By Daniel Oli- 
ver, F.R.S., F.L.S., Professor of Botany in University College, London, and 
Keeper of the Herbarium and Library of the Royal Gardens, Kew. With nearly 
Two Hundred Illustrations. Twelfth Thousand. iBmo, cloth. $1.50. 
LESSONS IN ELEMENTARY PHYSICS. By Balfour 
Stewart, F.R.S., Professor of Natural Philosophy in Owen’s College, Manches- 
ter. With numerous Illustrations and Chromolithos of the Spectra of the Sun, 
Stars, and Nebulas. Second Edition. iBmo. $1.50. 
A HISTORY OF CHEMICAL THEORY, from the Age of 
Lavoisier down to the Present Time. By Ad, Wuktz. Translated by Henry 
Watts, F.R.S Crown Bvo. $2.00. PUBLISHED BY JAMES CAMPBELL. 
7 
NEURALGIA, AND DISEASES WHICH RESEMBLE IT. 
By Francis E. Anstib, M.D., M.R.C.P., Senior Assistant Physician to West- 
minster Hospital. Bvo. $3.50. 
STIMULANTS AND NARCOTICS. Their Mutual Relations. 
with Special Researches on the Action of Alcohol, Ether, and Chloroform on the 
Vital Organism. By F. E. Anstie, M.D. Bvo. $3 50 
“ We can bestow unqualified commendation upon the learning and ability he has 
brought to his task, and upon the suggestive and original style in which he has treated 
some of the most important questions in physiology and practical medicine.”—British 
Medical Journal. 
ON THE USE OF THE OPHTHALMOSCOPE in Diseases of 
the Nervous System and of the Kidneys; also in certain other General Disorders. 
By Thomas Clifford Allbutt, M.A., M.D. Cantab., Physician to the Leeds 
General Infirmary, Lecturer on Practical Medicine, &c., &c. Bvo. $6 00. 
“ By its aid men will no longer be compelled to work for years in the dark: they 
will have a definite standpoint whence to proceed on their course of investigation.” 
Medical THues- 
ON BONE-SETTING (so called), and its Relation to the 
Treatment of Joints crippled by Injury, Rheumatism, Inflammation, &c , &c. 
By Wharton P. Hood, M.D., M.R.C.S. Crown Svo. $l-75. 
THE HUMAN SKELETON (including the Joints). By G. 
M. Humphry, M D., F.R.S. With 260 Illustrations, drawn from nature. 
Medium Svo. $lO.OO. 
“ Bearing at once the stamp of the accomplished scholar, and evidences of the 
skilful anatomist. We express our admiration of the drawings.” Medical Times 
and Gazette. 
COMPARATIVE LONGEVITY IN MAN AND THE LOWER 
ANIMALS- By E. Ray Lankester, B.A. Crown Svo. $l5O. 
THE PRACTITIONER. A Monthly Journal of Therapeutics. 
Edited by Francis E. Anstie, M.D. Svo. $4.00 per year; single numbers, 40 
cents. Vols I. to VII. Svo, cloth. Now ready. Price $3.00 each. 
DYNAMICS OF NERVE AND MUSCLE. By Charles 
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and to the National Hospital for the Paralyzed and Epileptic. Crown Svo. 
$3-00. 
THE OLD VEGETABLE NEUROTICS. Hemlock, Opium, 
Belladonna, and Henbane. Their Physiological Action and Therapeutical Use, 
alone and in combination. Being the Gulstonian Lectures of 1868, extended, and 
including a complete examination of the Active Constituents of Opium. By John 
Harley, B.D. London, F.R.C.P. Svo. $6.00. 
“Those who are interested generally in the progress of medical science will find 
much to repay a careful perusal.” —A thenceum. 8 
A CATALOGUE OF MEDICAL f VOLKS. 
THE ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF TUBERCLE IN 
THE LOWER ANIMALS. A Lecture delivered at the Royal College of 
Physicians, May 15, 1868. By Wilson Fox. M.D., Holme Professor of Clini- 
cal Medicine at University College, London. With Plates. 410. $2.00, 
THE CAUSES AND TREATMENT OF LATERAL CUR- 
VATURE OF THE SPINE. By Richard Barwell, F.R.C S., Surgeon 
to and Lecturer on Anatomy at Charing Cross Hospital. Second Edition, 
enlarged. Crown Bvo. $1.75. 
BODY AND MIND. An Inquiry into their Connection and 
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stonian Lectures for 1870. With Appendix. By H. Maudsley, M D., F.R C.P , 
&c. Crown Bvo. $1.50. 
“The volume is one which must have a prominent place in every practitioner’s 
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THE PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY OF MIND. By 
Henry Maudsley, M.D., London, Physician to the West London Hospital, 
&c. New and Revised Edition. Bvo. $4-50. 
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was so thoroughly good and important, or which accomplished so much towards the 
fulfilment of a most arduous and laborious task.” Lancet 
“Dr. Maudsley has had the courage to undertake, and the skill to execute, what is 
at least in English an original enterprise. His book is a manual of mental science 
in all its parts, embracing all that is known in the existing state of physiology.” 
Saturday Review- 
A PHYSICIAN’S PROBLEMS. By Charles Elam, M.D., 
M.R.C.P. Contents: Natural Heritage —On Degenerations in Man —On 
Moral and Criminal Epidemics—Body v. Mind— Illusions and Hallucinations 
On Somnambulism Reverie and Abstraction. Crown Bvo. $1.75. 
“The book is one which all statesmen, magistrates, clergymen, medical men, and 
parents should study and inwardly digest.” Examiner- 
A HANDBOOK OF VACCINATION. By Edward C. Sea- 
ton, M.D., Medical Inspector to the Privy Council. Extra foolscap, Bvo. 
$2.25. 
“A work of great utility and value. No man in England is more competent to 
instruct us on these subjects than is Dr. Seaton, and he deserves the hearty thanks of the 
profession for the very full and able way in which he has carried out the objects with 
which he undertook his work.” Medical Times. 
MEDICINE IN MODERN TIMES. Discourses delivered at 
a Meeting of the British Medical Association at Oxford. By Dr. Stokes, Dr. 
Acland, Prof. Rolleston, Prof. Haughton, and Dr. Gull. With a Report on 
Mercury by Dr. Hughes Bennett. Crown Bvo. $2.00. 
“ More healthy reading for students and medical practitioners we have seldom 
seen.” A thenceum. One volume. \imo. Cloth. $1.50. 
|l]pologial an& flrcnipeutol &t\m 
Bromide of Potassium, Bromide of A mmonium, 
Bromide of Sodium, and. Bromide 
of Lithium. 
OF THE 
By EDWARD H. CLARKE, M.D., 
Professor of Materia Medica in Harvard University: 
AND 
ROBERT AMORY, M.D., 
Annual Lecturer for 1870-71 on tire Physiological Action of Drugs on Man and 
Animals in the Medical Department of Harvard University. 
The work consists of two monographs, supplementary to each other: Part I. treat- 
ing of the ‘‘ 1 herapeutical Action of the Bromide of Potassium and its Kindred Salts,” 
while Part 11. has the “Physiological Action of Bromides of Potassium and Ammo- 
nium” for its subject. 
[From the Doctor, London, June, 1872.] 
“Although much has been written on the subject, Drs. Clarke and Amory have • 
succeeded in adding a ready valuab'e little volume to practical Therapeutics.” 
[From the St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal, August, 1872-] 
“ We regard it as a very valuable contribution to medical science, based on careful 
experiments and clinical observation. Every practitioner should read it.” 
[From the A merican Journal of Insanity, July, 1872.] 
“We commend the work to those engaged in treating diseases of the nervous sys- 
tem, and to the profession generally.” 
[From the Richmond and Louisville Medical Journal, June, 1872.] 
“This little work can be fully recommended: it costs little,; it is concise, lucid, 
physiologically and therapeutically instructive; embodies much if not all of the val- 
uable material scattered over the vast field of Journalism; it is pleasantly written, 
well printed, and well bound.” 
[From the American Journal of Pharmacy, JuTte, 1872.] 
“The medical literature in both essays has been extensively consulted, critically 
examined, and carefully compared with the experiments and observations of the 
authors; thus many interesting facts have been established which must prove very 
valuable to the medical practitioner.” 
[From the Philadelphia Medical Times for June, 1872.] 
“ Given a pure drug, the physiologist experiments with it upon man and animals, 
carefully noting its absorption, its elimination, its action while in the economy, and 
deducts certain conclusions, which he places in the hands of the therapeutist, who, not 
forgetting the changes produced by a pathological condition, is guided by them in the 
treatment of disease. Judging by this standard, we pronounce the book before us to 
be a model. We thank Drs. Clarke and Amory for their contribution, and express a 
hope that the supply of such books may, like Tennyson’s brook, ‘ go on for ever.’ ” 
NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 
For Sale by all Booksellers. 
JAMES CAMPBELL, Publisher, 
Boston, Mass. SURGICAL CLINIC OF LA CHARITE. 
LESSONS 
UPON THE 
DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT 
OF SURGICAL DISEASES, 
Delivered in the month of August, 1865, by Prof. Velpeau. 
COLLECTED AND EDITED BY A. REGNARD, INTERNE DES HOS- 
PITAUX. REVISED BY THE PROFESSOR. 
Translated by W. C. B. FIFIELD, M.D. 
1 volume. i6mo. Cloth. $l.OO. 
“This modest little book contains a statistical rimmi, by the author, of his sur- 
gical experience in the hospital wards under his care during the year. He treats his 
subject under the successive headings: Generalities, Fractures, Affections of the 
Joints, Inflammation and Abscesses, Affections of the Lymphatic System, Burns and 
Contusions, Affections of the Genito-Urinary Organs, Affections of the Aural Region, 
Affections of the Eyes, Statistics of Operations. We have a special liking for such 
works, which give us the most authoritative opinions of the elders of the medical pro- 
fession, who have reached the time when the judgment is least biased by the rivalries 
and personal influences which are so apt to mislead younger minds. It is o vastly 
more value than many more ambitious and bulky works.” Boston Medical and 
Surgical Journal. 
“ He not unfrequently surprises us by the simplicity of his expedients for the aid 
of ‘ Nature in Disease,’ and rarely, if ever, fails in making out his case. As a whole, 
the work is not only instructive, but entertaining, and may be regarded as one of our 
landmarks of minor surgery, upon our skill in which much of our success will be 
found to depend.”— Medical Record. 
“ It is rare that so small a book contains so many suggestions of great practical 
worth, and throws so much light on certain debated points, as Velpeau’s Lessons. 
Though nominally a review of one year’s practice, it is in reality an epitome of the 
experience of a lifetime.” Detroit Review. 
“ All who value the teachings of this great man will not lose the opportunity of 
obtaining them, as presented in this brief and economical form.” Richmond Medi- 
cal Journal. 
NOTICES OF THE PRESS 
Sent by mail, postage prepaid, on receipt of advertised price. 
JAMES CAMPBELL, Publisher, 
x 8 Tremont Street, Museum Building, Boston, Mass. NEW BOOK ON THE EYE. 
HAND BOOK 
OF THE 
DISEASES OF THE EYE. 
&!;eu* patljologp anD 
A. SALOMONS, M.D., 
BY 
Fellow of the Massachusetts Medical Society; former Oculist in Government Service 
at Veehnhizen, Holland, &c. 
One volume, i6mo. Colored plate. English cloth. $1.50. 
PREFACE. 
“ The book is divided into two parts : the first includes the 
pathology and treatment of eye diseases; and the second, the 
operative surgery of the eye. The practical portions of the work 
are given with as much detail as possible, and from the expe- 
rience of the author; and it is hoped they may prove a useful 
guide, not only to those entering this interesting department 
of medicine, but also to the busy practitioner, who finds himself 
unable to peruse the more elaborate treatises on this subject.” 
“ A synopsis like this, which goes over so much ground in so small a space, is 
advantageous to the student, in connection with clinical studies, and the perusal of 
more extended treatises. The definitions are carefully given, accuracy is observed, 
and lucidity is not sacrificed to brevity. The operations recommended are carefully 
selected and described. That for Entropium we may particularly mention as in point.” 
From the Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter. 
For sale by all medical booksellers, or sent by mail, postage 
prepaid, on receipt of advertised price. 
JAMES CAMPBELL, Publisher, 
Boston, Mass, THE 
Gynaecological Record: 
A BOOK OF BLANK FORMS, 
Intended as an aid to the busy practitioner in recording Gyne- 
cological Cases; with an Appendix of Blank Leaves, and Tables 
for the ready analysis of the contents of the book. Prepared by 
Joseph G. Pikkham, A.M., M.D., &c. Approved by the Gyne- 
cological Society. One volume, quarto, half bound in leather. 
Price, $2.50. Postage, 50 cents extra. 
“This book is intended to aid the busy practitioner in 
making detailed and systematic records of cases occurring in 
his Gynecological practice. Its scope will be obvious on inspec- 
tion. Blank forms are furnished which can be filled out with 
comparatively little labor. As the same method and order of 
examination is preserved in each case, a proper basis for com- 
parison is secured; and the minuteness of detail required to fill 
out the forms renders the physician less liable to overlook 
points of interest. Under the head of “History” is supposed 
to be given the patient’s own account of her clinical life previous 
to date, so far as otherwise not brought out. The diagrams will 
serve the purpose of illustrating the case. On the one repre- 
senting the anterior aspect of the body may be given the outline 
of any tumor, area of tenderness, &c.; on the other, the relative 
position of the several pelvic organs, as seen on a median sec- 
tion. The tables for the analysis of cases are few in number 
and simple in their plan.” 
EXTRACT FROM THE PREFACE. 
“ The forms are very carefully brought out, and will be of great advantage. They 
will serve not only as a record, but as a complete reminder ol what to observe in 
these cases, and will add much to the accuracy of the diagnosis, and consequently to the 
success of the treatment.” Medical and Surgical Reporter, Dec. 24, 1870. 
“ It seems to us to fill most of the requirements, and we cordially recommend it.” 
New York Medical Journal, Jan. 1871. 
“ The book is neat, and neatly gotten up.” Lancet and Observer. 
“ If these cases be well selected and carefully kept, even should only one bonk be 
filled by each practitioner, it would make a contribution to Gynaecology which, before 
many years, would enable us to settle definitely many points in the natural history and 
therapeutics of uterine diseases which a e ni w most obscure and unsettled.” Medicai 
Times. 
“We note with pleasure the use of diagrams with each blank, representing in 
outline the anterior aspect of the abdomen, and a section of the pelvis.”—Boston 
Medical and Surgical Jour tail. 
JAMES CAMPBELL, Publisher, 
Boston, Mass.