A Solemn Appeal

SOLITARY VICE

Testimony to the evil effects of solitary vice comes in from all quarters. Dr. Clarke, the excellent commentator, says that self-pollution “excites the powers to undue action, and produces violent secretions, which necessarily and speedily exhaust the vital principle and energy.” The doctor goes on to speak of its consequences, as disease and death, and then adds: “Reader, this is no caricature, nor are the colors overcharged in this shocking picture. Worse woes than my pen can relate, I have witnessed in those addicted to this fascinating, unnatural and most destructive of crimes. If thou hast entered the snare, flee from the destruction of both soul and body that awaits thee.” SOAP 10.1

Physiology also bears its testimony. Says Sylvester Graham, “By far the worst form of venereal indulgence is self-pollution.” This testimony perfectly accords with that of the divine quoted above. Says Mrs. Grove, the celebrated physiological lectures, “There is hardly an end to these diseases” - diseases caused by solitary vice. Says the Rev. E. M. P. Wells, teacher in the school of moral discipline, Boston, “Respecting the habit of sexual self-indulgence, I should hope it was unnecessary to speak of its dangerous and evil effects.” SOAP 10.2

Wm. C. Woodbridge, well known to the educational world, speaks of it as a “solitary but fatal vice, spreading desolation through our schools and families, unnoticed or unknown.” Tissot speaks of it as the cause of painful, long, disgusting disease. Says Dr. Woodward, the justly-celebrated superintendent of the Mass. State Lunatic Hospital, “A great number of the ills which come upon the young at and after the age of puberty, arise from this habit, persisted in so long as to waste the vital energies, and enervate the physical and mental powers of the man.” SOAP 11.1

Todd, in his “Student’s Manual,” p. 147, says, “I have known very many young persons who have daily polluted themselves with this vice - and that, too, for a number of years.... I have lamented the fall of many whom I have seen fall victims to premature death, for this foul cause alone - some, while in the halls of education, and others, soon after leaving college, adorned with its higher honors.” SOAP 11.2

We have already heard Mrs. Grove say, “There is hardly an end to these diseases” (diseases caused by this vice). She enumerates “dyspepsia, spinal complaint, headache, epilepsy, impaired eyesight, palpitation of the heart, pain in the side, bleeding at the lungs, spasms of the heart and lungs, diabetes, or incontinence of urine, fluor albus, or whites, inflammation of the urinary organs.” Dr. Deslandes, besides many of these, instances rheumatism, affected perspiration, consumption, asthma, catarrh, polypus of the heart, affection of the bones, fevers, priapism strangury, polypus uteri, blood discharges, etc., etc. SOAP 12.1

The following startling case occurred but a few miles from the residence of the writer. It is received on credible information. A boy, about four years old, was afflicted with weakness and stiffness of limbs. (The exact symptoms the writer has not learned.) His parents at length carried him to a distant physician. The physician, after sufficient inquiry, told them that the child “handled himself too much.” They returned, doubting what this could mean. Suggesting the matter to some of their neighbors, their eyes were opened. “Well,” said they, “we will stop that.” And they did stop it, by bandaging the genitals. And lo! the child soon stopped being feeble and lame. He is now a healthy boy. SOAP 12.2

Dr. Goupil, as quoted by Deslandes, gives a full and particular account of a little boy who at two years old was epileptic, from this cause. The vice was taught him by his nurse. We say taught him - perhaps we should say fastened upon him at early infancy only as a notion. A notion, however, which hurried on excitement and rendered him paralytic. By the most vigilant use of mechanical means for confining the hands, covering the genitals, etc., the child was at length cured; he now enjoys good health, “and, with the exception of a remarkable loss of memory, retains no trace of his former indiscretions.” SOAP 13.1

Instances like the above are, doubtless, of very rare occurrence, and when they do occur, must be supposed to be the result of the combined action of all the circumstances, constitutional and external, favorable to their development. That the debasing habit is often commenced before puberty, and in the language of an eminent physiological observer, “frequently many years before,” is, however, quite indisputable. SOAP 13.2

But, after all, very little of the mischief of this sin is known. It is a secret vice, a vice which its patrons are ashamed to confess. And hence, provided they themselves know it to be the cause of their suffering, they are slow to acknowledge it. Or, if knowing this, they abandon it, and so get well; feeling under no obligation to publish their indiscretion, some medicinal nostrum obtains all the credit of their cure. And further, if knowing its evils they persist in it, in spite of them, why, they have then no motive for exposing it. But if, as is generally the case, they are ignorant of its injuriousness, then certainly, they will not reveal it. So that, every way, the conclusion forces itself upon us, that comparatively very little of the mischief of solitary vice is known. Indeed, very little of it is known to the victims themselves; much less, then, to the community. This will appear still more evident in the fact that it is only quite recently that many discoveries calculated to excite any general alarm and inquiry have been made - and also in the fact that the more general effects of the vice, being only a sort of general debility, are not among the ignorant masses calculated to excite much careful inquiry into their causes. Upon the whole, it must plainly appear that what are known of the consequences of solitary vice, can, at most, be regarded only as indices to what actually exist. SOAP 13.3

This evil is confined to neither sex. Its ravages, though not as extensive, are, however, most dreadful among the females. We have before us numerous published cases of the horrible nature, taken from the history of both sexes. SOAP 14.1

The foregoing are among the causes which at present occur to our mind for the pre-eminently-sad physical consequences of solitary vice. But whatever view the reader take of these causes, we charge him never to hazard their consequences! And this charge we give in the name of his own health and life. Whatever be his age, and however temperate he resolve to be, he must not indulge in this sin. Total abstinence must be his law. One glass excites the appetite for another. One enemy admitted, another clamors for admission; while the one admitted is weakening his power of resistance. In a word, in the language of Deslandes, “It is clear that there is no possible security for the onanist.” But especially let every praying man either cease to sip of this cup of foulness, or cease to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” Otherwise “his prayer itself will become sin.” SOAP 15.1