A Solemn Appeal

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IT ENFEEBLES THE MIND

“Frequent indulgence in any of its forms, will run down, and run out, any one, of either sex. Those who would write, or speak, or study, must forego this indulgence or intellectual exertion, or else die. Powerful constitutions will stand an immense drain before they finally break, but terrible indeed is the result. SOAP 199.1

“Mere animal temperaments are less injured, because, by supposition, their vitality is abundant, and its drain by other functions is slight; nor do they enjoy this function as do those more highly organized, and hence are proportionally less exhausted. Such live, to be sure; so do brutes. Carnal, groveling, sensual, low-lived animals, living mainly on a single pleasure, when their nature serves up so many! Let such revel in lust, because capable of little else. But those highly organized must partake rarely, else it will excite to distraction, and proportionally exhaust. Besides, they can expend their less-abundant, perhaps deficient, vitality to better advantage. Frequent indulgence must necessarily be lustful, and therefore debasing to their higher feelings. Those whose intellectuality and morality are feeble, may spend their surplus vitality on this passion with less injury, yet cannot cultivate their higher faculties while they thus revel in lust. Let such remain all animal and revel on. But for those who have already too little vitality to sustain their higher faculties - for such to rob all their nobler, godlike elements of vitality, just to expend it on a sensual, debasing passion, is physical, mental, and moral suicide. Red-faced, bloated, coarse-grained, gouty subjects - it matters little what becomes of them. About as well go to Texas and be shot as any way, or stay and kill themselves, because worth little anyhow. But for light-built, fine-skinned, fine-haired, spare-built, sharp-featured, light-eyed persons, of either sex, to indulge, even in wedlock, as often as the moon quarters is gradual but effectual destruction of both soul and body; because they already work off vitality faster than their feeble vital apparatus manufactures it. This excess of expenditure over supply occasions their sharpness. A surplus would render them fleshy. Now to add the most powerful drain of all to their already sparse supply, must sooner or later, according to their vigor of constitution, render them bankrupts of life. SOAP 199.2

“It will not kill you outright. It will first weaken the garrison of life, and thus open the door for disease to come in and attack the weakest part, and complete the work of death in the name of other diseases. As bees, by swarming too freely, leave portions of their hive unprotected, and thus allow the deposit of those destructive worms which a full supply of bees would have prevented, so this indulgence drains the system of vitality, and of course leaves the weaker organs especially debilitated, till disease, thus invited, sets in, destroys the feebler organs, and ends in death; attributed, however, to consumption, dyspepsia, gravel, nervous, heart, and other affections, according as this or that organ is naturally most feeble, but rarely to its true cause. Ask any medical man conversant with diseases having this origin, and he will tell you that no other cause of disease equals this, either as a number, or aggravation, or difficulty of cure. Hear Dr. Woodward on this point: SOAP 201.1

“‘That the evil is wide-spread and exceedingly injurious, cannot be denied or doubted. 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 as to waste the vital energies and enervate the physical and mental powers of man. SOAP 201.2

“‘Nature designs that this drain upon the system should be reserved to mature age, and even then that it be made but sparingly. Sturdy manhood, in all its vigor, loses its energy, and bends under the too frequent expenditure of this important secretion; and no age or condition will protect a man from the danger of unlimited indulgence, legally and naturally exercised. SOAP 202.1

“‘In the young, however, its influence is much more seriously felt; and even those who have indulged so cautiously as not to break down the health of the mind, cannot know how much their physical energy, mental vigor, and moral purity, have been affected by the indulgence. SOAP 202.2

“‘No cause is more influential in producing insanity. The records of the institutions give an appalling catalogue of cases attributed to it.’ SOAP 202.3

“A doctor in Brooklyn thus writes to the author of ‘Facts, etc., to Young Men’: SOAP 202.4

“‘Brooklyn, Dec. 19, 1840. SOAP 202.5

“‘In my own practice, I think I have seen the following results of masturbation: involuntary emissions, prostration of strength, paralysis of the limbs, hysteria, epilepsy, strange nervous affections, dyspepsia, hypochondria, spinal disease, pain and weakness in the back and limbs, costiveness - and, in fine, the long and dismal array of gastric, enteric, nervous, and spinal, affections, that are so complicated and difficult to manage.’ SOAP 202.6

“Dr. J. A. Brown, of Providence, writes to the same source as follows: SOAP 203.1

“‘That it is an evil of vast magnitude, no physician who has been in the habit of tracing effects to causes, can for a moment doubt. I, sir, could tell of hundreds who labor under incurable maladies, produced by this practice; and I do not believe that I have a better faculty for obtaining such information than many others who are, and will be, dumb on this subject.’ SOAP 203.2

“Another physician writes that ‘seven-eighths of all the bodily ills and diseases of the people are caused, or greatly aggravated, by self-abuse, or excessive legal indulgence.’ SOAP 203.3

“Nor is this all, nor the worst. The loss of this secretion is the loss of vitality itself. As must readily be apparent, it embodies the very quintessence of parentage, in order thereby to impart this quintessence of parents to offspring. To dwell on this point, however important, is unnecessary because so evident. Now it is a well-known principle of physiology, that when any organ is especially overtaxed, it robs the other parts of the system of vitality to supply its own taxation. Thus, overloading the stomach causes mental lassitude and muscular debility, because the stomach withdraws energy from the brain, the muscles, and wherever it can find it, to enable it to discharge its burden. SOAP 203.4

“Now overtax this secretion, and it withdraws energy from all the other parts to re-supply the drafts. Doing this frequently, diverts the energies permanently from the other organs to this. As those who get into the habit of being bled frequently, soon get full of blood, because they overtax the blood-manufacturing energies by this drain, so that an undue amount of vitality goes to blood; so, the frequent withdrawal of this condensed vital secretion, causes a drain from all the other parts and organs to re-supply it, and thus, frequent indulgence causes the very life’s blood to run out thereat. Well has WISDOM said, ‘Give not thy STRENGTH unto women.’ And he who does, must expect to be weak every where else. SOAP 204.1