THE

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS
AND THE

EARLY DECAY OF OUR YOUNG MEN.
BY

J A M E S C. J A C K S O N , M. D.,
Physician-in-Chief of "Our Home on the Hillside."

DANSVILLE, N. Y.
AUSTIN, JACKSON & CO., PUBLISHERS,

1872.

< / 3. 6 6
o

AN
To

APPEAL.

D R . J A M E S C. JACKSON, PHYSICIAN I N - C H I E F OP OUR H O M E ON
T H E H I L L S I D E , DANSVILLE, N.

Honored Friend and

Y.:

Physician:

We, the undersigned, since having become inmates of your Institution, and previously thereto,, have become acquainted with facts,
either from personal knowledge or responsible testimony, which we
consider of the utmost importance to every person in the country.
These facts may be briefly stated t h u s :
1st. A large proportion of all the youth of the country*is addicted
to secret sexual vice, which is sapping the foundations of their health
and spreading ruin and decay among all classes. This vice is ruinous
not only to the health but to the morals of the people, and is exceedingly destructive to mental power and intellectual acumen, and lays
in youth the foundations of suffering and misery which old age frequently never surmounts.
2d. It is found in great intensity in colleges of learning, in seminaries, both religious and secular, and offers the chief explanation for
the failures which so frequently and manifestly appear among their
inmates. Factories and workshops also furnish a large quota of the
victims to this destroyer.
3d. It is the precursor of an immense number of diseases and
debilities which are incurable by the means usually employed. It
fills the pockets and feeds the rapacity of thousands of men who
advertise to cure these diseases, but whose appliances only amount to
enormous charges and still further reduced conditions of health to the
victims. The instinctive feelings of the patients lead them to conceal
from friends and responsible physicians their difficulties, and cause
them to resort to quacks and specifics for relief.
4th. It has a literature of its own, constantly circulating, advertised to be sent in sealed envelopes, whose effect is to arouse the

4

DEBILITY OF OUR BOYS.

passions of the patients, excite their imaginations, and induce lewd
thoughts; or, on the other hand, to frighten them and extort from
them money on promise of cure.
5th. These habits depend largely upon an inflammatory condition
of the blood, which irritates the amative faculty situated at the base
of the brain ; and this results from bad habits of living, especially
from using stimulating and heating foods and drinks, condiments,
tobacco, &c. You have told us that healthful habits of living, combined with knowledge on the subject, offer complete exemption from
the indulgence, and with proper curative treatment relief from resultant diseases ; that a change in the conditions of the blood, and relief
from the irritation of brain are necessary in most cases in order to the
abandonment of the practice. We can testify, either from personal
knowledge or from firm conviction, that the modes of treatment employed at your institution offer relief from these difficulties more
speedily and surely than any of the means usually practised by medical men,
A false modesty, which is largely attributable to the effects of the
habit, pervades the minds of the people with regard to it, and
though its existence is known, and its effects well understood by
medical men and ministers of the gospel, and well informed men generally, they are induced on this account to keep silence with regard
to it, so that ignorance among the young both of its effects and of its
causes is everywhere prevalent.
In the interests of humanity, therefore, we ask you to call public
attention to these facts. We feel that our duty to our neighbor and
relief to our own consciences are involved in this matter. Belonging
to the people and affected by all that affects them, we suffer either
directly or indirectly by these evils. We ask you, therefore, as a
representative man, and one possessed of peculiar facilities for spreading knowledge on this subject, to speak out and give information to
all interested. By so doing you will receive the thanks of all good
men and women the world over.
Yours, in behalf of our fellow men,
R. WALTER, M. D., Acton. Ontario.
S. N WALKER, A. M., Leavenworth, Kansas.
MELVIN H. STEARNS, Brooklyn, N. Y.
A. L. COLE, Pastor Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
J . L PATTERSON, Curdville, Washington Co., P a .
SILAS TOWN, Grai.t, Minn.

AN" APPEAL.
REV. J . B. WADDLE, Pastor Cong. Ch., E v a n s b u r g h , Pa.
HEV. WM. NAST, D.D., Ed. C h r i s t i m Apologist, Cinn., 0 .
A. K. STARK. Rockville, I n d .
F. H. CHARLES, Galva, 111.
S. B. BOWMAN, Blair, Waterloo Co., Ontario.
REV. H. DANIELS, Pastor
, F a h i b a u l t , Minn.
GEO. L. SHOREY, Lynn, Mass.
HENRY BROWN, Sidney, Iowa.
JOHN HOG AN, Monticello, Maine.
D. E. OSGOOD, Fulton, N. Y.
ISAAC NICHOLAS, Pittsburgh, P a .
J H DORSEY, Waynesburgh, P a .
I I G. BROOKS, Lowville, N. Y.
M. S. BAKER, Lansing, Mich.
WM 0 POST, Essex, Ct
C. A, P E T R I E , Orleans, N. Y.
J F . FAIR WEATHER, New Haven, Ct.
E. SEEBOLD. Dansville, N. Y.
E. K. McNAIR, Dansville, N . Y.
L. D. PA NGBORN, Jacksonville, 111.
L J . ANGER, New York.
E. D. WILMOTT, Carthage, N. Y.
GEO NUNN, Hamilton, Ontario.
L FORCE, Milwaukee, Wis.
EDWARD F. BAKER, Bloomington, 111.
H L. UPHAM, Athol Depot, Mass.
W, G FOSTEK, Dansville, N. Y.
E. LEWELLYN EASTMAN, Stowe, M a i n e .
HON. N. P. TRIST, Alexandria, Va.
W A L K E R B. VINCENT, Batavia, N. Y.
VERNON ROYLE, Paterson, N. J .
EUGENE PEARL, Amherst, Ohio.
A. H. McLEAN, Chicago, 111.
J . E. MOORE, Jacksonville, Florida.
€ . L. ROUTT, Routtville, l a .
S. S. BAYARD, Michael's, P a .
V. A. ELLIOTT, Omaha, Neb.
JOHN T. HOOVER, Washington, D. CL
A. M. THOMAS, Athol, Mass.
W. F. THOMAS, Brooklyn, N. Y.

THE DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS
And the Early Decay of Our Young Men.

CHAPTEK L
TO THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC.

I ADDRESS you because I have reason to believe that a
great many of you are in ill health, and because under your
want of knowledge of the causes which have produced it, I
see no fair prospect of your ever being rid of it.
Sickness, no matter of what nature, is never self-producing
nor self-continuing. It always has a cause or causes; and so
long as these operate it must exist.
To me, there is something pitiful, something always to be
mourned over, when a young, bright lad, or one whose manhood is in full blossom, is ailing, or in such ill health as to
be seriously or substantially disabled, and thereby made unequal to tasks of labor or of thought, for which in good
health he would be fully competent.
The wise man has said, " The glory of a young man is his
strength." Strength of mind and of will, strength of judgment and of purpose, strength of conscience and of heart—
these are always an honor to their possessor. An observer

8

DEBILITIES OE OUR BOYS.

admires them; a poor invalid sometimes almost envies them.
Such manifestations of manly qualities are seldom shown by
any person who is much debilitated in body.
The old Latin apothegm, that one is only to look for a
sound mind in a sound body, is full of significance. Where
bones are brittle and porous instead of tough and compact;
where muscles are flabby and small instead of large and close
in fibre; where ligaments and sinews elongate easily but will
not contract, or where they contract but will not stretch out;
where nerves are hyper-sensitive habitually, or are a]most all
the time half-numb; where back brain is neuralgic, and front
brain is congested; where expenditure of vital energy is
altogether greater than the daily supply; what else can one
expect that a man should have than an unsound body ? and
what else along with this but an unreliable and incompetent
mind ? A man of weak body is to be pitied, but a man of
weak mind vastly more needs pity.
" Touch not the mind!
You know not what you do, nor what you deal with.
Man perchance may bind the flower his step hath bruised,.
Or light anew the torch he quenches,
Or to music wind the lyre string from his touch that flew;
But for the mind, 0, tremble and beware !
To lay rude hands upon God's mysteries there."

To be unable to work is a great misfortune; but to be
unable to think profoundly and consecutively, this is terrible.
Yet there is something worse than either or both of these.
It is to be so debilitated in brain and stomach, lungs and
heart, liver and -bowels, kidneys aud genitals, as not only to
be unable to work or to think profitably, but to be unable to
stop thinking.
The physical debilities of great numbers of pubescent and
adolescent boys located in all parts of the Republic, are work-

TO THE TOUTII OF THE REPUBLIC.

9

ing their utter earthly ruin. What a loss! Especially so,
when it is seen that those who are thus ruined in health, are
ruined in usefulness and highly developed character, and
belong in great measure to that class which includes the
more intellectual and moral]y capable of the youth and
young men of the Nation.
In proportion to the whole number who fall within the
range of the class I have mentioned, there are many boys
and young men who are naturally dull; but a very large
majority are persons of bright parts, quite open to receive
large attainments and choice culture. They only need good
health and thorough education, to make lasting impressions
on the age in which they live. Of all the hindrances or huge
obstacles which are in their way to high attainment, there is
not another at all to be compared to that arising from ill
health or chronic sickness. Certainly, I do not know one
which works so extensively or produces such widely deplorable results.
If health consists in right conditions of living, or in other
phrase, in right use of one's bodily powers, what to a creature-resident on earth can be a matter of greater importance
or profounder interest ? All that is desirable in life to such
person either belongs to it, or is in some direct or indirect yet
forcible way attached to it. Surely right ways and conditions of living are not a matter intrinsically insignificant, or
indifferent to any one who wishes to live. Considered
thoughtfully, one should not hold them in light regard or
sport with them'or gamble them away. Life is too precious
and existence too sweet to be offered as a stake in games of
hazard. Only those who are thoughtless and unreflecting,
are careless with reference to their health. How sad it is that
the number of the young men, and of the lads soon to become
young men, who are careless about their health is so large.
1*

10

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

Unless by some means they can be and are awakened to their
danger, and are aroused to active and persistent effort to get
better health than they have had or now have, it needs not a
seer to foretell what must be the end. History makes emphatic declarations on this point. On many pages she has
recorded the fact that uniformly when civil governments have
died and nations have become extinct, it has been from want
of men. Wot for want of human beings who walked about
in their feebleness and looked like skeletons; nor yet for
want of human creatures fripperied, ribboned tawdrily or
ornately clad, whose lives were factitious and hugely false,
and who if they became mothers of boys made them accursed
by giving them physical incapacity for good health. 0, no!
Not for want of either or both of these classes of persons in
their populations have civil governments died and nations
perished; but because of their presence and numbers, and
from lack of men.

" W H A T CONSTITUTES A STATE?
Not high-raised battlement or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate ;
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad armed ports,
Where, laughing at the storms, rich navies ride ;
Not starred and spangled courts
Where low browed looseness wafts perfume to pride.
N o : men, high-minded men,
W i t h powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest, brake or den,
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude ;
Men who their duties know
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain,
Prevent the long aimed blow
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain:
These constitute a State."

TO THE YOUTH OF THE REPUBLIC.

11

Such must constitute our State; and to do so they must
be men of muscle and of bone, of sinew and of nerve, having
great " potential energy/' Men whom no danger can daunt,
nor hardship cause to flinch; to whom labor is like a pastime
and work is full of worship. In their veins should flow with
even beat the blood of ancestral women who cultivated the
resoluteness of heroes along with the sensibilities of affectionate and dutiful mothers.
No Eepublic can continue to exist long after manliness
dies out of its people. When the women become effeminate
and the men emasculate, then its doom approaches like thick
darkness. Nothing but reconstruction of its individual life
can then save it.. No wisely organized social reform nor
sagaciously devised political expedients resulting in modification of legislation, nor alteration of public policies, nor
change of attitude of religious corporations, will then avail.
The thing needed is responsible, upright personal life, and
nothing can insure this but personality itself.
When a man, instead of growing into a person develops
into a thing, what can help him but reconstruction ? Unless
he is made over, nothing effectual is done. Patch-work never
repairs the evils done to a State by the dying out of manliness in its people. This quality in individual men is essential
to the healthy existence and perpetuity of a " body politic/'
and no substitute has as yet been found for it. A State cannot feel the divine vigor of this most wonderful moral
element, unless its individual members possess it personally.
Where they lack it, where instead of being full grown and
rounded men, thorough in purpose and of good education,
upright in sentiment and sterling in character, they are
sneaking in action and cowards at heart, the State becomes
like them. As people so State, and where both lack manliness the nation dies. Never has a nation died whose people
were instinctively alive, and so kept essentially charged with

12

DEBILITIES OE OUE BOYS.

manliness. It is the saving clause in all organized society,
because it is the crowning of individual life. It is co-ordinate and co-essential with liberty in the construction and
organization of human nature. With it wealth is a blessing,
without it a curse. With it poverty may be a high virtue,
without it a ruin. Connected and intimately associated with
it, genius, learning, and culture rise to the hight of endowments not only, but of benignities. Even roughness, coarseness and ungentle manners, lose much that in them is
unpleasant when they are inlaid with it. So noble is it, that
all the other elements in human nature do it reverence and
pay it homage. To have it said of one, " He is every inch a
man/9 is to bestow on him high encomium. When God said
to Job, "Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will
demand of thee, and answer thou me," He did not intend to
speak derisively of manhood, but in compliment to it. A
genuine man need not be afraid of bis Maker. God delights
in him and lovingly aids him, and holds ready communion
with him.
But how can one be such, who is broken down in health
and enfeebled by sickness ? It is impossible. One may well
ask, "When the foundations are destroyed, what can the
righteous do?" Good physical health is a necessary substratum to high character. It is, therefore, a great pity that
the lads and young men of the Republic in such vast numbers, are ill, ailing or sick, and so many of them nearly or
already ruined. I appeal to every parent, whether man or
woman; to every minister of Christ's Gospel, no matter of
what denomination; to every temperance man and woman
no matter of what order; to every lover of his country in all
political parties; to every philanthropist of whatever stripe;
to examine with me the causes, predisposing and proximate,
which are actively and unintermittingiy at work to ruin the
health and destroy the lives of the young men of our great
Republic.

OHAPTEE II.
SUPERIMPOSED DEBILITIES.

I was once in a convention, some twenty years ago, where
Gerritt Smith, of the State of ISTew York, had a good deal to
say with reference to the necessity of regeneration of the heart
of man, as a condition precedent to his becoming a true
reformer." After he got through, an old man whom I did not
know, arose and said, " Our friend who has just sat down
has spoken of the necessity of regeneration, in order that
men and women may be good. Now I wish to call the
attention of the convention to the necessities of generation,
in order that men and women may be good." The idea
struck me as exceedingly forcible, and awakened thought in
me. The more I have thought of it, the more pregnant with
significance and pertinence it has become. Children are
charged largely with their mothers' peculiarities. If these
are good, they can be developed, and thereby increased. If
they are bad, they are subject to the same law of growth and
active force. Hence, education after birth is a great aid or
hindrance, as it is good or bad, to the evolvement of the
good or bad physical or moral qualities in the subject of it.
The necessity on the part of the parents, of paying attention to the evolution of right physical qualities in their
offspring is great. A child at its birth, and for years afterwards, is largely the subject of physical law. As an object
of love to its parents, they should arrange with great care,
solicitude, and skill, its conditions of physical life. As these
are healthy, will the child be healthy; as it has health will
it be good. For goodness in a child is the expression of

14

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

normal conditions of physical life; moral goodness legitimately showing itself at a later date. What then are the
physical conditions to which the children of our republic are
largely subject.
Let me state a few of them, and consider them a little.
FIRST, BAD DIETETICS.

I know of nothing more deplorable when it is considered
from a philosophical point of view (for philosophy always
with reference to human welfare, considers the material as
well as the spiritual conditions of life for mankind), than the
way in which from the birth of children, until puberty, their
parents feed them. While physical existence, and physical
growth, are the main points of importance for a child's
welfare, in the mind of its Creator, or if one pleases to have
it so, in the regard of Nature, it must follow that it is
largely under the operation and influence of chemical laws,
that its body is made to grow. What shall be the quality of
the matter out of which this growth shall be made, is an
important question. To have no regard thereto, is to have
no real intelligent respect for the welfare of a child. To
obey vital Laws which involve moral considerations, and the
development of moral character, is of high importance. But
to obey vital Laws which have reference to the evolvement of
the potential physical energy which lies coiled up in a child's
body, takes precedence when considering only his welfare.
It has given me a great deal of dissatisfaction, and awakened
in my nature a large dissent, that the plan common to our
people of developing worth in children, makes those measures of first importance which have reference to the drawing
out, and training in them, of their moral and spiritual
faculties. The intelligences of children should be educated
to understand their relations to physical life. Of these

SUPERIMPOSED DEBILITIES,

15

relations, how to grow into bodily strength, endurance, and
symmetry, ranks all the others. No parents can educate their
boys and girls as God would have them do it, without paying
large regard to their necessity for healthful conditions of
physical life. In this direction the first thing which is
needful, is care as to what such children shall eat.
Under our custom of training children, the drawing out
and building up of physical power, parents usually make no
distinction between the kinds of food which they give to
their children, and that which they eat themselves. This is all
wrong. Children and young persons should not eat all
the kinds of food that grown up and mature persons do.
Children should have bone making, muscle making, foods.
Adults need muscle making and nerve making foods. The
distinction is not only obvious, but essentially to be regarded.
Take as an illustration the practice of feeding children
white wheat bread. In nearly all the families in our land,
this food is fed to children as a staple. Eating it as they do,
its lack of appropriate elements, out of which their bodies
cannot evolve right material for growth, necessitates the use
of other substances which possess these lacking elements.
So wherever white bread is eaten, flesh meats are also eaten.
These are as bad in their effect on the bodies of children
as is white bread. Though they supply in a measure the
alimentary substances which white bread lacks, they also
furnish additional substance which no child's body needs.
Where children eat meats and white bread, they fail to
develop in right quantity the material out of which large
and healthy bone structure is made, while they also develop
in excess the structure of which nerve is made, and thus by
eating these two articles, they grow up to have small bones,
large nerves, and ill developed muscles. As one of the
ruinous consequences of such a course they fail to grow to good

16

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

size in body, and grow into too large size of brain and
nerve, making them at quite an early age excessively sensitive to intellectual and moral impressions, but lacking at the
same time power of physical endurance, and so they become
very susceptible to morbid bodily impressions, and are thereby easily made sick, difficult to get well, and in many
instances quite incurable of diseases with which they are
afflicted. I do believe in all honesty, that a great proportion
of children who die in infancy, and during their younger
years in this country, perish of diseases which have their
origin from want of proper food to nourish their bodies.
Thousands of them die during nursing periods, thousands
more soon after weaning, tens of thousands of them before
they are five years old, by reason of starvation. They are
fed on food which cannot answer the necessities of their
conditions of existence, any more than a man can be
supplied with nutriment for his body, who though hard at
work, eats bread made of plaster of Paris.
But to show that I am not beyond reason in the matter,
let me make a quotation from one of the most distinguished
scientific chemists which the world has ever seen. Baron
Liebig speaks in an article on the nutritive value of different
sorts of food as follows: " Of all substances used as food for
man, grain undergoes the greatest change in nutritive value
when converted into flour. Wheat and rye and Indian corn
contain more nutritive salts than flesh meats, but wheaten
or rye flour very much less than meat. The nutritive salts
in flesh meats, however, are about the same as in Indian
corn.
In one thousand parts of pure meat, are contained thirteen
parts in weight of the nutritive salts; in the same quantity
of wheat or rye, and Indian corn, twenty-one parts, or in a
like quantity of wheaten bolted flour only seven parts, and

SUPERIMPOSED DEBILITIES.

17

of rye bolted flour, only twelve parts. This difference is
extraordinarily great, and in the nutritive value, the difference also is much greater than is generally believed. One of
the most excellent French physicians, Dr. Bourdens, informs
ns that during the Crimean war the Eussian prisoners,
accustomed as they were to a very coarse brown bread, were
not sufficiently nourished by the rations of bread which the
French soldiers received, and that it was.found necessary to
increase their rations. It is a scientific fact, which Magendie
has proved by experiment, that a dog dies if fed on white bread
alone, while his health and energy do not suffer at all if his
food consists of bread made of unbolted flour.
All this has been said hundreds of times, but for those
who are daily seated at a well furnished table, and have a
choice of dishes, the difference in their relative nutritive
value, and the change occasioned in their power of nutrition
by the process of cooking, is a matter taken little notice of,
till at last it is thought that such difference does not really
exist.
Where custom is concerned, the generality of persons are
hard headed, and-only when as on an anvil, some thousand
blows have been given, is any impression made. The laws
of nutrition are so simple that a child may understand them.
It will be a long time, however, before the general public will
turn to account the knowledge which science has obtained.
The great mass of the civilized population in the world is
on the whole, better provided for than formerly. Wages are
higher, t\\Q dwellings and sanitary arrangements are
improved, yet in spite of this the efficiency of the male
population for military service, not only on the Continent
but in other countries, diminishes, and in the manufacturing
districts of such countries, to an extent that is alarming.
The chief source of this can be sought only in a deficiency
of nourishment, the ill effects of which are especially great
in youth.

18

DEBILITIES OE OUR BOYS.

By correct choice in the mixture of food, the nutritive
salts wanting in one thing may be supplied by some other
substance which we eat. Thus bread made out of unbolted
wheat meal and eaten with milk furnishes perfect nourishment
even for an adult. The nutritive value of flour may be
considerably augmented by the addition of fruit, as in the
north of G-ermany where oatmeal porridge mixed with fruit
is a favorite dish. Thus, too, soup made out of potatoes is
rendered more nutritious by the addition of peas, and the
potatoes themselves by being eaten with cheese and curds."
Here then is the statement of a man whose eminence in
his department has become such that all scientific men and
women, the world over, listen to him; and by this statement
the views which for twenty years I have had the honor to
urge upon the people of our republic, are most satisfactorily
and eminently confirmed. In all my professional practice
with young men, young boys and girls, who have shown
physical debilities originating in defective action of their
nutritive organs, my plan has been not to stimulate these
organs to greater activity, which is the ordinary method of
medical practice in such cases, but to alter the nature and
quality of foods they ate, and thus build up a better condition
of blood, thereby better conditions of brain and organic nervous structure, and so the better nutritive action of the
organs of digestion, and thus improve the bodily structure
and so invigorate it, and restore them to health.
I can say without any fear of successful question, that my
practice has been eminently gratifying. Thousands on
thousands of parents have had their feeble children made
robust, and thousands of young men whose health had
entirely failed them, and who were afflicted with diseases
which baffled the skill of the most eminent practitioners,
whom they took the pains and met the cost to consult,
having been thoroughly restored to health and early vigor,

SUPERIMPOSED DEBILITIES.

19

by this simple and careful attention to their physical or
bodily needs. Now as out of the generally prevailing system
of bad dietetics have our children the greatest bodily debility,
to be the fruitful cause of a great brood of painful and not
unfrequently ruinous diseases, it becomes parents to see to it
that their children, when young, shall eat proper food. It
becomes also the young men of our republic, in respect to
their dietetics, to make radical changes which can easily be
done, and when accomplished, will be fraught with the most
blessed effects. It is not, however, only in the use of bad
foods that our youth have bodily debilities superimposed
upon them, but also through the use of bad beverages.
Where this obtains, spiritual growth is feeble, and so out
of the debility of body which is thus caused, failures to
acquire large knowledge and high intellectual position, arise,
and as a consequence, in innumerable ways, moral and spiritual perversity is seen to characterize the subjects of it.

CHAPTER III.
THE DEBILITATING EFFECTS OE BEVERAGES.

The debilitating effects on our boys, and young men, of the
beverages which they are permitted to use at the tables of
their parents or elsewhere, I think have failed to receive at
the hands of thoughtful persons, that consideration which
really is needful. Certain it is that there are causes at work
to make our boys and young men feeble. Just as certain is
it, that they cannot be otherwise than feeble, ailing or sick,
or badly diseased, while these causes exist. Hence it
becomes all-important for their good, that their parents and
friends, as well as themselves, should be made to know what
these causes are, and in what direction they work morbidly.
Without attempting to discuss the mooted question whether
tea and coffee, beer and cider, and light wines, have in them
any nutritive qualities or not, I put in my protest none the
less vigorously, against their habitual use by our boys and
young men. Admitting that they are nutritious, it is not
every thing that has in it the quality of nutriment, that is
fit for every boy or young man to drink. Along with the
nutrient particles which these beverages may contain, there
may be other substances whose deleterious effects when taken
into the circulation far more than neutralize the good effects
of their sustaining elements. In any aspect of the case,
then, I insist that experience amply and abundantly demonstrates the ill effects which arise from the habitual use of the
beverages which I have mentioned above. For a child to be
permitted at his meals, usually, and so often as to make their
use common, to drink tea or coffee, beer, cider or wine, or to

DEBILITATING EFFECTS OF BEVERAGES.

21

drink the latter between meals often enough to become
habituated to their use, is so to relate his organic forces to
their appropriate office of developing and making strong
his body, as to cause them to fail essentially in their work.
The organic nervous system of the human body exhibits in
its structure and in the results of its operation more wonderfully the Creative skill perhaps, than any other structural
portion of the body. One of the most magnificent manifestations of Infinite wisdom of which human consciousness
has ever been permitted to take note, is the transmutation of
foods and drinks into blood, and how blood is transformed
into the various tissues of the body. No chemist in his
laboratory has ever been able to make human blood. Many
a scientific man has been able to decompose and analyze it,
resolve it into its original elements, and tell us exactly what
these elements are, and in what proportions they exist. Many
a man has been able to analyze a hen's egg, telling us what
its component parts are, but no man has ever been able, once
these parts are separated, to re-compose them, and then
re-construct the egg.
Now, just where these most wonderful transforming
processes go on in the human body, is where almost everybody disregards the laws of his being. Very little attention
is paid by parents, scarcely none at all by the children themselves, even when they have arrived at years of reflection, to
the operation of these constructive processes. They are
permitted to eat and drink habitually, substances whose
effects are to impair the vigor and nutritive power of their
reconstructive or recuperative organs. Digestion is a process
of which but few persons understand much, and these scarcely
ever undertake to understand it until it has become impaired.
Confessedly we are a nation of dyspeptics, and in proportion
to the whole number of persons thus afflicted, it will be
found on examination that by far the largest part of them

22

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

is confined to the class which we denominate young. When
one looks about him, where he will find one dyspeptic who
is over thirty-five years of age, he will find three who are not
over twenty-five years of age. This is to be accounted for
on the ground that with advancing years come reflection
and wisdom, and thereby dyspeptic invalids get well. As
dyspepsia is the parent of a large brood of other ailments, so
quite a proportion of chronic invalids amongst us will be
found to have their diseases dependent for their continuance
on the defective action of their digestive apparatus.
As dyspepsia almost always has its origin in the use of
bad foods and drinks, thus inducing the subjects of it to
indulge in bad ways of living in other directions, so where a
group of bad habits inducing complicated chronic ailments
is found to exist with any person, to rid himself of these
ailments it is necessary that he should break up his dyspepsia, and to do this it is necessary that he should pay wise
attention to his food and drinks. Whenever he does this,
uniformly it will be found that he has to abandon the use
of tea and coffee, beer, cider and wine. Why he has to do
this, is because in their use more or less from his childhood
up, lies hid away the originating cause or causes of his ill
health. In order to get well, therefore, he must give up
these beverages. Does it not follow logically, that if their
use creates such disease or diseases, and he wishes to avoid
these, he should forego their use ? It so seems to me.
Hence I urge the view that in order to avoid derangement
of the digestive organs, which when it exists affects the
action of the structural organs, boys and young men should
not use as beverages tea or coffee, cider or wine. These
substances, when drunk frequently, or so often as to be able
to make consecutive impression upon the organic nerves,
may not produce exactly the same effects directly, but indirectly they do. If the effect of one of them primarily is the

DEBILITATING EFFECTS OF BEVERAGES.

23

excitement of the nervous system, and then its sedation or
depression, while the primary effect of another is sedation
or depression, and then excitement, the ultimate result
is the same. Impairment of nerves or loss of power to act
steadily or vigorously upon the constructive apparatus of
the body over which they have special office, is as effectually
brought about, whether stimulation first and depression afterward, or sedation first and excitement afterwards, are
induced.
One of the ill effects from their frequent use, which is
common to them all, is the checking of the transformation
of existing tissues in the body. This is a very powerful
cause of disease with boys and young men. Nature demands,
in order to the health of young persons, that disintegration,
decomposition, and excretion of already formed tissues, shall
be as rapid and as effectual, as formation of tissues in their
bodies is. For one habitually to drhik anything whose effect
on the organic nervous system is to benumb its sensibility and
thus disturb its activity, and so cause to be retained in any
given structure of the body particles of matter which ought
to be broken down and carried out of the system, is to do
serious damage to the actual and prospective health of the
subject. Tea, coffee, beer, cider and wine, do produce those
) effects. They all stay the action of the eliminative organs.
i As boys and young men need for their bodily development,
' the best possible facilities for bodily growth, and for consolidation of their bodies when they have ceased to grow, so
substances which they eat or drink, having the effect to
interfere therewith, should be most sedulously avoided.
Independent, therefore, of any poisoning or intoxicating
effects which such substances when used habitually may be
supposed to be able to produce, I am decidedly averse to their
use by such persons, because of their effects on the action of
the structural organs.

24

DEBILITIES 01? OTIR BOYS.

I have not the least doubt that tens of thousands of children annually, in this country, are made sick by their use; and
wrhere no sickness is induced, those who use them are stinted
in growth by them, made to take on through their disturbing
effects unsymmetrical bodily development, and such morbid
tone of mind and moral sense as to render impossible any
large and beautiful outgrowth of personal character.

CHAPTER IV.
SECRET VICES OE CHILDHOOD.

Foremost as a predisposing cause of debility with boys
and young men, is the habit of secret vice, or in other words
the habit of exciting to preternatural action the organs of
sex. The habit of masturbation with boys has come to be
in this country well nigh universal. I do not think the
the truth is exaggerated, when it is said that very few boys,
except those who are children of parents who have come to
be psycho-hygienic in their ways of living, reach the age of
puberty without becoming more or less addicted to this
extraordinarily debilitating habit. The practice is generally
prevalent in all schools of learning; it is not uncommon
with boys whose homes are quite secluded or rural, and
is uniformly prevalent with boys whose parents live in villages
or cities.
Not much reflection is needed, it seems to me, to convince
any one, that so delicate, highly sensitive, and important
a structure as the reproductive organs are, cannot be urged
forward and subjected to extraordinary activity until inherent
excitement of them becomes a habit, without very ruinous
consequences ensuing. Some of these consequences are
worth noting.
1.—A defective, and not unfrequently a deformed, development of the bony structure of the body takes place. This
is not only observable in respect to the size of the bones, but
particularly so in respect to the quality of the material which
goes to make them up, and if there be any bone or set of bones
2

26

D E B I L I T I E S OF OUR BOYS.

which is more injuriously affected than another in the body
the back bone and the bones of the legs below the knee are
these. Many boys, by reason of this vicious habit, are
dwarfed both in height and breadth of build. They cease
to grow tall, and to grow broad. They are diminutive therefore in height and breadth, and in thickness of chest and
pelvis.
2.—Another injury very much to be deplored, which results
in the too early and unnatural exercise of the genital structure, is impairment of size of the organic nerves. If notice is
taken on a large scale of the relations practically existing
between the cerebellum, or back brain, and the organic
nerves, or that class of nerves known to preside largely over
the organs of nutrition^ it will be seen that where children
have naturally small back brains, they have feeble digestive
organs, or where they have very weak and delicate nutritive
organs, they have small back brains. Show me a boy who
cannot eat very heartily, even of simple food, without finding
it difficult to digest and appropriate it, and I will guarantee
that he has small back brain, and that where there is a large,
full and bulging back brain, other things being equal, the
digestive organs are uniformly strong and available.
Between the cerebellum and the organic nerves, on the
one hand, and the genitals on the other, there exists a very
great sympathy. So true is this, that with adults it is not
infrequently the case that a meal of food eaten by a man or
woman immediately after a sexual orgasm, cannot well be
digested. The stomach seems for the time being to be
enervated; the gastric juice is not secreted, the organic
action of the stomach is temporarily enfeebled, and the food
lies therein for a while as if it were a foreign body placed in
an inactive sack. This goes to show how great is the
sympathy between the use of the nervous force which the

SECEET VICES OF CHILDHOOD.

27

sexual system demands for its highest manifestation of power
and that force which the stomach depends upon for the
exhibition of energy.
Let the sexual structure use up a large quantum of this
vital force, and the stomach is deprived of its needful vitality.
Then the food cannot immediately be placed within its walls
and have the processes of disintegration and decomposition
of it thereafter, immediately go on healthfully. When in
boys this excitement of the sexual system is so frequently
induced that it becomes a habit or fixed condition, the
result is seen in the enfeeblement of the organic powers of
the stomach and the organs of assimilation. These cannot
work up to their best state, for want of power, this having
been appropriated by another set of organs, and by reason
of their abnormal excitement. Dyspepsia is a natural consequence, and a legitimate result of masturbation.
3.—Another ill effect, and a very serious one, is the precocious sensibility and activity of the large brain. Boys who
indulge in masturbation are very sensitive to all external
impressions dependent for their existence on the exercise of
their special senses and their organs of intuition. I never
knew a boy who was addicted to this vice who had not extraordinary sense of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, up to
the point where his health had become greatly impaired. Of
course a boy may be ruined by this vice. Loss of power to
act is one of the extreme symptoms of the disease. Insensibility, in some instances total and complete, in the direction
of the use of certain structures is observable. Where this is
so, the boy has become more or less paralyzed. I have known
quite a number of instances of complete paralysis of the
lower portion of the body, in consequence of solitary indulgence. A large number of cases have I seen where the right
leg of the body had become paralyzed, and had decidedly
shrunk.

28

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

Where the disease has not progressed to an extreme point?
a large brained boy takes on intense sensibility, and what is
always .peculiarly unhappy in such case, is, that as the
perceptive faculties become quickened, so that the special
senses are constantly on the alert, the reflective faculties
remain undeveloped, and no progress in the boy's conception
of moral truth and of spiritual things takes place. What
is to be known by observation and manipulation the boy
acquires with extraordinary ease, but what is to be found out
and rightly understood and s^alued, through the exercise of
thought, pure and simple, or by a proper exercise of the
affections in and through the department of the feelings,
such boy fails to learn. If then I were desirous to deaden in
a hoy his spiritual sensibilities, I know of no plan which
would prove so effective in this regard, except the habitual
administration of diffusible stimulants or narcotic drugs, as
to set at work quite frequently an undue activity of his
sexual organs. It would seem as though during human
childhood, God had made such intimate connection and
natural sympathy to exist between the spiritual sensibilities
and the sexual passion, as to render it impossible that the
latter can be unduly and unhealthfully gratified without
ruinous results to the former.
If I am right in my estimate of this subject, it lifts itself
up into commanding importance. It matters not how much
of delicacy hangs about it, and how difficult it is properly to
discuss it, the danger of neglecting to say what needs to be
said upon it, is far greater than that which can arise even
from injudicious discussion. No fanciful or factitious
considerations will justify parents in refusing to look at it,
and meet its great necessities fairly.

CHAPTER V.
WHAT CAN BE DONE.

The question divides itself naturally into two departments;
that which is preventive, and that which is curative. In the
way of prevention, the first suggestion I offer is, that during
the early years of a boy's life, the parents should be very
careful in respect to associates. Older boys and hired men
are often corrupt in their own personal manners and ways
of life, impure in their ideas, and immoral in their associations, and their influence both by speech and example is
directly calculated to awaken prurient impressions in his
mind. If these are not neutralized by the watch-care and
loving influence of parents, great evil may be done. I think
I may say, at a venture, that during my professional life, not
less than a thousand parents, either fathers or mothers, have
consulted me with reference to the secretly vicious habits of
their boys. A good many of these have informed me that
their boys were taught the practice as early as eighteen
months to two years of age. A great many of these parents
told me that their boys were taught it as early as four, five
and six years of age; and in many instances the condition
was imposed upon them by grown up men. I regard it,
therefore, as a'very unsafe course to allow young boys to
associate with, particularly to be left habitually alone with,
and especially to sleep with boys who have arrived at puberty,
and with men who are in the employment of their parents,
unless such persons are known to be of correct sexual habits
and pure morals.

30

D E B I L I T I E S OF OUE BOYS.

2. The next suggestion which I offer, in the way of prevention, is, that instruction, on the part of the parents, in
regard to the nature and use as well as the abuse of the sexual structure, should be communicated to their boys as soon
as they are sufficiently intelligent in general terms to understand the subject. Scientific explanations are not needful.
W h a t is wanted is a moral impression in respect to the impure and injurious effects of the habits of self-indulgence.
This can be readily made, as parents can see for themselves,
by an effort put forth in the right direction, much earlier in
a boy's life than is usually supposed. If, however, parents
have neglected such instruction until their boys have reached
a period of life when not only a knowledge of the sexual
structures and functions can be conveyed, but a curiosity has
arisen in their minds to know how these structures are related in their mutual functions, then it becomes the parents
of such boys to make them fully acquainted with the whole
matter, as far as physiological information can enable, them
to comprehend it.
An ungratified or unsatisfied curiosity oftentimes lies at
the root of immorality. If boys at ten or twelve years of
age were made acquainted with the physiological difference
which exist between their own physical organisms and those
of girls, there would be very much less liability to deviation
from a strict line of conduct than otherwise is likely to be
the case.
3. The feeding of stimulating foods to such of them as
are at all troubled with inordinate sexual propensities should
be avoided. The material of such food, when turned into
blood, establishes what may be called an inflammatory or
excitable diathesis of the body, and where this exists, under
other conditions unfavorable to health, fever ensues. "When
a boy is fed meat as a staple article of food, and is permitted
to have with it plenty of spices, such as he may like, with

WHAT CAN" BE DOKE.

31

tea or coffee to drink, a condition of his blood is created
such as to make his whole system feverish, and what may
be termed excitable or irritable. In watching what way this
excitability or irritability will show itself, if the boy be at or
about the age of puberty, it is morally certain that his
parents will find that his sexual structure will be the focal
point of its exhibition. Right there, nature, at the oncoming of puberty, is enforcing constitutional changes, and
if his blood conditions are irritable or inflammatory, the fire
breaks out at that point. If he has been left in moral darkness, receiving no instruction from his parents or anybody
else in regard to the appropriate restraint under which he
should keep himself, there is no reason to expect that he will
show self-control. Give him opportunity and he is as sure
to bring his sexual organism into action, as water is to run
down hill.
To prevent such prurient excitement, and to keep the boy
in the range of safety, not only is proper instruction needed,
but proper bodily habits are very important; and in order
that these may exist in full force, his blood should be kept
free from every irritating constituent, and his whole organization should be dependent for its activity on the power of
his assimilative organs to furnish the vigor which he needs,
from blood made out of unstimulating but nutritious foods.
Parents, therefore, should keep the blood of their boys
cool, if they want to keep them morally correct in the department of sexuality. ISTow, no person till he has had his
attention turned to the subject, and has been a patient observer, and by the gathering up of facts made himself thoroughly acquainted and conversant therewith, can tell to what
a ruinous degree, in the way of inducing constitutional feebleness and causing functional derangements, developing severe
diseases, and loss of mental, moral and spiritual power, this
wretched habit of solitary indulgence operates. I think that

32

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

it may not be uninstructive, nor unprofitable, for me to make
a concise statement of the diseases which may directly have
their origin in perverse use of the sexual organs:
(a.)

PHYSICAL DISEASES:

Headache.
Deafness.
Impairment of sight.
Loss of smell.
Early decay of teeth.
Failure to develop the second set of teeth.
Ringing noises in the head.
Dryness of the Hair.
Falling out of the hair.
Running of the eyes.
Catarrh of the nose.
Hoarseness of the voice.
Difficulty of breathing.
Irregular circulation of the blood through the heart.
Susceptibility to congestion of the lungs.
Dry hacking cough.
Pain under the right shoulder blade.
Pain in the right side.
Enlargement of the spleen.
Great sensibility, and sometimes enfeeblemenfc of the diaphragm.
Readiness to catch cold.
To have inflammation of the lungs.
Asthma.
Dyspepsia.
Constipation.
Diarrhea.
Inordinate urination.
Congestion of the Kidneys.

33

WHAT CAN BE DONE.

Failure to develop properly the sexual structures.
Loss of power to nutrify the body by food.
Rheumatism.
Night sweats.
Day fevers.
Cessation of growth of the nails on the fingers and toes.
Epilepsy.
Paralysis of one or both of the lower limbs.
Catalepsy.
Softening of the brain.
Diabetes.
Neuralgia.
And others which I might mention.
(b.)

MENTAL AND MORAL ABNORMITIES:

Excessive mental impressibility and moral sensibility, showing themselves in precocious activity of the mental faculties,
and preternatural activity of the spiritual faculties, to be
followed, as the body becomes diseased, by great passional
excitability and irritability, shown in readiness to get angry
under the slightest provocation.
In loss of power for self-controL
In loss of memory.
In capriciousness of desires.
In wild and impulsive manifestations of the imagination.
In incompetency to perceive and comprehend moral obligations, or to assume and fulfil moral responsibilities.
In the development of the worst constitutional elements,
propelling the subject out of the line of proper conduct,
causing him to assume perverse attitudes and pursue immoral courses of conduct.
Not unlikely shall I be thought quite one side of the
line of safe and prudent assertion, when I say that I doubt
whether any man ever committed a crime against his neigh2*

84

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

bor or against the peace of society, which on the score of justice and high regard for the general welfare, demands that he
should be put into state prison, who had not, when a boy,
become addicted to solitary sexual indulgence, or subsequently when a man, given himself up to vicious sexual gratification.
Whenever one sees an individual who has sacrificed to the
gratification of this vice his self-respect until he has lost it,
and so lias lost footing with his fellow men, it may not be
discreet to infer that this terrible self-destruction is to be
attributed to the influence, over and upon him, of a single
vice. Vices, like virtues, are gregarious. Their tendency is
to group themselves, and accumulate working force by their
union. Hence, when a man has fallen so low as to become
despicable as to his personal character in the regard of his
fellow men, it is altogether probable that diversions from
right conduct in life, in many ways, have united to push him
to his present depths of degradation and debasement. Not
infrequently, however, amongst all his vicious habits a single
one stands, like Saul among his brethren, head and shoulders
above the others, in the influence it has exerted in determining his downward course and causing his ruin.
While, then, the use of bad foods, and bad table beverages,
have much to do with inducing constitutional debility, and
functional derangements of the bodies of boys, and thus
making them incompetent to do worthy work in life, the
habit of masturbation with our boys in this country ranks
them; nevertheless it is somewhat dependent for its existence
upon these previously formed bad habits. When this, however, has come to exist habitually, it almost necessarily
creates for itself a distinct position, imposing, under its gratification, upon the nervous structures of those who indulge
in such powerful nervous and muscular reactions, as have

WHAT CAK BE DOKE.

35

compelled, if I may say so, the victims to indulge in the use
of strong stimulants and stimulo-narcotics. A great many
persons who have died drunkards since our Eepublic was
inaugurated, owed their habits of inebriety to their habits of
early sexual gratification, as they owed this to their wrong
dietetic and beverage indulgences during their early years.
God has so organized human nature, that its spiritual
attainments shall be measured in large degree by the amount
of intelligence which it achieves. This He has made to
depend largely upon the habitual and prevalent health of the
body which any given individual shall possess. Where physical debility exists, incompetency always measurably follows.

OHAPTEE VL
IMPOTBNOY.

An observing person who is interested in vital statistics,
can readily make himself aware of the fact that there are in
this country, at the present time, many more men and
women living together in marriage, who have no children,
than there were thirty years ago. True, the population is
much greater now than then, but the number of barren
households, in which there are now no children, is above the
ratio of the increase of our population greater than then.
The popular notion is, that where a man and woman are
married and have no children, the want of capacity is with
the woman. Formerly this was so, in a very great degree.
Sterility was a curse, and in nearly every case, where it
existed, the wife showed it. Now-a-days, however, the fact
is otherwise. There are as many impotent men, who are
husbands, as there are women who are wives, and are barren,
I think a good many more. Impotence with our young men
is coming to be not uncommon. Two causes produce it.
One, structural, unfitting them by defective growth of their
sexual organs, to perform their part successfully in the
procreation of their species. The other functional, rendering their secretion of the seminal fluid deficient in quality,
making it unvirile. This is a delicate subject to discuss, and
difficult to talk about in a way that, while it shall be plain
and full of moral pertinence, shall do no violence to the
sensibilities of those who are disposed to deal with the examination of all sexual matters in great modesty, yet with

IMPOTEHCY.

37

research. The evil of impotence in our young men is
becoming too common, and the consequences therefrom too
ruinous to society, to permit ignorance to prevail where
knowledge might exist. Knowing that the evil does exist,
and what are the predisposing and immediately active causes
which produce it, and how to overcome it, provided those
who suffer from it can be induced to accept my suggestions,
I feel not only at liberty, but under obligation, to speak, and
to talk very plainly.
Where impotency or incapability to beget a child under
circumstances favorable therefor, exists with a young man by
reason of imperfect development of his sexual organs, they
being too small to answer to the necessities of the case
whenever he cohabits with a woman, the cure therefor turns
largely upon the facfc of his age, and the peculiar development which already he may have made in other parts of his
body.
I have been successful in quite a large number of instances
in increasing the growth of the sexual organs of persons
who were approaching adult stature. In several cases I have
succeeded after the person has reached manhood. My
methods of doing this involved the action of the organs of
nutrition, and of- secretion, determining by very simple
processes large quantities of blood to the sexual organs, and
keeping it there in what might be termed excess of quantity,
thus causing enlargement of the parts, through accretion of
tissue. This may at first thought seem to be impossible and
very difficult, but it is not. Almost any organ of the body
can, under circumstances favorable thereto, be made to take
on increased developing energy, and as a consequence
become thus increased in size.
Let us see if this is not so. Under appropriate mearis the
human nails can be made to grow much more rapidly than
they have been accustomed to do. The human hair also, by

38

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

proper applications^ can be made to grow not only longer,
but much thicker than it has been wont to do. Long
eyelashes can be substituted for short ones. The size of the
muscles of the arm can be increased, and legs, and hips, and
loins. Increase of certain structures of the body can be
made, simply through determination of the blood to them,
under the exercise of certain mental faculties. It is not
always necessary to put an organ or structure to active use,
in order that it should increase in size. This may be accomplished by determination of the blood into it, under the
exercise of some other organ. Congestion of the stomach
may arise simply by reason of the intensity of that portion
of the brain which induces mental reflection. Enlargement of the liver oftentimes has its origin in the long continued exercise of that portion of the brain whereby anger
is expressed. Enlargement of the spleen is quite frequently
attributable to undue activity of the brain in the expression
of grief or sorrow. Induration of the inner walls of the
lower bowels, producing great difficulty of defecation, is
not infrequently induced by too great exercise of that portion of the brain whereby philosophical or abstract thought
is evoked. Enlargement of the heart in a majority of instances is the result of excessive activity of that portion of
the brain which expresses emotion or very great affection.
Increased activity of the sexual organs inducing their possessor to give himself up to excessive sexual indulgence, is
brought about quite commonly by too great determination
of the blood to the cerebellum.
Now, if these are facts,—and they are,—and if they show
any bearing on the point, they prove that it is not difficult,
either to determine unusually large quantities of blood to
particular structures, or to cause these structures to take on
increased size by reason of such determination. Tha'^ this
can be done I know. That it has been done in my practice..

IMPOTEKCY.

39

in the department of the sexual structures, to the degree
which I have already stated, is strictly and absolutely true.
That it can be done, should be a source of very great satisfaction to large numbers of our boys who have reached
puberty, and of our young men who have reached their ordinary growth. It should be so, for the reason which I have
stated in another chapter, that no greater misfortune
can befall a young man in this country than impotence.
Especially where he is impotent from structural causes. One
never feels as socially well placed, to be organically unfit to
do anything, the doing of which brings general public approbation, as he does when able to perform it, or though
unable to perform it when his debility arises from sickness.
If a man be below the general level of his fellows, from
want of organic power, this fixes on him a status, and imposes on him the loss of esteem, which would not apply to
him were he only functionally debilitated. To be naturally
weak, because of a feeble body, is to hold'a very different
position in the social mind from what one would who is
naturally strong, but at any given time had become very
feeble by reason of sickness. A man may be rendered incompetent by disease, to propagate his species, and his impotence will not subject him to criticism, as it will if it be
constitutional,—having its origin in structural causes.
Where, therefore, there is such defective growth -of man's
sexual organs, that he cannot in the act of coition impregnate his wife, and so is organically impotent, it is a very,
very great misfortune. If it can be overcome, no pains
should be spared to do so. In many instances it can be, and
the methods whereby it may be are/entirely within the
range of the strictest propriety, having their efficacy in the
employment of means for the desired end, which are very
simple, and easily available.
Such is the extent to which impotence with our young
men has come to exist, that I hold it only fair to any mar^

40

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS*

ried woman who cohabits with her husband and exposes
herself to become pregnant, to infer, that if she does not become so, the fault is with her husband, and not with her,
unless there are causes at work to make her sterile, which
are most obvious.
It is not an uncommon fact to find men and women who
are living together unhappily, because there are no children
born of their marriage. Where this does exist, it quite often
begins in the disappointment of the husband, who supposes
himself to have married an infecund woman.
I have had some marked instances of this sort, which have
come under my professional notice and management. Upon
making myself proficient as to the cause of such infecundity,
oftener than otherwise I have been compelled to take the
supposed responsibility off the woman, where the husband
had placed it, and fasten it upon him, where he had not supposed it possible to exist. When I have been compelled to
do so, and have been able to convince both the parties that
I was right, and that after all the man was impotent instead
of the woman being barren, it seems to me that more than
poetic justice was done, for in every such case, where the
man had been disposed to show his wife little consideration,
and to be less loving to her than he otherwise would have
been, has he greatly disliked to have'her apply to him his
own rule of action under reverse of circumstances. So true
it is that injustice exists in a large measure amongst human
beings, simply because those who commit it are not willing
to do urito others as they would be done by.
The second cause* of impotence with our young men, is
functional, and consists .chiefly in the failure to develop in
the semen which they secrete, spermatazoa, or seminal animalculse. When the fluid which the testicles secrete is lacking in these living forms, it is essentially defective. No contact of it with an ovum of the woman, can result in impreg-

IMPOTEKCY.

41

nation. The germinal virility of the fluid is lacking, and so,
under however favorable circumstances for fecundation the
woman is placed, she nevertheless remains unpregnant.
Now very great, and widely extended experiments, especially made with the semen of young men of the class which
suffers from seminal emissions, prove beyond all question the
incompetence of numbers of them to beget their kind. It is
probably true that where married men hold coitive intercourse with their wives under circumstances legitimately
favorable for their impregnation, not one time in twenty
does impregnation follow. This arises because the semen
secreted and passed into the woman's body, is unvirile. A
man may be incompetent to beget his species to-day, and -in
a fortnight thereafter be able to do so, other things being
equal. This, however, will depend largely upon the conditions
of the man's blood at the time when'the seminal fluid is
secreted from it. If he has been in excessive use and disposition of the fluid, it may be immediately thereafter defective in spermatazoa, as it may be if he has made himself
sick by indulgence in eating, and in order to relieve himself
has taken some powerful poisonous medicine. Alcohol has
a powerful and positive effect in this direction. It is remarkable to notice how many men partially inebriated, have sexual connection with their wives, and other women, and yet
fail to impregnate them. One reason why so few lewd men
get women with whom they cohabit with child, is not because the women are not open to exposure, but because at
the time of connection the seminal fluid of the men has
dead instead of living animalculse in it. Wherever, therefore, functional debility of the sexual organs exists, showing
itself in impotence, the subject of it does well to examine
into its causes, and see whether or not these have their vigor
and efficiency in his bad eating or drinking habits. If the
debility is functional, and dependent on bad habits, then it

4:2

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

can be thoroughly and readily overcome. This I know to
be the case, because I believe I have stated the truth, far
within the limits of fact, when I say that there are now living in the United States, more than a thousand men who
have been able to beget children, since they were either patients of mine at Our Home, or received instruction and
advice at my hands by letter, who previous thereto had lived
years with their wives without having any children by
them.

CHAPTER VII.
D E B I L I T I E S CAUSED B l DRUG MEDICATION".

A great many boys when young, and many young men
also, have their constitutions impaired, and their health permanently injured, by the taking of drug poisons. So common is the practice of administering poisons to children, when
they are suffering under any ailments incident to childhood,
that parents have grown thoroughly irresponsible and void
of all conscience in the matter.
If their children are not sick enough to send for a physician, they send for medicines which are poisons and administer them. Many of these poisons are of such a nature that
they directly affecfc the genital structures, not infrequently
producing organic debility therein, thus causing them to
cease to grow, or if not, to put on abnormal growth.
Only professional intimacy with the conditions of the
sexual organs of boys who have arrived at puberty, and young
men who have arrived at their majority, will make one
acquainted with the extent to which imperfect development
of these organs exists. In many cases the growth of the
genital organs ceases soon after the subjects arrive at puberty.
This.is a very great misfortune to those who suffer from it.
In considering the provoking causes which bring it about, I
am led to think that none has more powerful influence than
drug poisons remediaily administered by parents or physicians for other diseases. The sexual organs in boys who
have arrived at puberty, and for years thereafter, are particularly susceptible to specific impressions. These may be

44

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

healthful or morbid, according to the nature of the instrumentality or influence exerted. A good .many ailments
which boys show just before or for years subsequent to their
arrival at puberty, haye their origin5 in the constitutional
impressibility to which their sexual organs are liable, under
the bad conditions of life to which they are in this country
habitually subjected. Living for the most part unhygienically, as boys do, constitutional susceptibility of the whole
body to disease exists. Connected with this there is particular sensibility of the genital structures. "When, therefore,
from any cause, a boy shows an ailment which affects his
general system, such for instance as headache, fever, colic,
diarrhea, skin sweatings, or any other morbid manifestation
which makes him generally sick, his sexual organs, by
reason of their peculiar state of deyelopment growing out of
his age at that time, are extremely sensitive, and if powerful
medicines are administered to him then for the cure of his
general ailment, these will be quite likely to affect the conditions of his sexual organs. They may be so affected
thereby as to take on permanent morbid sensibility, or so as
to be checked in their growth; in either of which cases very
unhappy consequences may ensue. In the former case there
will be manifested a weakness of the organs, by reason of
which seminal emissions are brought about. In the latter
case, impotency or incapacity for procreation will be shown.
ISTo worse misfortune can befall an adolescent boy, or a
full grown young man, than to be afflicted with either of
these forms of deviation from the line of normal action of
his sexual structures. The ill results to his general health
are exceedingly to be deplored, and incompetencies arising
therefrom to any special, essential use of these organs, are so
great as to be very injurious in their effects on him, and
their influence over him, in his personal and social relations
to his fellows.

DEBILITIES CAUSED BY DRUG MEDICATION".

45

The administration of drug poisons is all the more to be
regretted, because there is no particular necessity for their
use. Children do not need to take poisons, for these kill, or
tend to kill those who take them. This is their nature, and
to it they all tend. What one gives as medicine to do good
and not harm by it, to save and not destroy him who takes
.it, should be such and so administered as not to interfere
with those relations of the human body which are naturally
congenial thereto. Any substance which, when taken, will
make a sick man better, will not make a well man sick.
Inside of wnat may be termed the operation of chemical
laws, this is the natural effect of the administration of remedial substances. Unless, therefore, the medicine administered can find its counterpart in some substance of the
human body, with which upon coming in contact it can
chemically unite, and form a new and innocuous substance,
no poison can have other than a deleterious effect, no matter
for what disease it is administered,, nor by whom given.
Take the materia medica, and apply this rule to the remedies therein offered for the various diseases with which
human bodies are afflicted, and one will be surprised to see
how few of them are left for use, after he has made a faithful
application of this rule. J T greater absurdity exists than
So
this of supposing that certain substances which are unfriendly to the maintenance of a healthy body, will tend to
restore such body to health when it is diseased. Nature's
economies are not thus arranged. Uniformly she makes her
grand remedies of substances which she uses for the preservation of health, whose effect when taken into the system is to
reconstruct, build up, supply waste, repair breaches in the
constitution, and invigorate organs whose functions are
feeble or imperfect.
Step out into her broad domain, beyond the intermeddling
of men, and see how true this is. Air for the sick and the

46

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

well, food for the feeble and the strong, light for the healthy
and the diseased, water for the young and the old, ease and
pleasant mental conditions for the invalid and him of robust
health; each and all these instrumentalities of nature to be
administered to the sick and the healthy, in proportion to
their respective capacities to bear them; but never one, nor
all of these for the sick only, or only for those who are well.
Take the poisonous agents which a.re not appropriable by
the living, human organism for the purposes of health, and
administer them to those who are healthy, and see how
decidedly nature expresses her abhorrence of their ad ministration. No one having sound discretion would ever think
of administering calomel, like the air, both to the sick and
the well, making no difference except in quantity; or of
giving opium or strychnine, colchicum or iodine, arsenic or
sulphuric acid, or any other of the ten thousand and one
poisonous agents to be found, as one would administer light,
or water, or food.
The poisoning of our boys and young men for their good,
is on a level with the old barbarous practice of blood-letting
for almost every human disease. A practice so destructive
when it was followed, that a very able medical writer has
given his opinion, that the lancet in Europe has sent more
persons to untimely graves, than all the battles fought since
the introduction of Christianity.
I think I am not speaking beyond the line of safe remark
when I say, that four-fifths of all our boys who, having
acute ailments, take poisonous drugs under the direction
of their parents, have, after their recovery therefrom, some
form of chronic ailment shown in some deranged disturbance or marked disease, which it is a burden to carry, and
which makes life less joyous than it otherwise would be.
With great numbers of them this disease is, as I have said
before, either such a weakness of their sexual organs as

DEBILITIES CAUSED BY DJiUG MEDICATION.

47

manifests itself by involuntary emissions of semen, or such
failure of organic development as to result in imperfect
growth of the sexual organs, or in impotency, though the
organs take* on full growth.
These facts speak for themselves. They show that
poisons which are often administered by parents, under the
direction of physicians, for remedial purposes, are powerful
to use up vigor, rather than to convert it, and breaking down
the elasticity of the muscles, stiffening the sinews, inflaming
the secretory membrane, relaxing the capillaries, obstructing
the glands, weakening the action of the lacteals, and so subverting nutrition, reducing the tone of the lymphatics, and
so making the blood impure, affecting the respiration and
the circulation of the blood, they thus make the subject old
oftentimes before he reaches his manhood, streak his head
with grey, furrow his face wTith wrinkles, give to him the
stoop of age, the decrepitude of a confirmed invalid, and the
air of one to whom the weight of a grasshopper has become
a burden, though he may not as yet have reached the age
of a full-grown man.
In every town, city, village or neighborhood,—I like to
have said in every house,—one can find tottering, feeble,
cadaverous witnesses of the truth of my statement. Now,
whatever maybe thought of the efficacy of drug poisons as
remedies for diseases of the Jiead, lungs, heart, stomach,
liver, kidneys, bowels, muscles, bones, nerves and skin, I begthat these may not be administered for derangements of the
sexual organs of boys or young men, whatever may have
been the cause or the causes whereby diseases of these
organs have come to exist.
The sexual structure is expressly intended to concentrate
within itself the essential energy, and to express through
itself the essential vitality of the body, of which it makes
a part. Through its action alone can man by his con-

48

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

nection with woman reproduce himself. Men do not beget
children with their heads, their hearts, their livers, or their
stomachs; they must have sexual organs wherewith to perform this most important and essential work. If, therefore,
from any cause, these organs are made to take on organic
or functional debilities, the subject is made the loser. He is
cut off from his race. He cannot hold the same relation to
his fellows that he would be able to do were this portion of
his physical organism in full vigor, awaiting appropriate
opportunities for natural exercise.
To have a child, and have him grow up a pleasant, agreeable, interesting boy, foreshadowing the possibilities of
earnest endeavor, grand success, and noble life, yet have him
cursed with genital debility in any of its forms, so that in
that direction he can never be a full-grown and efficient
man, is to have a blight come upon him, compared with
which almost all other afflictions that usually befall man
in his earthly career, are light.

CHAPTER VI1L
D E B I L I T Y CAUSED BY T H E USE OE ALCOHOLIC

DRINKS.

On no structure of the human body does alcoholic poison
have a greater and more injurious effect than on the sexual.
Its presence in the blood excites the genital organs, inducing
not infrequently excessive sensibility and preternatural action,
causing large secretion of semen from the blood, rilling up
and overcharging the seminal vesicles and ducts, causing
such pressure upon the sexual nerves as to produce large
cohabitative desire, which if not gratify d in the natural way,
forces the subject to solitary gratification by manipulation,
or induces such cerebellic congestion as results in involuntary seminal emissions when he is asleep.
Nothing can be more deplorable when viewed from the point
of physical development and functional health than the agency
of the sexual organs to undue and unusual excitement,
while as yet their possessor has not attained his full bodily
growth, or having reached full height, has not reached the
breadth, thickness and firmness of body, which he would do
under favorable circumstances.
Where alcoholic poison in any form of mixture is daily
or habitually at longer intervals taken into the circulation,
one of its effects is to check growth. It does this, as all
scientific men admit, by stopping the metamorphosis or
change of tissue, which must go on in one's body, if he is to
grow. Growth is nothing else than that condition of the
system indicated by repair of tissue, carried on in the living
organism as a whole, or in any part of it, in greater degree
3

50

D E B I L I T I E S OE OUR BOYS.

than wastage is carried on. As repair however cannot be
made except as destruction of tissue has preceded it, so
where no tissue has been destroyed, no reparation in the
growth can for any length of time healthily be made. Nature does not build the new upon the old. She uniformly
gets rid of the old, in order that she may construct the new.
Where from intervening causes this natural process is prevented, and she permits new tissue which has capacity to
express vitality to be overlaid upon worn out tissue or intermingled with it, disease is to a greater or less extent consequent upon such arrangemeut. The growth of the ringer
nail is shown in a form which clearly demonstrates how
nature makes her reparation. New creations of nail are not
superimposed upon already existing tissue, but are established
at the point where, as a consequence, the old tissue is crowded
out of the way, and rendered useless. Just so is it with all
the tissues.
The presence in the blood of new materials for yet unformed textures, seeking their appropriate place for structural
formation, necessitates the disintegration of structures
already formed to make room for them. When.the blood,
thus loaded down with particles of new but inchoately organ nized matter, contains alcoholic poison, as the blood flows
through the body it carries this poison with it wherever it
goes. An effect of poison is to reduce or destroy for the
time being the vital sensibility of the structures, which it
reaches by means of the blood carried to these structures.
Hence it stops that process which is known as disintegration
of tissue, and thus renders the creation of tissue impossible;
because where by the presence of matter already filling up
the cells in which tissue must be formed there is no room
for new tissue to be made, as a general thing it is not made.
So while the old, or already existing tissue, is not broken
down and room thereby made for new structure of the part,

DEBILITY BY USE OF ALCOHOLIC DKOTKS.

51

the new material cannot be received, and has to pass on,
either to be cast out of the system, or if retained, to undergo
chemical change and become itselt thereby poisonous, producing a condition very deleterious to health, and to no part
of the body more than to the sexual organs.
Boys and young men who, therefore, are in the practice
of drinking alcoholic liquors, subject themselves to injuries
very severe in their nature, on their bodies as a whole, but
especially so to their sexual organs. The ways in which
such injury is wrought are numerous. The more obvious
of them are, checking the body in its growth, making it less
in its entire size than it otherwise would be, altering the
form of it so that it is less symmetrical, and in some
instances impairing the vigor of the legs, so that while the
trunk of the body is as large as the style, or breed of build
common to the family would permit, the size of the legs is
decidedly diminished. Or, the defect may be seen in the
alteration of the structure of the chest, indicating small
lungs, or in diminution of the size of the stomach, liver,
kidneys and bowels, making the person to have feeble and
weak digestive capacity. It is not an uncommon case to
have the back brain enlarged, increasing the size of the
body about the hips, thickening up the hinder parts, and
diminishing the forward parts, so that the person shows
large buttocks, giving him posterior protuberance, and
inferior size of the lower abdomen, and of the genitals.
Where such defect exists, the person has what is called a
very hollow back, and is compelled to walk after a peculiar
manner. Sometimes the effect of habitual use of alcoholic
stimulants, is to check the alteration of the tissue of the
brain, so as greatly to impair the mental faculties.
It is not at all uncommon to see boys and young men, who
use alcoholic beverages habitually, but who never become
inebriated, show great want of power of the higher mental

52

D E B I L I T I E S OF OUE BOYS.

faculties. Proof of this can be had in abundance, if one
will but take the trouble in any community to classify its boys
and young men, and see how very few of them can be measured by a standard which requires, in order to come up to
it, that they shall show more than ordinary mental ability.
Take as a maximum measure, the mental and moral power
which the ablest men in any village or thickly settled neighborhood exhibit, it is surprising to see how very few of the
whole number of growing up and grown up boys ever reach
that standard.
Connected with the use of alcoholic drinks, in the production of constitutional and functional debilities, which render
our boys and young men infirm by breaking down their health,
or by making them sick, causing their premature death, I
must count in tobacco as a powerful agent. I am not by any
means certain that its effects are not more destructive upon
our boys and young men than alcoholic liquors are. Some
facts there are which go to support this hypothesis. Among
these I mention:
1. That its use precedes that of liquors.
2. That its direct effects are powerfully depressing.
3. That the destructiveness of such effects are likely to be
greater upon physical organisms which have not reached
consolidated growth, than stimulants would produce, for the
reason, that the effect on the human nervous system of a depressant is more directly produced and longer continued,
than that of a stimulant.
4. That the poison of tobacco is more subtle than that of
alcohol, and is therefore more likely to affect primarily the
nervous rather than the other soft yet solid structures of the
body.
It is nothing to the credit of a poison, that it intoxicates
without producing dizziness, and that it leaves the subject
capable to walk without staggering. One of the most

DEBILITY BY USE OF ALCOHOLIC DEINKS.

53

redemptive effects which result from the use of alcoholic
liquors is, that the intoxicating principle so affects certain muscles of the body, that the person brought under its
influence in an extreme degree cannot control them, t h o u g h
his mental faculties can operate within their sphere, with
such certainty that he can think correctly, and will to carry
out his thought. One of the least destructive effects of alcohol on the human body is, that under its exclusive use the
natural relation between responsible consciousness and the
muscles whereby such consciousness is expressed, is broken
up, and so the body is saved from an expenditure of vital
power to a degree that otherwise, were it to go on, would
make reaction impossible. He who will drink alcoholic
liquors till his system becomes positively affected thereby, is
likely to live longer and be less diseased while he does live,
from getting occasionally thoroughly or dead drunk, than if
he uses them to such an extent only as never to feel the control of his muscles sensibly impaired. I do not hesitate to avow
my conviction as fixed, and firmly settled, that this view
is true. Moderate drinking, so as never to get the muscles
drunk, is the worst form of drinking, viewed from the point
of constitutional impairment, or from the point of liability
to the incursion of severe and incurable diseases.
Every person who uses alcoholic liquors habitually, and in
such measure as to feel only daily exhilaration therefrom ?
would be likely to live longer, and meanwhile to have generally
better bodily health for having an occasional fit of downright
inebriety. In such case the system goes through a complete
reaction, and reinstatement of conditions approximating to
the normal or healthy. One only wants to become aware
of facts to know this. Take an instance.
A man is what we call a dipsomaniac, or spasmodic
drunkard, having his fits of inebriety with quite regular
periodicity. Watch him between his periods, and he is

54

D E B I L I T I E S OF OUR BOYS.

never seen so under the influence of liquors as to stagger,
but as the time draws near when according to the law of
nervous reaction he will go into a drunken fit, a close
observer will readily take note how ill-related he seems to be in
his mental and moral consciousness to his responsible every
day duties. For a week or a fortnight before he gets drunk,
he will show wide deviation from his usual capacity of self
control. If he ever shows want of judgment, and in matters of business makes ill-considered bargains, he will do it
then. If ever he is peevish, fault-finding, fretful, cruel to
his family, or to domestic animals, it will be then. If at any
period he ever exhibits dullness of moral sense, rendering him
more or less oblivious to nice discriminations of right and
wrong, this is the point when it will be seen, and as time goes
on, up to the hour where the spasmodic appetite develops
itself in overwhelming force and he goes into a drunken fit,
he will show more and more loss of self control, till at last the
fit appears and for a week he revels in his debauchery, ultimately coming out and becoming sober, to have apparently all
his faculties renewed, and to go up and down the avenues of his
daily life, with as much dignity and strength, as it is competent for a man of his faculties to show. Nature has brought
about a severe vital reaction, in spite of all the influences
downward to death to which, his habit of drinking liquor
subjects him. She has thereby enabled him to recover, and
stand upon his feet once more, and for the time, a man.
Let not our boys and young men, then, think that they
are not doing themselves manifest injury by drinking liquor,
simply because they do not become sensibly intoxicated from
loss of control of the will over their muscles.
Tobacco is one of those poisons whose effect on the human system is not so direct upon muscles as upon the
nerves. He who habitually uses it, though he does it to great
excess, is not made staggering drunk by it. It stupifies

DEBILITY BY USE OF ALCOHOLIC DKINKS.

55

him when its poisonous element is introduced into the system, at a given time in great excess, but he can nevertheless
walk about, and maintain his muscular control. Its destructive effects therefore are more insidious, and not so readily
apparent when investigated from a single stand-point, but
considered with reference to broad results I am disposed to
think that the sexual organs of our boys and young men
are as ruinously affected thereby as they are under the use
of alcoholic liquors, as at present drunk by a majority of
them.
It is not generally the case, however, that our young men
habitually use only one of these poisons. On the other hand,
where they chew tobacco, they usually drink liquors, or where
they habitually drink liquors, they usually chew or smoke
tobacco; so they get the destructive effect of both these
poisons. Where these habits are established during the periods of bodily development, their destructive effect is more
likely to concentrate and primarily show itself in their brains
and their genital organs and thereby in other part or parts
of their systems.
I have seen such ruin of our young men, caused by indulgence in the use of these two poisons, as to make my heart
ache with agony, and my eyes flow fountains of tears. To
me there is no sadder sight than to behold bright, promising,
beautiful boys and young men, robbed of constitutional
vigor, broken down in health, smitten by disease, and made
a prey to death before they have grown to manhood, or lived
out half their days. Would to God that every young man
in this couutry, might be induced so to regulate his appetite,
as henceforth never to drink alcoholic liquors, or in any
form to use tobacco.

CHAPTER IX.
SEMIKAL

EMISSION'S.

By this teim I mean the involuntary loss of semen.
This has come to be with our pubescent boys, and our young
men, a very common thing. For several years after I began
to study the nature and functions of the sexual structure, I
was at a loss to account for the general prevalence of this
form of debility. I found no single cause was sufficient to
account for it. As I sought for satisfactory explanation, I was
led at last to conclude that no functional derangement
would furnish the solution, so I was forced to take into consideration also constitutional tendencies. At length I became satisfied that whatever provoking causes were at work
to induce habitual irritation of the genitals of boys and young
men, thus resulting in the production of this form of debility,
it was mainly that result was produced when such boys and
young men were of sanguine-nervous, or nervous-sanguine, or
nervous-bilious, temperament. If a boy or a young man of bilious temperament, or bilious-lymphatic, or purely lymphatic
temperament, was given to the use of tobacco and habitually
to the use of alcoholic beverages, also to the use of tea and
coffee, flesh meats and condiments, however much the use
of any one, or of all of these, might impair his general health
and make him sick, the form of sickness which he took on
would be that of weakness of his sexual organs, manifested in
the involuntary loss of seminal fluid. I was led, therefore,
to suspect that organic temperament, or constitutional proclivities, have much to do with the existence of this form of

SEMINAL EMISSIONS.

57

debility in so many of our adolescent, or adult boys. It so
happens that the majority of boys born of American-born
parents, are of sanguine-nervous or nervous-sanguine temperament.
In the ranks of these two classes, will be found largely
those persons who suffer from the involuntary flow of the
seminal fluid. It will be seen that in the ranks of these two
classes dwell those persons who deviate in their habits
of living farthest from the hygienic standard. The
worst debauchees to be found within our male population are men having one of these two forms of temperament. Our gluttons also are of this order. Those
men who are noted for extreme hard mental labor, belongalso to this type. Our best manual laborers have also the
sanguine-nervous or nervous sanguine, or the bilious-nervous
temperament. It therefore appears that in the habits and
methods of living of persons organically dwelling within this
pale, are to be found the provoking or immediate causes of
structural weakness of the sexual organs, which must exist
as a condition precedent to seminal debility.
If the sexual organs keep natural and vigorous, no involuntary seminal emission can be had. If these grow weak,
then there is not only possibility but probability of its appearance. Not only this, but actual evidence that such
debility will result. Not every man who has either temperament which I have mentioned, and also has bad habits,
will have the same form of development of seminal weakness,
but being of such general organization he will run great
risk of having it, provided he is not fortified against it by
intelligent reflection and conscientious conviction.
No two persons suffering from the disease will have the
same symptomatic exhibition. In the one case it may show
itself in a very severe form, taxing the general powers of the
system, in large degree impairing the general health of the
3*

58

DEBILITIES OE OUR BOYS.

subject, and making him quite incompetent to the pursuit
of his ordinary duties. To another man the disease may so
show itself as to make him unfit for his responsibilities only
in a certain direction. I have known men by the thousands
whose memories were no more retentive than a sieve to hold
water.
I have known other men in great numbers, whose courage,
or pluck, or what the English particularly cell grit, was so completely taken out of them that they were as destitute of real,
substantial, physical courage as a wild wood rabbit. Anything which should take them by surprise would throw them
into terrible tremors, and quite unman them. I have known
a great many others in whom the social faculties were substantially crucified, so that they were unfit for ordinary, and
particularly so for the more delicate associations in life with
women. A woman was their abhorrence. This form of disorder is perhaps more to be deplored than any other morbid
exhibition which, the emissionist ever shows, except one.
Certainly, no man can have a realizing sense of how much
he has become degraded, how well nigh ruined he is, when
he has so far become diseased in his brain, and disturbed in
his consciousness, that he dreads beyond all calculation to be
thrown into and kept in the society of women, without suffering intense agony. Almost every woman-hater to be
found is a man who has suffered, or is still suffering, from
involuntary weakness of his sexual organs. The reflex
effects, therefore, of such a disease on men or largely-grown
boys are terribly ruinous.
Of the many thousands of persons who have come to me
to consult with reference to their diseases, I have had confessions from great numbers of them of their strong and
powerful temptation to take their own lives. Probably, of
persons who commit suicide, and are not recognized as
positively insane, seven-eighths of all of them are suf-

SEMINAL EMISSIONS.

59

ferers from sexual debility by seminal emissions. The
intimate sympathetic connection between the genital structures and the large brain is such that where one suffers from
congestion of the frontal brain, he is likely to become cursed
with this form of debility, or, if thus cursed, he is almost
sure to be made to suffer from congestion of the frontal brain.
The two go together. Thus, the man, in all his moral and
intellectual aspects of character, is greatly affected by his
seminal weakness. He is made to take on, not infrequently, the very worst phases of mental morbidness, insomuch that at times he is not responsible for what he says
or does.
When emissions come as frequently as once or twice a
week, they not only destroy the healthiness of the brain, but
they impair the vigor of the spinal marrow, and greatly injure
the integrity and healthful condition of the nerves that pair
along the spinal column.
There is no disease prevalent with our young men which
is so terribly destructive, because of its wide-spread blight,
and blasting of prospects and of character, as seminal weakness exhibitive of seminal losses. I have given it the best
thought, under a very large practice for investigation of its
nature, and its legitimate effects on the human organism,
and the best means of overcoming it, and I am satisfied that
no plan of medication which involves the taking into the
circulation of anodynes, sedatives, or excitants, or alteratives,
will meet the necessities of the case. It has its origin in bad
habits of living, and while these exist the causes exist, and
while these exist, it is impossible for any man, representing
any school of medicine, however skillful he may be, to make
the effects cease. Only by inducing the subject of it to
return to great simplicity in all his habits, and to have a
much larger proportion of these strictly hygienic, can he
hope to be effectually rid of this terrible scourge.

60

DEBILITIES OF OUB BOVS.

Anything less than a revolution in his bodily quality of
blood, and of his organized textures of body, will not produce
restoration to health. Meanwhile, thus not understanding, thousands and hundreds of thousands of our boys and
young men will be ruined in health, and smitten with disease, and sent to premature graves If any young man, who
is suffering from this curse, wishes, desires, and is determined to
rid himself of it, I can offer him a prescriptive formula, which,
if he will carry it out, I venture to say will result in his cure,
unless his system has become so far diseased as to make it
necessary that he should have the advice or counsel of a
skillful and experienced hygienic physician. Without wishing to say anything derogatory of the medical profession, I
do distinctly declare my conviction that medicines internally
administered no matter by what physician of whatever
school, for this disease wijl not produce a curative effect.
I do not believe that out of the ten thousand or more
young men who have first and last consulted me with a
view to their deliverance from this form of weakness, and
their. possible restoration to health, there have been a dozen
who had not, before coming to me, faithfully tried the specific remedies offered them by physicians of almost all the
drug schools. In many instances, the medicines which they
had taken served only to intensify the morbid sensibility of
the genitals, and to render their resumption of normal action
all the more difficult. They were just so much worse than
they would have been had they taken no medicine, as the
effect of the medicines taken had been sensibly felt. Every
dose they took, whether tinctures or powders, pellets or pills,
little or large, did them actual damage. It therefore was
with great difficulty, in many of the cases, that I succeeded
in breaking up the fixed morbid condition into which the
sexual structures, as well as the body at large, had been
placed by the effect of the poisons which my patients had
taken.

SEMINAL EMISSIONS.

61

This experience, running over a very wide field, has forced
me to the belief that, for this form of debility, drug specifics
are not demanded, but that sufferers from seminal weakness
should relate themselves by constitutional and functional
conditions where their vital energies can begin to work naturally, and after a while reinstitute natural relations between
the vital force and the organs whose general and especial
office it is to express that force according to law.

CHAPTER X.
T R E A T M E N T A N D CURE OF S E M I N A L D E B I L I T Y .

The most important question which any young man, suffering from debility of the sexual organs, shown in the form
of involuntary seminal losses, raises, and seeks to have
answered, is, " can this debility be cured ?" In reply, I say
it can be, provided two forces can be brought into use. One,
a sufficiency of vital energy resident in the organism to be
treated. The other, opportunity to apply this vital force
according to the law of restoration. Out of the uncountable
number of young men in the United States, who are victims
to sexual weakness, and have lost their health thereby, I
think that I may truthfully say, ninety-five per cent, of them
are thoroughly and absolutely curable, yet, under the methods
of living common to them, and the medical remedies which they
are more likely than not to employ, I believe that three-fifths
of them will die before they have lived to thirty-five years.
The disease, as I have already stated, has its origin in
derangements of the nervous system, and, therefore, must be
cured by processes which involve sedation, and substantial
rest of the nervous system. If, therefore, any young man,
who is suffering from this disease, wishes to get well, let him
accept and follow my advice:
1. If he is a student, no matter in what capacity, let him
cease to study and to think.
While the human brain is intended to carry and endure a
great deal of mental strain, its capacity in this direction must
always be measured by the healthy activity of the digestive

TREATMENT AND CURE OF SEMINAL DEBILITY.

63

organs, and the quality of the blood, which is organized out ot*
the food which a person eats. If, from any cause or causes,
a sufferer from seminal debility has become dyspeptic, or, if
not particularly so, has become so enfeebled that, though he
may digest food without conscious disturbance, he makes out
of the food he eats poor blood, he must, of necessity, change
either or both of these conditions, or there is no remedy for
his seminal weakness, which, if effectual, is not constitutionally ruinous. If a man, therefore, is a student, or a thinker,
and is cursed with this form of disorder, his first thing must
be to cease to think.
2. A man suffering from seminal debility should not ivorJc
hard.
The disease contra-indicates any kind or form of hard
labor. Hand, or body, or brain work is bad. The patient
needs to be inactive, instead of super-active; needs to entertain no ambition, nor foster any soul-stirring aspirations, nor
give way to any keen, long-continued, though delightful,
intellectual impulses. He must seek to be as free from these
as though he were totally irresponsible for anything that he
might say or do. All that can be required of him is to
exhibit such a degree of intelligence and moral force as will
render him self-managing, and, therefore, safe to be out
from under the restraint and the control of others.
3. He must stop eating, except in the simplest and most
moderate degree.
Gluttony is a constant feeder to the disease. It is to the
brain and ganglionic-nervous system what oil or alcohol is to
a raging fire. He must stop eating flesh-meats, and condiments of every kind. All foods which have in them, in
addition to the nutriment they contain, elements which
induce exaltation or excitement of the nervous system should
be dispensed with. Animal foods, even in so simple a form
as that of eggs, is not so good as foods made out of grains
and fruits, and vegetables simply cooked.

64

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

4. The spermatorrheist must stop drinking tea, coffee, and
any and every form of distilled, fermented or brewed liquors.
These, when indulged, render the cure of any person suffering from chronic weakness of the sexual system quite
impossible. Some beverages may be worse than others, but
none can be used which is so therapeutically good as pure
soft water. Tobacco, as I have elsewhere said, is a powerful
deranger of the nervous system, besides being an actual poison, in a greater or lesser degree, to every person who takes it.
5. Whoever suffers from sexual debility should not live in a
house, but should live out of doors.
His sleeping-room should be where he can get the purest
air, and all his physical labor should be so done as to give
abundant recreation to his nerves. In addition let the patient
cease entirely all voluntarily induced excitement of the genital
structures. Absolute continence is imperatively demanded;
no matter how much present suffering comes thereby there
should be no deviation from this rule, either by reason of the
force of circumstance or from uprising desire. It will not do
to indulge by putting the organs which are diseased into active
exercise, as whatever is necessary to be done, in order to insure self-control, must be done. I do not mean by this that any
mechanical appliance which would produce prevention is
the motive power to be set at work to induce continence; a
better and more influential, and more successful motor force
would be the awakening of the conscience, and the action
of the will of the party. Where one's moral sense, and even
judgment united in. favor of or against a certain course, it is
by all odds the strongest moving power that can ever work
a man's faculties into exercise, or, contrariwise, impose upon
them profound inertia.
6. The patient must sleep abundantly.
Want of self-control often comes from want of sleep.
Crazy dreams, delusions, hallucinations, illusions, upset a
party suffering from sleeplessness. In order that one may

TREATMENT AND CURE OF SEMINAL DEBILITY.

65

sleep he must put himself into conditions favorable thereto.
Eecumbent posture is very desirable. The muscles and the
nerves become relaxed thereby, the blood flows into the brain
under less violent action of the heart, the vital energy is
expended in smaller measure, and, as a consequence, sedation
ensues, perhaps sleep follows. In order that sleep may be
induced, it is also desirable that great regularity,of habit in
this respect should be established. The patient should go to
bed every night at such an hour, and rise up the succeeding
morning at a given time. The more regular he* becomes in
this habit, and in all his habits, the more likely is his system
to resume normal conditions.
7. Baths should be given with great judgment, and never
heroically.
One should see to it, not how many baths he can take, but
how few he can get along with. Wash the body all over
twice a week in cold weather, and three times a week in
warm weather, the temperature being at about 85° or 90°.
Having the skin well rubbed thereafter with soft cloths by
an attendant, is of great therapeutic value. Sitz baths may
be taken on alternate days, and a general wash at a temperature of 90°, five minutes, 85° thereafter, for ten minutes
in cold weather; in warm weather 85°, five minutes, 70° for
ten minutes. These will be derivative in their action,
unloading the blood-vessels of the abdomen of their surplus
blood, and thus relieving the vessels of the sexual organs of
their congested conditions. As an aid thereto let him keep
his bowels open. The best way to do this is to eat aperient
food, and take injections of tepid water, so that a movement
shall be had every day.
8. Let the patient secure to himself IDith certainty and regularity, good, pleasant society, and not get discouraged.
The social force in every man should be strong enough to
counteract and regulate the morbid tendencies of his individual nature. Seminal emissionists are very apt to get into

66

DEBILITIES OE OUB BOYS.

modes of living that are monkish. They fall into habits of
soclusiou, keep themselves away from their fellows, and particularly so from the society of women. The true rule is to
do exactly the other thing. Go into the society of women
and force one's self to be cheerful, attentive, well-behaved
and agreeable. The benefits therefrom would be great, and
in many instances almost immediately observable.
9. Such persons should take plenty of time to make changesTo be in a hurry and impatient of results is bad. To be
calm, resolute, cool-headed and courageous is helpful. In a
great many cases spermatorrheists never can get well unless
they undergo constitutional modifications. This will require
abundant time. It is something of a task for nature to make
over and reconstruct a man who has inherited tendencies to
disease, so that he shall have a good constitution after her
work is done, and thenceforward be capable and competent
to have good health. If, therefore, any person or persons,
out of the millions of our young men who are suffering from
this cursed disease, are so related thereto that they cannot
get well of it by a simple renovation of their existing morbid
functions of vital organs, but can only get well by being
made over, they must be willing to take time to have this
great work done. That it can be done I solemnly affirm, so
done, too, that such persons may themselves become healthy,
and in addition become the fathers of healthy, robust children.
When one feels that he-cannot carry out these suggestions
at his own home, let such person set himself religiously and
sedulously at work so to arrange his affairs as to be able to
come to "Our Home on the Hillside/' where he can have
cumulative efforts made in his behalf, and so recover his
health, as thousands on thousands of poor, wretched, brokendown, disease-stricken young men by coming to me have
already done.

CHAPTER XL
DEBILITIES BY CONJUGAL INDULGENCE.

It is the habit and fashion in this country to marry early
in life. For the most part, our young men marry too early.
They do not give to themselves time, after arriving at adult
age, to consolidate or solidify their physical bodies, before
they assume relations which challenge the active exercise of
their reproductive organs. It is very desirable on the part
of every married man, that he not only should have for his
wife, a woman who has constitutional vigor, who is fullgrown, and has measurably well matured nutritive and propagative organs; but that he also should be thoroughly developed in constitutional force, and have in possession his
best propagative energies at the time when he begets
offspring.
Breeders of domestic animals recognize the different capacities of an animal for begetting his kind, when he is fully
grown, as compared with when he is only half grown.
In our country, under our excitable methods of living,
which push our boys into the virile state quite early, it is
true that, as a general thing, they become competent to beget
their kind at or about sixteen years of age, or any time
thereafter. The law of the State of New York makes a
marriage legal, when performed between persons, the male
being seventeen, and the girl fourteen. This is instituting
the right to control one's actions, in one of the most important relations in life, at a period several years earlier than the
law of the same State allows one to reach his full measure

68

DEBILITIES

0 E OUR BOYS.

of personal control. It would seem absurd to permit a youngman to become a father of a child, while he as yet owes legal
service to his own father, or if he be dead, to any guardian
whom the law may appoint. It seems still more absurd for the
State to permit one to become a husband and father, years before he can sell or devise property, or before he can exercise the
right of suffrage. Nevertheless, there is no hope to be entertained that in this respect the law can be changed, hence only
moral influence can be brought to operate upon our young men
to induce them not to enter upon marriage until they shall
have reached thorough manhood; for whatever gratification
they may have in and under the use of this important social
relation, their children are made to partake of the ruinous
effects which their deviations from the true line of conduct
necessarily establish.
The notion is so prevalent with all persons, that marriage
justifies cohabitation and coition between husbaud and
wife to an indefinite extent, that young men who do marry
before they are fully and thoroughly developed, uniformly
indulge in the conjugal right to such a degree as greatly
to debilitate their physical strength, impair their physical
health, practically weaken their mental faculties, so that
these are never competent to such exercise as they would
have been, other things being equal, had sexual continence
been maintained.
I have sometimes questioned whether there is more of real
practical lewdness inside or outside the marriage relation.
It is to the credit of our civilization, that the majority of our
educated men and women who are married, remain substantially true to their self-imposed and assumed conjugal obligations. It is not enough, however, that a man remains
faithful to his wife, or the woman to her husband; it is also
the duty of each to be faithful to one's self. A man is not
at liberty because he is married, to debilitate his physical

DEBILITIES BY CONJUGAL INDULGENCE.

69

system by sexual gratification, though this be taken only
with his wife. In imposing the inhibition against adultery,
Jesus declared that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after
her, committed adultery with her already in his heart. Man
and woman are bound to be pure minded, as well as true to
each other in their sexual intercourse. Lust, though it finds
its gratification in connection with one's own wife, is sin, and
" sin when it is conceived bringeth forth death."
The impression is quite common, that not only no ill
moral effects grow out of unlimited indulgence of men with
their wives; but that so long as they remain true to the
connubial relations, there is no physical ill result to accrue.
On this point information is very much-needed. Of all the
exciting and reactionary efforts of the vital force, none is so
taxing, on the whole so exciting, as that of the sexual organs.
Men of nervous sanguine, or bilious nervous temperament,
cannot sustain, without injury, frequent taxation of the nervous system, brought about by sexual gratification. I am
not disposed to argue the question minutely, as to the frequency with which young men may indulge in the pleasures
of the marriage bed. I only feel called upon to say that too
much care cannot be given to the matter, from considerations pertaining to health alone. Health is everything to a
young man. One may almost say, it is food and drink, it is
home and friends, it is reputation and wealth. I do not
mean to speak extravagantly, but there are so many blessings
grouped, clustered, and placed at every person's disposal who
has good health, and there are so many deprivations of such
blessings imposed upon every person who lacks good health
that a strong statement of the matter is justifiable. An ordinary expression serves no purpose. The good sense of our
young men is uneducated, and therefore I speak imperatively
upon the subject. They err ignorantly, not knowing the ways
of wisdom, and not knowing also that her paths are paths

70

DEBILITIES OF OUR BOYS.

of pleasantness, and her ways, ways of peace. Sensational
pleasures attract and absorb their intelligence. To gratify
appetite, to fall under the sway of passion, to be given over
to bodily indulgences, does not seem to them undesirable,
provided they do not thereby violate some external moral
rule of conduct. To grow wiser, nobler and better in their
inner consciousness, is not before them and does not operate
upon them as a motive in the government or regulation of
their conduct. So long as they are right in public sentiment and yield a cheerful obedience to recognized forms of
outward morality, they do not feel called upon in any way to
forego any kind of sexual gratification. Nature, however,
does not accept this outward obedience. She wants her
laws obeyed from conviction. She asks that they may be
recognized, not only as having a Divine origin, but as having
a Divine bearing; and in order that those who come under
their sway, shall feel in the largest measure their beneficial
influence, she affirms the necessity of their being obedient
to them from principle, as well as from policy.
Our young men who are married, are outwardly careful
of the designs and morals of the social state, but inwardly
they are not free from the charge of lustful and unhallowed
desire. This psychological abnormity, making them spiritually diseased and depraved, reflects itself upon their physical
bodies, and has very much to do with the establishment of
their physical debilities. If the spirit of man can bear his
infirmities, it stands to reason that it is needful that his
higher consciousness should be absolutely healthy. He must
not be sick in his intellect; not abnormally related to the
origination or establishment of ideas in his intelligence; not
depraved in his imagination, nor ill-balanced, nor ill-adjusted
in his impulses—for impulses, intelligence, intuition, and
higher consciousness in a man, are all affected in the
kind or quality of their exhibition, by the influence of the

DEBILITIES BY CONJUGAL INDULGENCE.

71

appetites and passions. Then must it, of necessity, be true
that one's physical health will suffer (how can it be otherwise), if a man feels that there is no impropriety in eating
like a glutton, and drinking like a sot, or in gratifying his
sexual impulses like a'rake or a debauchee. Thus feeling,
what is more certain than that fair opportunity for either or
all of these gratifications being presented, he will give them
unlimited sway? If he does, what is more certain than that
he will become physically debilitated, and when this has actually come to pass, what is more difficult than to induce such
young man to reinstate and. reenthrone his manhood ? It is
a hard task which is set to the teacher of correct physiology,
because if his teachings are to be followed with good fruits,
he must contrive to interest the higher consciousness of his
pupils.
To the adolescent boys and the young men of the United
States, I have dedicated this little work. It seems to me,
that if read by them, and they properly ponder what I have
said, it cannot be other than beneficial. I am interested in
young men. I have been young myself, " and now am old,
but I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
begging bread. I have seen the wicked in power, spreading
himself like a green-bay tree, but I looked, and lo! he was
gone, and the place that knew him, beheld him no more."
I want our young men to be good men. That they may be
such, they should be healthy men. That this may be their
condition, they must know what are the. laws of life and
health, and riot only know them but they must obey them.
If our Republic is to flourish forever, our young men must
be like pillars in a temple. Each must stand in his place, a
model of manly strength, manly courage, and sublime faith.

# w • © • © mm tb© MllsM0f
D A N S V I L L E , LIVIPIGSTOftf C O . , N. Y.
This Institution is the largest Hygienic Water Cure at present existing in the world. It is presided over by and is under the medical
management of Dr. James C. Jackson, who is the discoverer of the
Psycho Hygienic method of treating the sick, and under the application of which he has treated nearly 20,000 persons in the last twenty
years, with most eminent success, and without ever giving any of them
any medicine.
The Psycho Hygienic philosophy of treating the sick, no matter
what their age, sex, or disease, consists in the use of those means only
as remedial agencies, whose ordinary or legitimate effects on the human living body when taken into or applied to it, is lo preserve its
health. The fallacy of giving poisonous medicines to Invalidshas
been abundantly shown in Our Home in the results of our treatment.
Our Institution is large enough to accomodate 2o0 guests, is, after
the plan adopted by us, complete in all its appointments, having worthy and intelligent helpers in all its departments of labor, and who
give their proportion of sympathy and influence to the creation and
maintenance of a sentiment and opinion cheering to the invalid, and
therefore decidedly therapeutic in its effects. The scenery about the
Establishment is very beautiful, the air is dry and very salubrious, we
have plenty of sunshine, and pure soft living water in great abundance. Besides all these, and which we prize as one of the highest
privileges and health-giving opportunities our guests could possibly
have, we live ourselves and so can enable them to live, free from fashion
and her expensive and ruinous ways, Life with us is simple not sybaritic, is true not hollow and false; and so of itself tends to its own
perpetuation and of course to health. A great many of our guests
who have for years been great sufferers, growing steadily more sickly,
begin to get well, and go on getting well in such silent yet sure, in
such imperceptible yet certain ways, as never to be conscious how it was
brought about. The means used seem so utterly incommensurate to the
results produced, that it seems marvelous. So true is it that in Nature
"God's mightiest things
Are His simplest things,"

and that to understand how things are done, one needs to cultivate a
teachable spirit and to cherish reverence for Law. To teach those
who come to us for treatment what the laws of life are, and to
awaken in them the desire to obey these laws, is to establish a most
favorable condition precedent to their recovery. Sick ones, whoever
you are, or wherever you are, do you want to get well ? And to learn
how to keep your health, having got well? Come to Our Home if you
can, and once here learn the all-important lesson that
"'Nature as a mistress is gentle and holy,
And to obey H e r is to live."
Circulars of the Institution, or a y information in regard to it, may be obtained by
addressing either J a m e s C. Jackson, M. D., Miss Harriet N. Austin, M. D., or Dr. J a m e s
H. Jackson These Physicians may also be consulted by letter by t h e sick who a r e unable to attend t h e establishment. Fee for home prescription $5 00.

J™.NJAcX™,

1

LUCRETIA E.JACKSON,

j

AUSTIN, JACKSON & CO.,
Proprietors.

OUfi HOME ILLUSTRATED.
CHBOMO

LITHOGRAPH.

A fine colored Picture 24x36 inches, showing the " Cure * and all
the cottages belonging to it, the grounds and the surrounding scenery,
A desirable ornament for private parlor or public hall.
Price by mail, $1.50-

PHOTOGRAPHS.
Four pictures, each 12 x 16 inches.
1st. Side view of Our Home and surroundings.
2d. Maple Beach ; Dr. Jackson's private residence on the shores
of Conesus Lake; Cottage, Grounds and Lake.
3d. " The Terrace ;*' the Family Cottage at Our Home.
4th. Front view of Our Home.
The two photographs first described are specially beautiful and
valuable.
Price by mail, singly, $2.25 ; Price by mail, set of 4, $7.00.

STEREOSCOPIC

VIE WS.

These are a series of 14 views in and aboat Our Home and Maple
Beach. Interior of Chapel, of Sitting-Room, of Dining Room, of Editorial Room, of Private Parlors, etc., etc.
Most of these are very clear and nice. Each and all are greatly
to be desired, both by those who wish to become acquainted with
Our Home, and those who wish to secure a varied collection of fine
views for their stereoscopes.
Price by mail, singly, 50 cents; 7 copies, $3.00 ; set of 14, $5.00.
|3p"All moneys should be sent in registered letters, or in the
form of drafts or post office orders.

AUSTIN, JACKSON & € 0 . ,
DANSVILLE, N.

Y.

AMERICAN WOMANHOOD:
ITS

PECULIARITIES AND NECESSITIES.
BY JAMES C. JACKSON, M. D.
A B E A U T I F U L L Y BOUND BOOK O F ABOUT 2 0 0

PAGES,

CONTAINING! A

FINE STEEL ENGRAYING OF

OVR HOME

ON THE

HILLSIDE.

This work by Dr. Jackson is a most thorough analysis of the
Woman Question, and presents the subject in a very clear and interesting manner.
C O N T E N T S .
CHAP. 11. Women who do not make
CHAP. 1. A Peculiar Type.
good Wives but do make
"
2. Physical Organization.
good Mothers.
3. Unhealthy Foods.
"
4. Unhealthy Drinks.
" 13. Women who, as society
"
5. Unhealthy Dress.
goes, can neither make
"
6. Constrained Locomotion
good Wives nor Mothers.
"
7. The Useful and Beautiful " 13. Competency of this class
in Dress.
of Women.
"
8. Life in-Doors.
" 14. Their Business Capaci"
9. Marriage for Women.
ties.
*' 10. Non-Maternity.
" 15. The Ballot.

]Price, ©1.00 b y M a i l .
Agents Wanted in eYery Town in the United States. Liberal
Discounts will be given.
Address,
AUSTIN, JACKSON & CO., Publishers,
Dansville, Livingston Co., N. Y.

T H E LAWS O F LIFE,
AND

WOMAN'S H E A L T H JOURNAL,
Is an original Paper, published monthly, in octavo form o( thirty-two
pages, on fine paper, with tinted covers.

EDITED BY MISS HARRIET N. AUSTIN, M. D.,
ASSISTED BY

JAMES C. JACKSON, M. D.,
3 ? h y s i o i a n ~ i n . - C l i i e f o f Oiai? H o m e ,
and an able corps of assistants and contributors. The Journal treats
of all subjects relating to Life and Health, and embodies the experience of twenty years' practice by its editors, at the head of the Largest
Hygienic Institution in America.
The aim of this Journal is to advocate and commend to the people
improved ways of living, by which individual, family and general
social life may be made to put on more beneficial, satisfactory and
beautiful forms than at present prevail. I t teaches how to live healthfully, and to make health the basis for the growth and development
of symmetrical character. Some of the leading topics are :
Care of the Sick Room.
Nursing the Sick,
Food and Baths for the Sick.
Gave of Children.
Dress of Children.
Flower Gardening.
Fruit Growing.
Dress.

Continued *
Letters.
The best kinds of Food and how to
Prepare them.
Lectures on General Principles.
Running Accounts of Life on the
Hillside.
Building of Houses.
Furnishing of Houses.
Ventilation.
I Natural History.
Answers to Questions from Corres- Woman's Rights and Responsibilipondents.
\ ties, Etc.
Special Diseases and their Treatment without medicine.
Each number of the Laws of Life will contain a Lecture from Dr
James C. Jackson. Also a Chapter from the same writer, of '' INCIDENTS AND REMINISCENCES I N M Y L I F E , " of which one of our

public journals says:—" These are very interesting to those who care
to learn how our great reformers are made."
TERMS—One Dollar and Fifty Cents per year in advance. Most
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Send for a copy, and circular of our Health Publications.
Address,

AUSTIN,

JACKSON

<% CO.,

Dansville, Livingston 0o.« N, 1.

HOW TO TREAT THE SICK
WITHOUT MEDICINE.
A NEW WCLtK,

B Y J A M B S O. J A C K S O N , M . D.,
Author of Consumption ; How to Prevent it and How to Gure it-" "The
Sexual Organism and its Healthful Management" and numerous
Popular Health Tracts. Also Physician in-Chief of "Our
Home on the Hillside" at Dansmlle, Livingston Co., N. Y.,
the largest Hygienic Water Cure in the World.
The book contains a fine likeness of the Author, and a beautiful and correct engrav
ing of t h e Institution over which he presides.

C O N T E N T S .
CHAPTER I—My Method of Treating Dis-

CHAP. X X X I r — Pleurisy ; Spitting of
Blood or Ilemiuorhage of the Lungs.
CHAP. I I — W h a t is Disease?
CHAP X X X I I I — T h e Heart and its DisCHAP. H I — T h e True Materia Medica.
eases.
CHAP. XXXIV—Dyspepsia.
CHAP. IV—Air.
CHAP. XXXV—Coiic.
CHAP. V—Food.
CHAP. XXXVI—Cancerous Conditions of
CHAP. VI—Water.
t h e Stomach.
CHAP. VII—Time for Taking Baths.
CHAP. XXXVII—Diseases of t h e Spleen.
CHAP. VIII—Sunlight.
CHAP. XXXVIII—Diseases of t h e Liver.
CHAP. I X - D r e s s .
CHAP. XXXIX—Calculi; Jaundice.
CHAP. X—Exercise.
CHAP. XL—Diseases of t h e I n t e s t i n e s ;
CHAP. XI—Sleep and its "Recuperation.
Duodentis ; Bowel Colic.
CHAP X I I — T h e Sick Chamber and its
CHAP. XLI—Inflammation of t h e BOM els;
Surrouudings. Peritonitis.
CHAP. XIII—Children and their Diseases.
CHAP. XIV—Teething,Teething Diarrhoea, CHAP. X L I ! . —Dropsy of t h e Peretoneum.
CHAP. XLTI —head Colic.
—Summer Complaint.
u H A P . XV—Tetter ; Eruptions ; Scald CHAP. XLxV—Inflammation of the Mesen
teric Glands.
H e a d ; Common I t c h .
CHAP. XLV—Diseases of the Kidneys ;
CHAP. XVI—Measles.
Congestion; Inflammation; Diabetes;
CHAP. XVII—Croup.
Gravel
CHAP. XVIII—Diptheria.
CHAP. XIX—Scarlet Fever ; Whooping CHAP. X I V I — B r i g h t ' s Disease of t h e Kidn e y s ; Urinary Diseases.
Cough.
CHAP. XX—Summer C o m p l a i n t ; Dysen- CHAP. XLVII—Neuralgia of t h e Bladdei ;
Paralysis of t h e Bladder ; Inflammatery.
tion of the Coats of t h e Bladder.
CHAP. XXI—Diseases of Grown Persons.
Baldness; Deafness; Blindness; In- CHAP. X L V I I I—Worms.
CHAP. XLIX—Piles.
flammation of t h e Eyes.
CHAP. XXII—Nasal Catarrh ; Nose-Bleed. CHAP. L—Sexual Organs.
CHAP. XXIII—Apoplexy, Inflammation CHAP. LI—Rheumatism
of t h e B r a i n ; Hydrocephalus, or CHAP. L I I — R e m i t t e n t Fever, or Fever
and Ague
Dropsy of t h e Brain.
CHAP. L I U — I n t e r m i t t e n t F e v e r ; CongesCHAP. XXIV—Paralysis.
tive Chills.
CHAP. XXV—Epilepsy.
CHAP. LIV—Typhus and Typhoid Fevers.
CHAP. XXVI—Insanity.
CHA i'. LV—Erysipelas, or St. Anthony's
CHAP. XXVII—Drunkeness.
F i r e ; Pui'pura Hemorrhagica; Acne.
CHAP. X X V I I I — H y s t e r i a .
CHAP. LVI—Ulcers, Boils and Carbuncles.
CHAP. XXIX—St. Vitus' Dance.
CHA P. XXX—Pulmonary Consumption; CHAP. LV IT—Burns and Scalds ; Goitre.
CHAP. LVIII—Varicose Veins.
Mumps ; Salivation.
C H A P . X X X I - Q u i n s y ; B r o n c h i t i s ; In- CHAP. LIX— Baths, and How to Take
them.
flammation of the Lungs.
We wish to engage agents, all over t h e country, to sell this work ITore is a new
field for Book Agents, and one into which they may enter with good prospect of abundant success. We give liberal terms. Price $2.25, by mail, postage paid.

Address

AUSTIN,

JACKSON

& CO.,

"OUR HOME," Dansville, Livingston Co., i\. 1.

THE SEXUAL ORGANISM
AND ITS HEALTHFUL MANAGEMENT,
BY JAMES C. JACKSON, M. D.

IPriee

toy

Mail,

-

-

T w o

Dollars.

This is one of t h e most valuable books ever written. I t should be read by every
married m a n and woman in t h e land. Every clergyman who takes an i n t e r e s t in t h e
health and happiness and present as well as fu.ure well-being of his fellow creatures
should read it. He may rest assured h e will preach b e t t e r sermons for having read it.
Every young m a n contemplating marriage should read it. Every school boy should
carefully and studiously read it. Every young woman should read it. She will find in
it nothing offensive to modesty, nothing t h a t should m a k e h e r blush, b u t much t h a t
will instruct her how to protect h e r rights and personal immunities, so as forever to
secure her from having cause to blush.
This book is by far t h e ablest ever written on the subject. I t embodies t h e experience of one of t h e ablest physicians liviug, whose opportunities for t h i n k i n g of and
studying t h e laws of the H u m a n Organism in this special d e p a r t m e n t have never been
excelled. If t h e tens of thousands of young men in our land suffering from debilities
arising from their w a n t of knowledge of t h e Laws of t h e Sexual System, could each
have this work placed in his hands, what a blessing; it would be to him.
The publishers a r e not unmindful t h a t on t h e subject of Sex, t h e people of t h e
United States hold a conservative position. The Publishers a r e happy to be *\ble to say
t h a t they hold t h e same position. Neither " for love nor m o n e y " could they be induced
to publish a n y t h i n g t h a t might serve to weaken in t h e minds of t h e people—especially
t h e rising generation—the regard which they cherish and are t a u g h t to cherish for
t h e Social and Family relations. This book contains no subtle sophistries, no cunningly
concocted falsehoods made to look like t r u t h s , which once re^d shall poison t h e mind
and debase t h e moral sense of him or her who reads it. It sets no snares, and digs no
pitfalls for t h e young and u n w a r y .
Th« Author is a Christian gentleman, a philanthropist and a man of science, who
having won by his great talents and very large professional practice an eminent position
as a Physician, h a s turned his great knowledge to account in writing on a special theme,
and it is no small meed of praise to him t h a t we can say, out of t h e ten thousand volumes
of t h e work already sold in t h e United States, neither from press nor private individual
haf t h e r e ever come to our knowledge an unfavorable criticism.
Buy t h e book, then, and read it. Having read it yourself lend it to your neighbor.
You can do nothing better with tho same amount of money. The viol tion of t h e Laws
of Life in t h e department of t h e Sexual S t r u c t u r e is very great, and knowledge should
be had. Read, digest, do, and live
Address,
AUSTIN, JACKSON & CO.,

Dansville, Livingston Co., N. ¥,

Are You of Consumptive Family?
If so, do you wish to know how to avoid having Consumption yourself
or, if you have already got it in its first or second stages, how to cure it ?
Then send to Austin, Jackson & Co., and purchase Dr. Jackson's book
entitled:

Consumption: How to Treat It, and How to Prevent It.
In this book you will find the information you need. Dr Jackson is
the only Physician who, having treated this disease successfully without the use of Drugs and Medicines, has placed his ideas at the service
of unprofessional readers. The Book is written in a clear style, is free
from technical terms, and full of valuable instruction. Thousands of
volumes of it are in circulation, and tens of thousands of Human lives
have been saved by reading it and following its instructions.
The work has two very valuable points :
1st. I t elaborates and makes plain t h e methods and ways of overcoming hereditary
tendencies and constitutional predispositions to t h e development of the disease, so t h a t
those who have t h e m may escape, and, if children, may overcome t h e m and grow up robust and live to good Old Age.
The instruction on this point contained in t h e Book is great and ought to be in possession and use by every father and mother who has Scrofulous children. Consumption
in t h e United States and in Canada is almost always induced under bad conditions of
living operating on persons of Scrofulous Constitution-*. Where this is t h e case it is a
pity t h a t those who get it and die from it, could not know how to stop its development.
" An ouuce of prevention is worth a pound of Cure, " and t h a t t h e advice of Dr. Jackson
is ample to produce this result t h e testimony of thousands of persons proves beyond
cavil.
2nd. The Book tells the reader not only how to understand the Consumptive Constitution and how to avoid and overcome its active development; b u t i t instructs t h e
reader how to t r e a t curatively those persons who are curable, without t h e use of drugs
and medicines and poisonous nostrums. This is of itself most valuable information.
Header, have you ever t h o u g h t w h a t a drug poisoned people, we of t h e United States
are? Everybody, almost, taking, when sick, stuff to cure t h e m which were t h e y well
would surely m a k e them sick, So blind a r e t h e people, and so deadened their instincts
t h a t from the child of a span long to t h e man of m a t u r e age, dosing with poisons is t h e
remedy for every h u m a n ailment. So Common is this practice and so destructive to life
is it, t h a t t h e wisest observers do not hesitate to say t h a t War, Pestilence and Famine,
have not killed as many persons since t h e Creation of Man as Drug-Medication has. Of
all t h e diseases to which t h e H u m a n Organism is subject, none have proved so incurable
under Drug-Medication as Pulmonary Consumption ; while of t h e m all, none has proved
more curable under Psycho-Hygienic t r e a t m e n t t h a n it.
As there are in t h e United States thonsands and tens of thousands of Consumptive
persons who are cnrable, and tens and hundreds of thousands who, though not having
Consumption as yet are sure to have it under the ordidary course of things, we t a k e
pleasure in telling them t h a t they c a n be intelligently instructed how to get well, or
how to keep from having t h e Disease. The Book is nearly 400 pages octavo, has been
extensively noticed by t h e Press and always with favor, and is so ably w r i t t e n t h a t one
of the most scientific men in our country has said t h a t , " were the A u t h o r never to write
more, this book of itself in less t h a n fifty years will place his name high in t h e temple
of Fame, as one of the farthest-seeing men of his day, and as a benefactor to M a n k i n d . "
Address AUSTIN, JACKSON & CO., DANSVILLE, LIVINGSTON Co., N. Y., who will send the
work p.ost-paid for $2.50.

HEALTH REFORMER'S COOK BOOK,
BY MKS. L U C K E T I A E. J A C K S O N .
Singly, Thirty Cents ; per Dozen, Two Dollars

H E A L T H

T

U A C T S ,

By James G. Jackson, M. D., and Miss Harritt N. Austin, M. D
SINGLY.

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P E R DOZEN

How to Hear Beautiful Children,
8 cts. $0 60
How to Cure Drunkards,.,..
8 u
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How to take Baths,
8 "
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Tobacco; and its Effect upon the Health
and Character of those who use it,
15 u
1 50
Diptheria; its Causes, Treatment and Cure, 8 '•
60
The American Costume; or Woman's Right
to Good Health,
8"
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Flesh as Food; or How to Live without
Meat.......
8 <
•
60
Dyspepsia; or how to have a Sound Stomach, 8 "
60
Student Life; or How to work the Brain
without over-working the Body,..
8 u
60
The Curse Lifted; or Maternity made Easy, 8 "
60
Piles and their Treatment,
.
8 " •
60
The Gluttony Plague,.
..„
8'*
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Wife Killing,. „
... 8 «
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Shall our Girls Live or Die,
8 "
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How to Nurse the Sick,
__
_
8"
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How to get Well and How to keep W e l l , . . . . 8 «
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The Four Drunkards,
6 u
45
Dancing; Its Evils and its Benefits,
..10 "
75
The Weak Backs of American W o m e n , . . . . 8 "
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Clergymen : What they owe to themselves,
their Wives, and to Society,
8 "
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Papers on Alcohol,..._
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Sets containing one of each,.__
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AUSTIN, JACKSON & CO.