Personal hygiene means a sound body and mind. It means the preservation of health, which was humanity’s effort since time immemorial. Personal hygiene is as old as civilization. The Bible devotes many a chapter to personal hygiene. The ancient Greeks spent a considerable part of the day in exercise, games, etc., in the interest of personal hygiene. The celebrated Roman baths were established in the interest of the hygienic development of the body. The Roman maxim was, “mens sana in corpore sano.”
As far as humanity is concerned, the most important part in the science of sexuality is the hygiene of the vita sexualis. Preventive medicine will score its greatest successes in the field of sexual diseases. If the rules of personal hygiene are followed they may prevent many an anomaly which, when once established, is seldom amenable to treatment.
Especially does the principle, “prevention is the best cure,” hold good in the anomalies of anaesthesia. In almost ninety-nine cases out of a hundred these anomalies are contracted through the patient’s own recklessness and fault. If the patient could be guarded against sexual excesses, the main cause of impotence in all its ramifications would be removed. But the necessity of avoiding certain things requires a proper insight into the nature of these things. To be good requires a proper knowledge of the evil. “We cannot,” says Hain Friswell (Essays on English writers), “be good by pretending not to know evil. When women go mad, the most innocent, the youngest, the most purely educated often utter the most horrid and obscene language; a proof that to them evil has been known; how acquired, how taught, it is vain to ask. What the teacher ought to seek is, not to blot out and veil iniquity, since that will always be visible, but to make the heart strong enough to cast out the evil.”
To accomplish this end proper instruction in matters of sex is a condition sine qua non. The instruction should begin before the sexual idea has an emotional garb. When the habit of masturbation has once been contracted, it is very hard to break it; when promiscuous life has been tasted, all knowledge of its dangers will seldom protect the individual from continuing such a life.BJ
The missionary work must, therefore, begin in the nursery. The drunkard is not expected to embrace temperance by acquiring the knowledge of the injurious effects of excesses in alcohol upon soul and body. His impaired will cannot resist temptation. He must be taught to be temperate before he becomes a drunkard. The same is the case with the boy who has once tasted illicit venery. All the preaching will generally be for naught. Knowledge at this time comes too late. The young man who has gone through all the suffering of gonorrhea and syphilis, as soon as he is cured, and sometimes even before a perfect cure has been reached, forgets everything, under passion to resistless impulse, and associates again with meretricious women. His practical experience, just as the theoretical knowledge of the medical student, is not powerful enough to keep away a man from illicit indulgence, once he has made its acquaintance. But if the dangers are known to the individual before he has tasted from the forbidden tree of knowledge, he will, in most cases, avoid tasting the fruit which may contain one of the deadliest poisons.
Hence the lessons in sex-matters must be given quite early. It is very unfortunate that even the cultured public has not learned yet that the young child, even the infant, shows some sex manifestation. The general public is unwilling to be enlightened about the genetic functions of the child. There is no need to go as far as Freud’s school and reduce the most innocent infantile natural activities to the emotions of sex; still it is agreed among the keenest observers that, if infants and small children are not carefully watched and protected against themselves, lewd servants, and ignorant mothers, autoeroticism may be established at such an early period that the first lesson in sex instruction will come too late. For masturbation, once it has become a habit, will seldom be relinquished until normal sex relations take its place, instruction or no instruction.BK The child must be brought up in such a way that it will reach puberty without any kind of contamination, either by masturbation or by prostitution.
Only upon such pure and chaste children will lectures on the dangers of sex irregularities have any influence. The reason why the medical student with all his supposed knowledge of sex is not different from any other young man, is that he acquired his knowledge too late to be of any value. If he had begun his studies on the pathology of syphilis and gonorrhoea and had known the dangers of the venereal scourge before he ever had a taste of sex, it is very likely that with the knowledge of the danger lurking, not only to himself but also to those dearest to a man’s heart, his future wife and children, he would abstain from the association with meretricious venery. But when the medical student began to gain the knowledge of sex,BL it was too late for him to resist. Like the habitual drunkard, he had lost the power of resistance.
Education of infants.—The teaching of matters sexual must hence begin very early in life. Cases are known where masturbation was started before the first year of the child’s life had passed. The child has the impulse to touch and pull everything within its reach. Hence the infant will also try to play with its genitals. A phimosis or an inflammation of the prepuce, in the boy, and in the girl uncleanliness in the vulva or pin-worms in the rectum, may cause itching in the genital parts and induce the child to touching and rubbing these parts. The manipulations may cause an agreeable tickling sensation and may awaken a feeling of lust. The feeling operates then in the memory and excites to a taste of sexual activity before sexual consciousness has had time to be naturally awakened through the growth of the sex-centres.
Sometimes servants, either to quiet the child or out of lust and ignorance, tickle the child’s genital organs or gently slap the gluteal region and thus awaken a lustful feeling.
The natural curiosity of children often leads them to an examination and finally to a titillation of their genital organs, even without the aid of any vicious instruction.
It is, therefore, the duty of parents to prevent their infants from becoming masturbators. They must see to it that the child does not manipulate with its genitals. The little hand ought not to touch any part below the waist-line.
It should be the nursery-rule not to touch the child’s genital organs and not to handle the buttocks in any unnecessary way. Children should not be allowed to sleep in the same room with their nurses or in the same bed with other children. The child should acquire the habit of sleeping on the side, not on the back. The bed should be firm, not soft and yielding. The covers must be light.
The health of the genital organs must be cared for, and in case of deviation from the normal, medical aid must be summoned. A long, tight prepuce, eczema of the genitals, accumulations of filth and sebaceous matter around the glans of the penis or of the clitoris, retention of urine beyond the proper time, pin-worms in the rectum, hemorrhoids, fissures of the anus, all lead to rubbing, pressing and handling of the genitals.
When the children are old enough to understand, they must be taught never to handle their genitals, the same as they are warned not to poke the fingers into their noses, ears, or eyes. The child must be taught to lie straight in bed, with the hands never under the cover, must be taught to rise, urinate and dress soon after awakening.
The child must be accustomed to the sight of the nude, in art and nature. It will thus become immune against prurient impressions in the presence of the nude later in life.BM
Children from four to seven years.—At the period of four to seven years of age, the child’s curiosity about the origin of man is awakened. When he approaches his parents with the question, “Whence do babies come from?” he must not be put off with stork-stories and false ideas, or met with evasive answers. The mother should explain to the child that the baby grows from a seed implanted in the mother’s body, just as the flower grows from a seed sown in the mother Earth.
After the child has been told of his origin he should be admonished not to talk of these intimate subjects with others. He should be warned against allowing any one, little friends or adults, nurse or teacher, to touch or play with any part of his body. If an attempt be made by any one, no matter who it is, be it a little friend, brother, sister, etc., to touch his body, the child must be taught to report the fact immediately to his parents.
Children from seven to ten years.—At the period of seven to ten years of age, the child ought to receive its first real sex-lesson by teaching him the anatomy of the sexual organs of the plant. The child is told about the cell being the basis of all organic life. The different modes of reproduction is explained to him. Then we go over to the study of phanerogamous plants and show him that the flower, the most beautiful part of the plant, is nothing else but the genitals of the plant. We then analyze every part of the flower, the male and the female principles. In this way the child will become accustomed to hear, without apprehension or any thought of impropriety, terms like male and female germ-cells, ovum, ovary, etc., terms which are now considered to be unspeakable, save behind closed doors and then only with low breath.
Children from ten to thirteen years.—At the next period from ten to thirteen years of age, we may begin to explain the sex-phenomena in the animal kingdom. It is best to follow the pedigree of the living beings from the lowest, the unicellular animals, to the highest, the mammals. The teacher could even describe to the children the complicated indirect cell division, called “Mitosis,” in order to impress upon their minds the great importance which the creative power of the universe attributes to the correct halving of the nuclear substance of the cell.
The child should then get better acquainted with the different modes of reproduction, the binary fission, the budding, the sporulation, the conjugation and the different kinds of the latter. The child may now learn to know the difference between the hermaphroditic animals and sex-animals, between sperm-cells and egg-cells. It may learn what is meant by metamorphosis, by external and internal fertilization, by ovulation and impregnation.
Period of puberty.—When the child has reached the period of puberty, it should learn something about the wonderful phenomenon of menstruation, which by nature is sure to come to every normal female, so that the young girl should not be surprised and frightened by its onset and the boy should not make jokes over it.BN
The young girl must be told that nature has reserved this catamenial week for the process of ovulation and for the development and perfection of the reproductive system. All the pelvic organs are in a condition of increased nervous irritability and in a natural healthy state of congestion. The attention of the girl must be called upon the participation of the breasts in the genital congestion. They become extended and more sensitive.
With the irritability of the genital nerves the entire nervous system becomes impressionate. Especially at puberty, when the first menstruations set in, the nervous susceptibility is increased to the highest degree. The child enters the period of storm and stress. During puberty, says Kiernan, there is normally a struggle between the cerebral and the reproductive systems. The latter tends to obtrude subconscious states upon consciousness. Quite a few of the young boys and girls harbor in their hearts the so-called “Weltschmerz,” which may be defined as the subconscious conviction of the emptiness and worthlessness of existence.
Hence the functions of menstruation should be very carefully and minutely explained to the girl and the responsibility of the womanly organism impressed upon her mind, as soon as the mental symptoms herald the approaching change from child to maidenhood. Indefinable yearnings and moods, wishes and fears, the emotions of shame and guilt, of faith and hope, of love and hate, of vanity and repentance, of sensitiveness and ambition, assume a certain domination over the growing child. Sweet inexpressible emotions disturb the thoughts and actions of the awakening consciousness. Mysterious sensations and impulses fill the heart of the ripening individual. The bodings of desires and cravings take possession of the individual’s thoughts and fancy.
Other symptoms which appear at the time of the onset of the catamenial period are headaches, restlessness, excitability, irritability of temper and a general hysterical condition. The girl is carried away more easily than at any other time. She often cries without any cause. A certain lassitude seizes her. She has pain and feels heat in the back and breasts, loins and in the internal organs. The appetite is often diminished and capricious, at this period, just as it is not seldom observed at the beginning of pregnancy. The girl is not seldom attacked by sickness and giddiness. If she then goes to bed and remains in a recumbent position, the blood accumulates in the vagina and coagulates there before it leaves the system. This coagula frightens the child.
Hence at the approach of menstruation it is the duty of parents and teachers to assist the girl with their advice. The regular regimen at the time of menstruation must be, first of all, more rest and little physical exercise. Standing too much, dancing, swimming, horseback riding, cycling, out-door games, must all be forbidden. The girl needs more sleep at that time. She must avoid excitement. She must guard herself against the exposure to draughts, chills or to getting wet feet. Cold baths must be omitted, but she ought to take regularly her warm baths. Especially should the genital organs be frequently washed with warm water. Tight clothing is particularly injurious at that time.
Pollutions.—The boy needs a different lesson at this period. He has to be told that, at the time of maturity, the testicles begin to produce or secrete spermatozoa which fill the seminal vesicles about once or twice a month. Here the sperm is, as a rule, reabsorbed when no external pressure, such as from the filled bladder or rectum, is exerted upon the vesicles. In the daytime the bladder and rectum are regularly emptied, and the pressure from this side is at a minimum.
During the secretion of the spermatozoa the nerve apparatus of the genital system is charged with vital energy. When the tension becomes very high, which coincides with the filling of the vesicles with sperma, the nervous tension and the physical pressure are both eager to discharge, respectively, to evacuate. When the bladder and rectum are filled during the night, their pressure upon the seminal vesicles becomes so great that the latter evacuate and thus cause an ejaculation and a change both in blood and nerve-supply. This relief from the physiological congestion and nervous tension gives a feeling of satisfaction and pleasure. The boy is awakened and is conscious of what has happened.BO
Boys, therefore, must be taught that these pollutions, if they happen only once to three times a month, are entirely normal and have absolutely no pathological significance whatsoever. The appearance of nocturnal emissions is merely a proof that the boy is approaching manhood. Hence there is no necessity for him to resort to prostitution to get rid of the nocturnal losses, or the so-called wet dreams, as many a boy has done, sometimes even upon the advice of his parent or of some medical authority.
Prevention of masturbation.—At this period, the children of both sexes have to be warned against the habit of masturbation. There are three periods in the child’s life when the danger of masturbation is especially imminent. There is, in the first place, the period of infancy and early age when the child is usually seduced to masturbation either by vicious servants or ignorant mothers, uncleanliness or improper diet. At this time careful watching of servants, cleanliness of the genitals, details of diet, as light suppers, non-spicy food, non-alcoholic drinks, the right way of sleeping, as hard mattresses, the proper dressing, as light trousers, etc., will prevent early self-abuse.
At the second period when the child enters school the danger of seduction to self-abuse is again very great. Masturbation is widely spread in schools. No institution is free from it. In some schools the evil reaches a wide extension. Particularly dangerous, as hatcheries and divulgers of the evil, are those institutions in which numerous pupils are present who have passed the normal age by several years.
At this time any moral indignation or long-winded sermons or, what is still worse, punishment, will be of no avail and will have just the opposite effect. Long talks and repeated turnings to the same subject will be of great harm and will only call the child’s attention upon the evil. Here only a deeply implanted disgust of the child against children with nasty habits will prevent the child’s seduction by such masturbators. This feeling can not be implanted in a day. One lesson will not accomplish anything, if the parents have not interposed a remark at every opportune moment during all the years between infancy and school days.
The third period favorable for acquiring the habit of masturbation is the time of puberty. At this period systematic action is of great necessity. All causes of the material genital congestion, as remaining long in a sitting position, sitting with crossed legs, riding on chairs, the movements of the sewing machine, climbing with the legs on poles, retention of urine and stool, erotic literature, obscene pictures and vulgar plays, all of which often tend to evoke sexual desire or excite the genital organs, must be removed.
Means against the acquired habit.—When we observe a child becoming listless, absorbed in thoughts, startled when suddenly addressed, obstinate, peevish, irritable, morose, taciturn, when we find its emotions becoming slow and heavy, that it seeks solitude and shuns play, when we see it becoming pale, with eyes sunken and surrounded by dark rings, when the lips become faded and the muscles soft and flabby, we are justified in the diagnosis masturbation. Sometimes the children are masturbating themselves in the presence of their elders, and the latter are not able to interpret the suspicious movements. Any kind of movements, with the boy’s hands in his trousers, or with the girls legs crossed, are suspicious and must be interrupted. Near the orgasm such movements change their character and rhythm, the eyes become sparkling, the face shows an excited lascivious expression and respiration becomes rapid. Such phenomena must be recognized, and the child must be interrupted in its favorite exercise.
The child having already acquired the habit, we will have to see that no opportunity is left to him to exercise the same. Masturbation once learned, it is impossible to stop it before adult life is reached. In the meantime, the child must be kept busy and must be taught self-control. The child must never remain in bed when not asleep, never sleep lying on its back and never remain too long in the toilet or in the bathroom. Two children must never sleep in the same bed or enter together the same toilet. Stimulating foods and drinks, such as pork, gravies, pastry with lard, salt-meat, mustard, pepper, rich pies, spices, candies, pickles, tea, coffee, must be eliminated from the masturbating child’s diet. Exciting entertainments, lewd pictures, suggestive reading, all of which tend to increase the child’s sexual passion, must be withheld from such a child. In addition to these precautions, we will repeatedly warn the child against the dangers of excesses of masturbation.
The children are now old enough to understand. Although the harmfulness of masturbation has been greatly exaggerated, still it is more injurious than the natural act. Among other injurious effects, the masturbator uses strong psychical and physical stimulants, and the harm to health is in proportion to the height of excitement. Especially injurious to the brain is mental masturbation. The voluptuous day-dreamers are often unable to free their thoughts from fancies and pictures of lustful circumstances when they are alone.
Teachers especially should be alive to the excessive danger of the so-called platonic attachments among their pupils. The sentimental fancy taken by an older boy to a younger boy in boys’ schools, or by an older girl to a younger girl, in girls' schools, between whom, in the regular course in the school, there ought to be very little natural companionship, is always suspicious. The teacher or guardian must know that such attachments, which appear so touching and romantic, have a most dangerous resemblance to abnormal passion.
The sequelae of immoderate masturbation are often quite disastrous. There is, in the first place, general neurasthenia, with all its accompanying symptoms, as photopsias, glistening and dazzling before the eyes, photophobias, dry conjunctivitis (particularly found among masturbating young girls and old maids), and functional sexual disturbances, as diurnal pollutions and spermatorrhoea. Other symptoms are indolence, lack of energy, shyness in demeanor, want of self-reliance, disinclination to study, incapacity for serious work, shortness of memory, absent-mindedness, unsteadiness of character, hypochondria and melancholia.
The children become peevish and irritable, they are reserved in conversation, apathetic in manner, hesitating in actions, slovenly in dress, and contradictory. Cerebral anemia is of common occurrence among those addicted to excesses in masturbation. Hence vertigo is a common symptom and fainting spells occur often. (Girls especially are liable to be affected by syncope.) Perspiration breaks forth on the slightest exertion, and the slightest exercise occasions much shortness of breath. Neuralgia of the testicles, ovaries and the bladder is also frequently caused by excess. The neuralgia of the neck of the bladder is particularly distressing. The patient is frequently seized with a desire to pass water, and the evacuation of the bladder is attended with pain. The frequent calls to urinate occur oftener during the day than during the night. Particular danger of long-continued masturbation lies in the development of impotency in men and frigidity in women.
Besides the nervous phenomena, there are often found real anatomical alterations. As the habit is more frequently indulged in, the prolonged congestion produces a catarrhal process in the urethra, prostatic gland, seminal vesicles and varicoceleBP in the male; and in the female, catarrh of the ovaries, tubes, uterus and especially of the endometrium. These conditions give rise to uncomfortable and distressing sensations which demand relief and are gotten rid of only by a continuation of the habit. Thus a vicious circle is continually at work. The results are stricture of the urethra, spermatorrhoea, disturbances of the intestinal tract, as dyspepsia, flatulence and constipation, and palpitation of the heart.
The congested genital glands, furthermore, excrete and secrete excessively. In this way the elements of the internal secretion are either in a state of atrophy or otherwise disturbed. The organism is thus deprived of these important elements and suffers accordingly.
Period between sixteen and eighteen years.—When the boy or girl, at the age of sixteen to eighteen, are about to leave their families, they will have to be warned against yielding to the frequent sexual temptations. At this time the boy, and to a certain extent in our modern industrial world also the girl, leaves the family to go out into the world to commence the struggle for existence. There, in the office or in the factory, the boy and the girl will be surrounded by many temptations. Innumerable chances will be offered to them to surrender their chastity. It must, therefore, be impressed upon them how necessary and important it is for them to be careful and not to allow the hot temper of youth for the woman, respectively for the man, to get the better of their prudence.
They have to be warned of the dangers of venereal diseases and have to be shown the fearful results of promiscuous intercourse.BQ We will speak to them openly about the dangers of venereal diseases. The diseases of society just as those of the body, says Stuart Mills, can not be prevented without speaking openly about them. The social diseases must be spoken in the open and not with bated breath, and must be spoken to the woman no less than to the man.
The social diseases have been declared shameful and no one is allowed to know or to mention them. Many excellent people look upon venereal diseases as a merited punishment for the sins of immorality. In the popular conception, venereal diseases are diseases of debauchery only. There is, on the part of the public, an indifference, even an active opposition, to sex-enlightenment, due to the erroneous idea that venereal diseases are the exclusive appanage of vice. The people are ignorant of the fact that millions of guiltless persons contract these diseases through common utensils and particularly in marriage. These dreadful diseases embrace among their victims a vast number of virtuous wives and innocent children. The number of virtuous wives suffering from venereal diseases is much larger than the entire number of prostitutes in our country. The wife and unborn child are surely innocent in every sense of the word. They are incapable of foreseeing and powerless to prevent the threatening injury.
Syphilis, especially, is not purely a sexual disease. It is often acquired in the most innocent manner. An almost inperceptible lesion in the mouth or throat of the syphilitic exudes a virus which may be conveyed to another person, by a pen, pencil, drinking-glass, by surgical and dental instruments and by kissing.
Some years ago the author treated a pure, innocent, seventeen-year-old nurse-girl for syphilis of the pharynx who contracted the disease from the syphilitic infant she was taking care of. Both the host of the infection and the victim were thus perfectly innocent.
Such innocent people surely do not deserve punishment and ought to be protected. The traditional shameful character with which the venereal diseases have been invested by popular prejudice is surely absent in this class of cases. The only practical protection is the removal of the mist of ignorance.BR Ignorance of the results of venereal diseases is often ruinous.
Especially is ignorance, prevailing about gonorrhoea, often very disastrous. Gonorrhoea is commonly considered a benign local disease. Young men think it a joke to have gonorrhoeal infection several times in their lives. They have imbibed false views in regard to the trivial character of this venereal infection. They think gonorrhoea is not more serious than a bad cold. The young man who happens to have escaped gonorrhoeal infection is the target of his friends’ jests. Yet gonorrhoeal infection may make a tragedy of marriage by destroying the woman’s conceptional capacity and rendering her irrevocably sterile, in this way producing childlessness, and by sending thousands of women to the operating table to be condemned to the mutilation of their generative organs to save their lives.
If the proper knowledge of all these dangers would be imparted to her, it is inconceivable that any woman, with a fair amount of judgment, would permit the approach of a possibly tainted man. Every girl, who knew all the dangers of contracting such a disease, would be more capable of understanding the seriousness of her taking a false step and would guard herself against it. If the girl knew of the prevalence of venereal diseases among men, and her great danger from this source, she would not so easily debase herself and sully her vestal purity. Only full knowledge can adequately assist her. Experience has shown again and again that thousands suffer physical and moral wreckage by trusting the blind instinct as the sole and sufficient guide for its regulation. The girl ought to know that the sexual instinct is imperious in its demands. If she yields to an ardent lover she runs danger to contract a serious disease.
The ignorance prevailing about the dangers of venereal diseases is also responsible for the levity with which marriages with profligates are contracted. By a strange irony of fate, the diseases of vice, transplanted to the bed of virtue, often become intensified in virulence. Still with many girls the man who has most promiscuously and profusely scattered his “wild oats” has been looked upon as the most favored one among possible husbands. How there can be anything alluring to marry a man with a past, when there is the great peril that the young bride may get up on the morning after the wedding-day an invalid for life, can only be explained by the lack of knowledge of the gravity of venereal diseases. If the mother knew that a man who has led an unclean life is not a safe husband for her daughter, if she were aware of the fact that dissipated men do not make desirable husbands, she would look more for virtue than money in the future son-in-law. If the girl knew the host of indeterminable lesions which may follow in the wake of various venereal diseases, if she knew all the dangers lurking for her and her offspring, she would never condone moral depravity in her husband and the father of her children. Her whole nature would revolt against the wedlock with a man whose body is a sink of corruption. It will be she who will have to suffer most. It is upon the woman that the burden of shame and suffering, of disease and death, is chiefly laid.
The danger of sexual exploitation of young girls by certain men is much greater, the less the girls are instructed about the social dangers and the physiological consequences of a chance acquaintance. The girl ought to be taught that one mistake blasts a young girl’s life. Let a young woman stray but once from the path of virtue, or let there be even one breath of suspicion against her virtue, whether well founded or not, and there is no forgiveness to her in this world. She has suffered an irretrievable loss. Her greatest enemy in such a case is woman herself. Society admits the acknowledged libertine to its most exclusive circles, but forever ostracises the woman whose one false step has been found out. The man may emerge from the mire of dissipation without a spot or blemish upon his character, for the woman, there is no return. Shame and degradation follow her even to the grave.
If the girl further knew the physiological consequences of her transgression, if she knew that she may become gravid, and thus publish to the world her folly, such cases as are often seen in maternity hospitals of girls between the ages of twelve to fifteen years being already pregnant, without knowing the sex relation, would never be met with.BS Many of these girls have no adequate idea of the result of congressus, because no one has told them.
The prophylactic value of education, which has been applied to the prevention of almost all communicable diseases, would surely also be seen in this dreadful disease, this cancer of the body politic, meretricious venery, this plague of prostitution which poisons the very sources of the family and of the state. But for the prevailing ignorance of the girls, regarding the dangers and pitfalls that beset their lives’ pathway, one million girls would not have been led into a life of shame in this country.BT These unfortunate girls do not all come from the slums of the great cities, as the economic determinists would like to make us believe, but many come from refined country homes.BU Most of these devotees of meretricious venery have become so through the fundamental vice of laziness and defective mentality. It is sentimentality pure and simple always to speak of betrayed innocence or dire poverty.BV A vicious disposition, love of pleasure, and the gratification of the erotic desires,BW are, as a rule, responsible for the majority of girls embracing the profession of prostitution. But the most serious among the factors which work together to bring many a girl to ruin, is ignorance and the lack of proper instruction. If the girl knew that the career of the venal woman lasts scarcely five to ten years,BX and that it is a large sewer, a garbage dump and a crematory, she would surely not be so easily led to embrace this vile profession. If the girl knew these facts, it is inconceivable that even the mentally defective girl would prefer this short life of silks and satins and then annihilation to a respectable life, even of poverty.
The girl, therefore, must be warned against the allurements of meretricious venery. She must be told that the average duration of the career of the venal woman is very short, and that embracing this profession is almost tantamount to committing suicide. Before the girl has made the fatal step, she has to be shown the great slavery and misery prostitution brings upon those who embrace it as a profession, and that the career of the prostitute lasts no longer than five to ten years in the average. Then come ruin and the morgue.
But the young girls are started in life entirely ignorant of all the dangers about them, and the result is the vast army of unfortunates. In this way venereal diseases persist, sexual crimes abound, degeneracy remains and countless victims, year after year, pay the penalty of ignorance.
The best prophylaxis of impurity is the avoidance of intoxicating beverages, chance acquaintances, vanity and pleasure-seeking. The girl’s attention has to be called to the danger lying in the habit of drinking intoxicating liquors. A girl has only to taste a drop of liquor in a strange man’s company, and her chastity is in the greatest danger to desert her for good. It will not take very long before this girl will indulge in the excessive use of alcohol, which dulls the moral sense of men and women.BY
The girl has further to beware of the danger of chance acquaintances. Young men of such acquaintances, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, will do all in their power to induce a girl to drink intoxicating liquors, and, when she has become excited by the unaccustomed beverage, they will ruin her chastity.
The girl must particularly be warned of the great danger lying in vanity of personal appearance. Many a girl has sold her virtue for fine clothes and outside finery, many a girl has sold her health, morality and even her soul for a few showy bawbles.
Last but not least, there is danger in pleasure-seeking and in an absorbing love of gaiety.BZ The seducer, says Block (Zeitschr. f. Bekämpf. d. Geschtskr., Vol. X, p. 75), is really not the particular man but the big city. The luxurious hotels, restaurants, music-halls, theatres, etc., and the elegant clothes of the rich allure the poor shop-girls, milliners, dressmakers and servant girls to the career of the mistress in such big numbers that a pure girl over twenty-five years of age is rarely found in this class in the big cities in Europe.
Alcohol, vanity and pleasure-seeking thus lead to the evil of impurity and to a life of ruin, desolation, sickness and degradation. A girl must, therefore, be made acquainted with all these pitfalls, in the outside world, before she leaves her mother’s protecting presence. She has to learn above all the high and holy function of her genital apparatus and of the sickness, shame and sorrow which are sure to follow any profanation of these functions. The subject of venereal prophylaxis has been altogether too largely taboo among us, hence the venereal diseases continue to rot the core of society, leaving blindness, deformity, invalidism and death in their train disseminate.
Even the girl who is sent to college has to know all the dangers and pitfalls in the outside world. In addition she has to be warned against the sex-overvaluation by the unhealthy sensualists of indulgence, found in the modern literature of the so-called feminists. All those novels, that are written by the modern woman, says Howard, show an itching of the sexual centre. The passion is there, but perverted, unsatisfied, masturbatic. They wish to make man the weak slave of his or her erotic excitement. They call it in German “Sich ausleben,” “to live out your life.”
The girl who has chosen an intellectual pursuit has to be taught before leaving home that the real ethics is the defense of all external sex-values. Man is more than a mere sex-being. The spiritual kind of virginity consists in the sensual affairs not being dominating, exacting or filling the inner life. The Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria in Egypt, says: “The virgin, by her company with man, becomes a woman, by the soul’s association with God, the woman becomes again a virgin.” Such are the lessons the young girl should take along, when she leaves home, so that she may be protected against the doctrines of sensual hyperaestheticism of the modern writers.
The necessity of self-control and chastity must be impressed upon the mind not only of the young woman but also of the young man. There is not the slightest support in physiology for the double standard of morality of the two sexes. Either men and women should be allowed to lead a promiscuous sex-life,CA or what is by custom forbidden to the woman should not be allowed to the man either.
But such lessons will have very little effect upon boys who have passed childhood and puberty before they have had the opportunity of receiving proper sex-instruction. Such boys need altogether another kind of instruction, namely, lessons in personal prophylaxis. The objection that to teach personal prophylaxis against venereal infection would remove the most effective obstacle to sexual indulgence, i. e., the fear of infection, simply shows the ignorance of the elementary force which indulgence in venery, once tasted, drives the boy into the arms of prostitution, fear or no fear.CB The young man himself, once defloured of his virginity, is of no concern any longer. All the lessons in personal prophylaxis will not have the least influence upon his conduct in life one way or another. But personal prophylaxis may save his wife and children from a life of invalidism and even death.
The same procedure will be necessary in dealing with the young man who is a congenital weakling and has to associate with meretricibus. He should at least take care not to contract any venereal disease, which may wreck the lives of his future wife and children. He should immediately after coition, first wash with a cotton-sponge the penis—head, shank and under-frenum—with a solution of sublimate 1:5000; secondly pass water and make a urethral injection with a solution of 2% protargol, and thirdly rub a 50% calomel ointment well into the fore-skin, head and shank of the penis, particularly about the frenum.CC
The best prophylaxis against masturbation, and in a certain degree also against inchastity, is the coëducation of the sexes. The familiar intercourse of boys and girls in the kindly presence of their teachers prevents and appeases the morbid craving of the sex-appetite, provided the pupils have not been morally tainted before they entered the coëducational school.
But the comingling of the sexes must not degenerate in tactile eroticism, as may be observed, on any summer night, in city parks, on excursion boats, or on hotel verandas at most of our summer resorts. Of all the five senses, touch is the strongest sense, it is a sense-world in itself. Touch is the only sense that has an organ which can be doubled upon itself. The eye cannot see itself, the ear cannot hear itself, the tongue cannot taste itself, nor the nose smell itself. But the hand can pass over the body surface and both feel and be felt. It can perform the feat of being at the same time both subject and object.
For this reason the sense of touch is especially adapted to be at the service of the sex-sense. The sense of sex seems to have made the sense of touch a part of its being. The sense of touch forms one of the component impulses of the sex-instinct, namely, the impulse of contrectation. Hence dalliance and caresses form a substantial part of the sex-act and are unhygienic, if not soon followed by ejaculation and orgasm. When the act has once begun, and the often observed caresses do represent the beginning, it is unhygienic and very harmful not to terminate the same. The often repeated interruption will lead to all kinds of sexual neuroses, particularly to psychic and more often to atonic impotence in men and frigidity in women.