We have referred, in previous chapters of this work, to the great influence of the sexual glands on several of the most important organs, and shown in what a marvelous way these glands affect our vitality and prospects of longevity (see Chapter V); consequently it is only natural that we should use our best endeavors to maintain these glands in good working condition, which we can do in a rational manner by protecting them from all harmful agencies, which may be numerous. It would exceed the limits of this book to enumerate all the different causes of diseases of the sexual glands, so we will confine ourselves to the most frequent, which, although not immediately producing actual disorders of the glands, may yet lower their vitality in the long run and finally lead to their degeneration.
The infectious diseases of the sexual glands, acquired by contagion through sexual intercourse, occupy a prominent place among the agencies deleterious to them. They are well dealt with in the handbooks on this subject, so will not be further referred to here. The best way to avoid them is by marriage. This may, in the majority of cases, be a safeguard for the man but not for the woman; for, unhappily, in very many instances women are infected by their husbands as soon as they enter the bonds of matrimony.
In Chapter VII we mentioned the injurious consequences of these infections, not only for men, but also for women, and told how in the former sexual potency, and in the latter fertility, may be ruined by such. The best way to deal with the matter would be to pass a law enforcing the examination of the prospective husband by a physician; and if such a law were applied also to the woman, the propagation of certain hereditary diseases might be arrested. Long ago Plato thought of such an emergency. He recommended that before a marriage judges should examine both man and woman, the man to be stark naked, and the woman partially so; after the inspection the judges were to deliver their opinion whether the couple should be married or not.
Nearly as injurious as infectious diseases may be the abuse of the sexual glands by too frequent intercourse, by masturbation, or by other irritations of these glands, such as excitation, without subsequent satisfaction, especially in cases of interrupted copulation with a view to avoid offspring.
Too frequent sexual intercourse may soon sap the vitality of these glands and, indeed, hasten the symptoms of old age, even in young persons. As already mentioned, even young girls may acquire some of the attributes of old age by such means. They soon become fat and bloated, the features lose their juvenile aspect, and the cheeks become pendant; the muscles lose their tonicity, and there is a marked difference between the muscles of a young maiden and those of a woman of the same age who has been leading a life of debauchery for some time. The latter will invariably, if not always, look older—which ought to be an object lesson on this subject. Premature old age can similarly be brought about by constant conditions of exhaustion of the ovaries consequent to frequent pregnancies. When a woman has a child year after year, as a rule, especially if living in straitened circumstances, she usually looks older; but this is not so in all cases, as we have before remarked.
Moderation, therefore, must be strictly observed.
The ancient Hindoos recommended to men sexual abstinence of long duration, thinking that by this means the internal secretion of the sexual glands would be absorbed into the system and that they would thereby reap all the benefits inherent in such a secretion. By this it seems that thousands of years before Claude Bernard and Brown-Séquard the Hindoos already appreciated the great importance of the internal secretions.
According to the Prophet Mohamed, sexual intercourse should not be more frequent than once in eight days. Zoroaster recommends once in nine, Solon and Socrates once in ten, and Moses eight days before and eight days after menstruation, and Luther twice a week (der Woche Zwie). The Holy Book of the Jews, The Talmud,[336] an encyclopædia of Jewish knowledge embracing a period of from 500 years before to 500 years after Christ, recommends the following in respect to marital intercourse: Young strong men, every day; workmen, once a week; mental workers, once a month. Acton advises copulation once only in from seven to ten days.[337]
Pomeroy says matrimony is Nature’s nectar, but if we indulge too freely, instead of nectar Nature will offer us water or bile, and finally deadly poison. To avoid sexual overactivity in married people Kisch recommends a separate bed for man and wife.
Far more dangerous than too frequent intercourse are frequent excitations of the sexual organs without final sexual satisfaction. In this way a continual hyperæmia of the caput gallinaginis in the prostate can be set up; and as this is where the ducts of the seminal vesicles end, premature emissions and impotency may result. Thus we see that masturbation and interrupted copulation may produce the same effect; indeed, these practices are far more injurious to virility than sexual overactivity if indulged in in the normal way.
Frequent sexual excitations are also very deleterious to the female sexual organs, which are thereby brought into a hyperæmic condition; and if this dangerous practice be often repeated serious disorders may follow, and especially is this the case if intercourse be interrupted before the seminal emission.
According to Professor Kish such preventive coition (congressus interruptus) may be followed by a relaxation of the uterus and chronic metritis. The hyperæmia and stagnation of the blood may lead to inflammation of the ovaries and parametritis, and perhaps to new growths. Neugebauer and Pigeolet have often observed cancer of the uterus in women who made a habit of indulging in sexual intercourse with the use of preventives against conception. Metritis and parametritis after such a proceeding have been observed by Bircher, Valente, etc.
Certain abuses of the female sexual organs, such as copulation during menstruation, may also be ruinous to those organs; metritis, parametritis, ovarian inflammation, etc., may be the result of such grave violations of this most elementary rule of the hygiene of the sexual glands.
The ancient Mosaic Laws prescribed the punishment of death for intercourse during menstruation. During this period all kind of work should be prohibited, and for many women it would be wisest to rest completely, especially during the first day.
Women should not marry under a certain age, preferably not under 20. With the Spartans no man was allowed to marry before 30, and no woman before 20, and we know what a robust and strong nation they were. This is most essential to avoid premature senility, which can easily develop in women who commence sexual intercourse at an early age. No woman should be permitted to marry until she is fully developed physically and mentally. There are cases where women are not fully developed at 18, or even at 20, and in such cases marriage should be deferred to a later period.
Close observation of the rules for a rational hygiene of the sexual organs also demands that chlorotic girls should not marry until their condition is improved by iron treatment, the sexual organs in cases of severe chlorosis or anæmia not being fit for use.
We have referred to the dangers of sexual overactivity, and we will now endeavor to show that the opposite extreme, viz., complete inactivity of these glands, may also lead to disastrous consequences. When nature created our different organs they were intended to be used, and there is no part and no organ in the body that should not fulfil its function (even the appendix, as lymphatic tissue, has one). No exception can be made in favor of the sexual organs, although the hypocrisy of certain faddists would have us believe that these organs alone out of the whole body should serve no purpose whatever. Indeed, the whole anatomical construction and the physiological working of these organs—differing in each sex—shows that Nature intended them to be used in conjunction with each other.
These organs are glandular formations having, like all other glands of the body, a secretion, which, like the secretions of the other ductless glands—as, for example, the thyroid—if produced in too large quantities, may have toxic effects. That this really is the case is shown by the experiments of Loisel, who found that the extracts from the testicles, and still more so from the ovaries, if injected into other animals, have toxic effects.
The sexual glands, being glands with an epithelial formation, must certainly produce a secretion; they could not be an exception to one of the fundamental laws of anatomy and histology. The accumulation of this secretion may produce certain toxic effects, judging from the experiments of Loisel.[338] We may, therefore, conclude that the complete inactivity of these glands or, in other words, total sexual abstinence, may have injurious effects on the general health, as also on the condition of the glands themselves; and we are able, by experiments and clinical and anatomo-pathological observations, to confirm this view.
Regaud[339] has observed that when guinea-pigs are kept for a long time in complete sexual abstinence, away from their females, the testicles present degenerative changes, and at the same time the volume of the gland is considerably diminished. The seminal epithelium shows many cells with signs of degeneration. He also observed similar signs in the epithelium of the seminiferous tubules during winter hibernation, and also in the spring when the animals were not sleeping but if they were kept in total sexual abstinence. Although they were well nourished these animals showed no spermatogenesis.
Regaud comes to the conclusion that “la continence forcée peut done avoir pour conséquence des modifications importantes de l’épithélium séminal”—enforced abstinence (sexual) may thus lead consequently to important modifications of the seminal epithelium.
According to Mingazzini,[340] the ovaries of female animals that are kept in captivity and sexual abstinence present degenerated follicles, this being very different to the ovaries of other females living in freedom, the comparisons having been made in the same season of the year.
There is some evidence to show that similar results may happen in man. When men live a long time—not for weeks or a few months, but for a very lengthened period—in total sexual abstinence, the size of the testicles may sometimes be found diminished. Unfortunately there have not as yet been made, at least to our knowledge, histological examinations of the sexual glands of those who really have led a life of total sexual abstinence. But a remote proof in support of our proposition that such a condition may lead to histological changes in these important glands, is the fact that Baldwin has discovered histological changes in the ovaries of hysterical women, of whom a large proportion were either spinsters or women who became widows early in life. Of course this is but a very indirect proof, devoid of the scientific value of the observations of Regaud and Mingazzini.
There are, however, important clinical facts which support the supposition that total sexual abstinence may lead to alteration of these glands. Thus we have observed impotence in the cases of several men after sexual abstinence of long duration, which entirely disappeared in nearly every case after copulation at regular intervals; and we arrive at the conclusion that a regular use of these organs, which are intended by Nature to be used, is a necessity, and that impotence can frequently be best cured by marriage. In marriage only can hygienic and regular sexual intercourse best take place; and thus marriage is the best hygiene for the sexual glands. For this and other important reasons we will devote a special chapter on marriage, which will succeed this. In some maidens near the thirties we can note the appearance of symptoms of fading; through the loss of fatty tissue those parts of the body that were formerly round become angular, and there thus develops the condition of leanness so typical of old spinsters; hairs may also appear on the chin and upper lip. That all this is caused by the inactivity of the sexual glands, which, as already explained, influence the outward appearance of the body, is best demonstrated by the fact that after marriage a great change takes place in such women, and the fading rose-tree blooms again. Thus marriage re-creates youth.
The deleterious effects of total sexual abstinence on the sexual glands have also been observed. Professor Kisch noted that with women who had lived an active sexual life and who had had several children, whom they had fed from the breast, menstruation continued till a later period in life than it did in old maids, or in women who early in life had become widows, or in barren women.
That total sexual abstinence may have very injurious effects on the nervous system, as mentioned in Chapter IV, and assist in the development of hysteria and neurasthenia, is shown by the fact that when there is an accumulation of semen in the male, or a swelling of the Graafian follicles in the female, then an excitation of the nervous system follows, with sexual desire. That the nervous system can be excited and even seriously damaged by too frequent and too excessive impulses conveyed from the sexual glands, has been mentioned by us at various times in this book.
The continual resistance to satisfy sexual desire, and especially satisfaction by artificial means, may lead to ruinous consequences for the nervous system and the sexual glands.
Happily there can be no doubt that many men and women lead healthy lives, in spite of their struggles against satisfying the desire of the sexual organs to follow their natural bent; but such cases are not the rule, and most of such people have some kind of disorder, especially of the nervous system or the digestive organs, as, for instance, cardialgia, or acidity of the stomach. We have already referred to the alteration in these organs following changes in the sexual organs.
There are people with a frigid disposition,—which is certainly not normal—and such may not be troubled by their sexual glands. On the other hand, there are people with too great a sexual inclination. The suppression of these desires in them may often lead to ruin of the nervous system. Prof. Krafft-Ebing found that individuals with neuropathic constitutions often have their desires exaggerated in a pathological way, and he came to the conclusion that in such persons, through enforced sexual abstinences, the nervous system may be ruined. Professor Erb, the famous Heidelberg specialist for nervous diseases, declared at the Congress of the German Society for the Suppression of Vice, held a few years ago at Frankfort, that there are adult individuals in whom sexual abstinence for a long time produces serious mischief in the nervous system.
Buddha says: “Sexual instinct is stronger than the iron hook with which wild elephants are tamed; it is hotter than fire; it is an arrow that pierces the soul of man.”
Briefly, neurologists, especially since Freud’s labors, now realize the importance of the injurious influences of an abnormal sexual life, many disorders of the nervous system and mind having been traced to the conflict between the demands of nature and a too rigorous sexual repression, through fear, disgust, shame, etc.
One of the pioneers of the movement in Germany for the emancipation of women—Johanna Elberskirchen—demands free scope for the sexual feelings of women and their satisfaction within physiological limits and according to physiological necessity.
We are of the opinion that, as a rule, there is a certain difference between sexual desire in man and the same in woman. Man mostly wants satisfaction simply; in women there is generally a higher motive: she demands love, and refuses satisfaction alone.
Nature, who has created the sexual organs of male and female as a masterpiece of very clever and skilful construction, with admirable forethought in even the smallest details of this very complicated mechanism, has appointed to them a very important purpose, viz., the propagation of the race; and she pursues her ends in a most artful way, giving to each sex certain attributes by which the opposite may be attracted. The peacock, for instance, is furnished with a wonderful collection of beautiful feathers to excite the sexual feelings of the hen, which has a much plainer exterior. In man the relations are reversed; here beauty is more conspicuous in the female, and it is by their charms, the attributes of their sex, that men are attracted,—who, unfortunately, look rather to the beauty of the outside, which is transient, than to that of the soul, which is eternal.
This book is a plea for a simple and natural life, and for obedience to the laws of Nature rather than for neglect or abuse of them. Sexual desires are the outcome of the existence of the sexual glands, and they are enforced upon us in a way that is sometimes nearly irresistible after long-continued sexual abstinence. Disobedience to the imperious commands of Nature will draw down upon us her revenge and punishment, and ailments and disease, and bodily and mental misery, may be the consequences of the complete suppression of the functions of these glands in adults. There may be exceptions, and certain women or men may pass a lifetime in such an unnatural way without any apparent ill consequences to their health; but such are rare. It has been observed not infrequently that spinsters were fast fading when they were married, but that after a time they looked much younger, especially after their first child. As already quoted above from Kisch, sexual life and, therefore, youth are longer preserved in women who use their sexual glands and have children than in those who do not. Thus there is no alternative, and marriage is the safest course. Marriage, if the partners are well suited, is indeed the most useful and beneficial institution there is; and, as we will show in the next chapter, it is one of the most important agencies in the treatment of old age, and for the longest possible conservation of youth.
But the question now arises, what should those do who cannot get married, not through any fault of their own, if they should escape all the mischief due to an unnatural suppression of the sexual functions or their satisfaction in an unnatural way? We will now endeavor to give a few useful hints on the subject.
First of all, a hyperæmic condition of the sexual organs should be avoided by all means, and care should especially be taken to have the bowels opened every day, as otherwise hyperæmia of the pelvic organs will follow. This may also be a consequence of rich food and a sedentary life, which, therefore, should be avoided. Cold hydrotherapeutic washings of the surface of the body, particularly of the sexual parts, may also be beneficial. As during long sexual abstinence the probability is that toxic products are being evolved and are accumulating in the system, a good purge every five or six days would seem to be a necessity, as also would a hot bath. Reading light literature should be avoided. We especially recommend much exercise in the open air and sunshine, long walks, mountain climbing, sports, long journeys (especially by automobile), etc.
The best safeguard against sexual desires is an active busy life, which affords no opportunity for idle thoughts.
For persons doomed, from one cause or another, to lead a life of complete sexual abstinence, the best and safest course to prevent sexual desire is to lead a strenuous business life, drowning the desires in a flood of useful and busy occupations.
Thus unmarried girls and widows may well pass their time in charity, nursing the sick, and other occupations tending to make them useful, rather than spend their time in fruitless dreams; and by such occupations they obtain a happiness which they might not have found, perhaps, even in married life.
The surest kind of occupation for the prevention of the above-mentioned desires is strenuous mental work. When the mind is busy with serious problems these desires cannot obtrude themselves; and, indeed, we have often observed in persons whose lives have been devoted to serious scientific work, which has entirely absorbed them, a total absence of sexual desire for a long time, and even impotency. This, however, we will consider later as a consequence of defective hygiene during mental labor (see Chapter L, on the hygiene of the brain worker).
We do not recommend mental work so exaggerated beyond the ordinary limits that it might cause harm to the brain and nervous system; but it is certain that when mental work is done within reasonable limits, and when it occupies the greater part of our time, but not all, it is a great protection against sexual desires, restricting them without any injury to the functions of the sexual glands.
Thus, as we see, there are certain remedies against sexual desires for those that cannot satisfy them; but the most natural solution of this question can be brought about in the safest way by marriage.