used by excess in normal
coitus, by sexual abstinence, and especially by disordered menstruation.
Thus we see that even when we are considering a mechanism so delicately
poised and one so easily disturbed by any jar of the system as vision,
masturbation produces no effect except when carried to an extent which
argues a hereditarily imperfect organism, while even in these cases the
effects are usually but slight, moreover, in no respect specific, but are
paralleled and even exceeded by the results of other disturbances of the
sexual system.

Let us turn to the supposed influence of masturbation in causing insanity
and nervous diseases. Here we may chiefly realize the immense influence
exerted on medical science by Tissot and his followers during a hundred
years. Mental weakness is the cause and not the result of excessive
masturbation, Gall declared,[320] but he was a man of genius, in
isolation. Sir William Ellis, an alienist of considerable reputation at
the beginning of the last century, could write with scientific equanimity:
"I have no hesitation in saying that, in a very large number of patients
in all public asylums, the disease may be attributed to that cause." He
does, indeed, admit that it may be only a symptom sometimes, but goes on
to assert that masturbation "has not hitherto been exhibited in the awful
light in which it deserves to be shown," and that "in by far the greater
number of cases" it is the true cause of dementia.[321] Esquirol lent his
name and influence to a similar view of the pernicious influence of
masturbation. Throughout the century, even down to the present day, this
point of view has been traditionally preserved in a modified form. In
apparent ignorance of the enormous prevalence of masturbation, and
without, so far as can be seen, any attempt to distinguish between cause
and effect or to eliminate the hereditary neuropathic element, many
alienists have set down a large proportion of cases of insanity, idiocy,
epilepsy, and disease of the spinal cord to uncomplicated masturbation.
Thus, at the Matteawan State Hospital (New York) for criminal lunatics and
insane prisoners, from 1875 to 1907, masturbation was the sole assigned
cause of insanity in 160 men (out of 2,595); while, according to Dr. Clara
Barrus, among 121 cases of insanity in young women, masturbation is the
cause in ten cases.[322] It is unnecessary to multiply examples, for this
traditional tendency is familiar to all.

It a