actual vesania."[331] When we remember that there
is no convincing evidence to show that masturbation is "begun early and
carried very far" by "persons of sound antecedents," the significance of
Spitzka's "typical psychosis of masturbation" is somewhat annulled. It is
evident that these distinguished investigators, Marro and Spitzka, have
been induced by tradition to take up a position which their own scientific
consciences have compelled them practically to evacuate.

Recent authorities are almost unanimous in rejecting masturbation
as a cause of insanity. Thus, Rohleder, in his comprehensive
monograph (_Die Masturbation_, 1899, pp. 185-92), although taking
a very serious view of the evil results of masturbation, points
out the unanimity which is now tending to prevail on this point,
and lays it down that "masturbation is never the direct cause of
insanity." Sexual excesses of any kind, he adds (following
Curschmann), can, at the most, merely give an impetus to a latent
form of insanity. On the whole, he concludes, the best
authorities are unanimous in agreeing that masturbation may
certainly injure mental capacity, by weakening memory and
depressing intellectual energy; that, further, in hereditarily
neurotic subjects, it may produce slight psychoses like _folie du
doute_, hypochondria, hysteria; that, finally, under no
circumstances can it produce severe psychoses like paranoia or
general paralysis. "If it caused insanity, as often as some
claim," as Kellogg remarks, "the whole race would long since have
passed into masturbatic degeneracy of mind.... It is especially
injurious in the very young, and in all who have weak nervous
systems," but "the physical traits attributed to the habit are
common to thousands of neurasthenic and neurotic individuals."
(Kellogg, _A Text-book of Mental Diseases_, 1897, pp. 94-95.)
Again, at the outset of the article on "Masturbation," in Tuke's
_Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_, Yellowlees states that,
on account of the mischief formerly done by reckless statements,
it is necessary to state plainly that "unless the practice has
been long and greatly indulged, no permanent evil effects may be
observed to follow." Naecke, again, has declared ("Kritisches zum
Kapitel der Sexualitaet," _Archiv fuer Psychiatrie_, 1899): "There
are neither somatic nor psychic symptoms