in the habit of attending fashionable parties at
late hours, and taking their 'refreshments,' to consider whether they
may not be a means of keeping up, by their example, those more vulgar
assemblies, with all their grossness, which I have been describing. Is
it not obvious that what the _wine_, and the fruit, and the oysters,
are to the more refined and Christian circles, wine and fermented
liquors may be to the more blunt sensibilities of body and mind, in
youthful circles of another description? But if so, where rests the
guilt? Or shall we bless the fountains, while we curse the stream they
form?

SECTION III. _Diseases of Licentiousness_.

The importance of this and the foregoing section will be differently
estimated by different individuals. They were not inserted, however,
without consideration, nor without the approbation of persons who enjoy
a large measure of public confidence. The young ought at least to know,
briefly, to what a formidable host of maladies secret vice is exposed.

1. _Insanity._ The records of hospitals show that insanity, from
solitary indulgence, is common. Tissot, Esquirol, Eberle, and others,
give ample testimony on this point. The latter, from a careful
examination of the facts, assures us that in Paris the proportion of
insane persons whose diseases may be traced to the source in question,
is _one_ in from _fifty-one_ to _fifty-eight_, in the _lower classes_.
In the higher classes it is _one_ in _twenty-three_. In the insane
Hospital of Massachusetts--I have it from authority which I cannot
question,--the proportion is at least one in three or four. At present
there are about twenty cases of the kind alluded to.

2. _Chorea Sancti Viti_; or _St. Vitus's dance_. This strange disease,
in which the muscles of the body are not always at the command of the
patient, and in which the head, the arms, the legs, and indeed every
part which is made for muscular motion often jerks about in a very
singular manner, is sometimes produced in the same way. Insanity and
this disease are occasionally combined. I have known one young man in
this terrible condition, and have read authentic accounts of others.

3. _Epilepsy._ Epileptic or _falling sickness fits_, as they are
sometimes denominated, are another very common scourge of secret vice.
How much they are to be dreaded almost every one can judge; for there
are few who have not seen those who are afflicted with them. They
usually weaken the mind