escape detection by the patient's
friends, the peculiar freaks of disposition being regarded rather as
eccentricities of character than as symptoms of serious disease. Fits of
despondency are usually common with such sufferers. The mental
derangement is not always accompanied or preceded by spermatorrhea or
frequent seminal emissions, the injury done to the nervous system by the
practice of self-abuse, or sexual excesses, being first noticeable in
various phantasms or imaginings on the part of the patient. These are,
in different cases, so various, both in character and degree, as not to
admit of any classification, each case presenting phases peculiar to
itself. In many cases, the patient imagines that his best friends are
conspiring to injure him, or that some great calamity is about to befall
him. In most cases there is danger of the patient's committing suicide,
if not closely watched. Especially is this true of those who suffer from
fits of hypochondria.

Except in its milder forms, insanity resulting from masturbation and
sexual excesses, is rarely curable.

DON'T BE ALARMED. A nocturnal seminal emission now and then, or at long
intervals is not, in and of itself, evidence of the existence of
spermatorrhea or other serious disease. A full blooded, strong,
passionate man, in vigorous health, and who has never abused himself,
may now and then, at long intervals, if his sexual passions be not
gratified naturally, or if he permit his mind to run much upon
lascivious subjects, experience an emission while asleep and dreaming.
As to whether such occurrences are evidence of disease or not, in any
given case, depends upon their frequency, and as to whether they are the
result of a weakness of the organs and are followed by more or less
depression and debility, or are merely the overflow of a robust system,
or the outburst of restrained, pent-up, and ungratified passions. In the
latter case, and when only occurring at long intervals, the emissions
are not followed by any perceptible enervating or weakening effects.

QUACKERY RAMPANT. This country is flooded with cheap circulars and
pamphlets, circulated openly and broadcast, wherein ignorant,
pretentious, blatant quacks endeavor to frighten young men who may never
have practiced self-abuse, or been guilty of excesses in any way, and
yet who experience, now and then at long intervals, nocturnal seminal
emissions. In such cases, it is the duty of the conscientious, honest