face of
the adolescent. However, one must be very slow to pass judgment in
these cases.

Not the least important among the results of masturbation is the
attitude of the victim to society in general. This _psychical_ change
is noticed in immoderate cases of masturbation and takes the form of
disinclination to enter into any physical contests, or games; and
disinclination to cultivate the society of the opposite sex. Here
again one must be conservative in his judgment, because there are
individuals who possess a very retiring temperament naturally, and who
may become so engrossed in study or productive work that they take
little share in the society of either sex, so that individuals who may
be wholly innocent of any abuse of their sexual apparatus would suffer
a very grave injustice if they were classed among the masturbators. So
allow the author at this place to emphasize the importance of never
passing judgment on anybody in these matters on circumstantial
evidence.

While the damage that one may do to his system through the practice of
masturbation may not be very serious, in many cases that have come
under the author's observation in which the habit has reached extreme
limits, very serious, sometimes irretrievable damage has been done,
yet the encouraging feature of this whole matter is, that if the
adolescent youth, who is practicing this habit, is warned of its
danger and stops at once absolutely, nature comes to his rescue, and
gradually, step by step, but surely, rebuilds the whole fabric of his
virility, bringing back gradually the flush of perfect health into his
cheek, the light of perfect manhood into his eye and the tone of
perfect virility into his muscles.

This change can be wrought in from one to three years of absolute
continence. Nature, like a loving mother, heals the wounds of her
child with a kiss.

3. CONTINENCE.

Such frequent reference has been made above to continence in
antithesis to illicit intercourse and masturbation that little need be
said in addition to that which has preceded. The young man who holds
before his mental vision an ideal of the home he hopes some day to
establish--in which a pure wife reigns as queen, sovereign of his
life, and gently hovers over a brood of lusty boys and fair
girls--cannot for a moment consider as a sane solution of his sexual
problem, periodic visits to the house of ill fame or the periodic
lapse into illicit intercourse with clandestines; nor c