o be deplored.

12. THE EXTENT OF THE PRACTICE.--One cannot tell to what extent this vice
is practiced, except by observing its consequences, even among people who
fear to commit the slightest sin, to such a degree is the public conscience
perverted upon this point. Still, many husbands know that nature often
renders nugatory the most subtle calculations, and reconquers the rights
which they have striven to frustrate. No matter; they persevere none the
less, and by the force of habit they poison the most blissful moments of
life, with no surety of averting the result that they fear. So who knows if
the too often feeble and weakened infants are not the fruit of these in
themselves incomplete procreations, and disturbed by preoccupations foreign
to the natural act.

13. HEALTH OF WOMEN.--Furthermore, the moral relations existing between the
married couple undergo unfortunate changes; this affection, founded upon
reciprocal esteem, is little by little effaced by the repetition of an act
which pollutes the marriage bed. If the good harmony of families and the
reciprocal relations are seriously menaced by the invasion of these
detestable practices, the health of women, as we have already intimated, is
fearfully injured.

14. THE PRACTICE OF ABORTION.--Then we have the practice of abortion
reduced in modern times to a science, and almost to a distinct profession.
A large part of the business is carried on by the means of medicines
advertised in obscure but intelligible terms as embryo-destroyers or
preventives of conception. Every large city has its professional
abortionist. Many ordinary physicians destroy embryos to order, and the
skill to do this terrible deed has even descended among the common people.

15. SEXUAL EXHAUSTION.--Every sexual excitement is exhaustive in proportion
to its intensity and continuance. If a man sits by the side of a woman,
fondles and kisses her three or four hours, and allows his imagination to
run riot with sexual visions, he will be five times as much exhausted {412}
as he would by the act culminating in emission. It is the sexual excitement
more than the emission which exhausts. As shown in another part of this
work, thoughts of sexual intimacies, long continued, lead to the worst
effects. To a man, whose imagination is filled with erotic fancies the
emission comes as a merciful interruption to the burning, harassing and
wearing excitement which so constantly goads him.

16. THE DESIRE OF