orpse on your hands. So you must respect
the eternal laws that direct the current of man's moral actions, the
principles of Ethics and Jurisprudence.

LECTURE V.

VENEREAL EXCESSES.

In the opening lecture of this course, I remarked to you, gentlemen,
that the scope of Medical Jurisprudence is much wider than that of
Medical Law. It embraces many subjects of which human laws take no
cognizance, and in particular such vicious actions as do not violate the
rights of others, but are injurious to those only who practise them.
They undermine the health and shorten the lives of the guilty parties,
and bring in their train diseases the most destructive and often the
most incurable. It is the physician's beneficent task to lessen the
weaknesses and sufferings of the body, and to prolong human life in
well-preserved vigor to a green old age. It is not the least important
part of his valuable services to provide for the sound and vigorous
propagation of the human race to future generations. Of this propagation
of our race, of the laws which govern it, and of the criminal abuses by
which these laws are violated, I am to treat in this present lecture. My
subject is "Venereal Excesses."

I. If a physician's purpose were only to make money, his task would then
be to multiply diseases and infirmities; he would then be as great a
curse to mankind as he is really intended to be a blessing; and an
immense blessing he will be to his fellow-men if he studies to remove
even the remote causes of diseases and untimely deaths. He can do so in
a variety of ways and not the least by providing against sexual excesses
and abuses. These are a copious fountain of ill to humanity. A host of
diseases, such as tuberculosis, diabetes, cardial and nervous
affections, epilepsy, hysteria, general debility, weaknesses of sight,
languor and general worthlessness, hypochondria, weakness and total loss
of reason, and, in married life, impotence and sterility are some of the
effects of venereal excesses. Any excitement of the sexual passion
before the body has received its full development is more or less
injurious to its welfare; and all excesses or unnatural indulgence of it
at any period of life is pregnant with deplorable consequences. Now,
such evil practices are too much overlooked by many physicians; yet it
is certain that thousands of patients might, by timely warning on these
matters, be saved from unspeakable mental and physical sufferings