Sexology

Front matter

Current Indorsements

Hon. Hartford P. Brown, of the Pennsylvania Legislature, and originator of the School House Flag Bill, says:

Doctor Walling's "Sexology" is a volume of rare value, and should be in the possession of home-builders everywhere.

Part I : Introduction.

SEXOLOGY

PART I.

Introduction.

We present this work with pardonable pride, believing it will be the means of saving many lives and a vast amount of suffering and needless unhappiness.

The importance and demand for a work of this character cannot be doubted. Its need has been announced upon the floor of the Senate Chamber; in resolutions adopted by Church Assemblies; in the Pulpit; in our Religious and Medical Journals; and the need of the knowledge it contains is evidenced by the newspapers, in their daily records of disagreements, separations, desertions, seductions, adultery, insanity, suicide, murder and death, the cause of which in almost every case is admitted by all authorities and shown by the Records of our Courts to be ignorance of the Laws of Nature, of self and of sex.

It is to the unfortunate victims of these dreadful conditions that this book directly appeals. It is written to enlighten and benefit those who have recklessly plunged into marriage, who have assumed that relationship at once 80 holy and so intricate, where knowledge is essential, yet substituted by ignorance; marriage, whose only incentive is to get "a home" or secure a "partner." It is this "home" and this "partner" that we desire to reach, as well as to enlighten those who mentally and physically are capable of the functions of wedlock, but who for lack of knowledge suffer in silence.

In attempting to map out the rights and wrongs of the relations that exist between human beings, and which govern their life, health, intellect, love, power, happiness, usefulness and honor, we cannot avoid a feeling of responsibility, a desire and absolute determination to record nothing without careful investigation and due consideration — and yet an equal desire to hold back nothing that can give them a proper understanding of themselves.

It is far from our object to profane with open publicity the secrecy of Holy Matrimony; yet within this Holy Matrimonial state there exists a deplorable condition of sexual incompatibility, a frightful undercurrent of unhappiness; a feeling of wrong and outrage, which although in many cases not admitted—even to one's self—yet smoulders on until it bursts forth into the flame of some one of the crimes referred to.

We cannot say that this imperfect state of affairs is with the minority—nay! it exists, to a greater or less degree, with the vast majority!

A true and happy marriage, wherein we see the husband's and the wife's love for each other increase from day to day, where they grow to even strongly resemble one another—where the offspring is blessed by a healthy body and mind; where true and congenial wedlock exists; where sorrow and poverty only more strongly rivet the ties that bind them—this—this state of married happiness, which should and could be enjoyed by nearly all, is unfortunately the exception and not the rule.

It is not to those, who have either by study or natural perfection and wisdom, entrenched themselves within those all-powerful walls of true love and happiness that this book is written; except to furnish them with such knowledge as will enable them to instruct in a proper manner, and at a proper time their children, who otherwise would not, though the picture and example is constantly before them, know how and why such happiness is obtained and preserved.

It is for the rank and file of our fellow human beings that this book is mainly written. Its message is to those who have little or no conception of the duty due and owing between husband and wife. To those who are the victims of misadvised friends; the victims of the glaring advertisements of Quacks, that fill our daily papers, even polluting our religious journals, preying upon the minds and souls of our young men and women, with their endless list of symptoms, until the average youth and maiden are well nigh hypochondriacs, believing as they do (though they know not why) that they are the victims of some disease (though they know not what) which makes them unfit for marriage.

To them we give the gems of knowledge gleaned from the entire field of standard literature and from the documentary evidence of eminent European and American men and women Physicians, Professors, Lawyers, Preachers and other brilliant minds, whose far sight led them to the investigation of a subject which means the life and honor of our Nation—the health and happiness of our people.

Remember, then, that this work is not based upon medical evidence alone, nor is it in any sense a "Medical Treatise," as experience has shown that knowledge, not medicine, is needed. Therefore, in addition to the combined contributions of our Physicians, it embodies the concentrated wisdom and experience of every age and country, and does not rely upon the mere unsupported opinion of any one man, however great his genius.

Those who would accuse us of exaggeration will accuse us of extreme moderation if they will but consult the recognized authorities, from the first fathers of medicine to the most eminent scientists of our present time, and which, for the benefit of Physicians and those who desire further research, we give herewith in addition to those given throughout the book, sufficient references to standard works as will open up to them a field of study unlimited and without bounds:

Hippocrates (De Morbis, lib. ii, c. 49); Areteus (De Sign's et caus. dius. morb. lib. ii, c. 6); Lomnius (Comment de Sanit, tuend, p. m., 37); Boerhaave (Instit., p. 776); Hoffman (Consult); Ludwig (Instit. physiol.); Kloekh of (De Morb. anim. ab. infir. med. cereb.); Levis (A Practical Essay upon Tabes Dorsalis); M. Legoure (Histoire Morale des Femmes); Harbinger (On Health); Ellis (Psychology of Sex, ii); C. K. Mills (American Text Book, Diseases of Children); Garrigues (American Text Book); Palmer (American Text Book of Obs., '95); Lusk (Management of Preg'y.); Hirst (American Sys. Obs., '89); Galabin (Manual M'dw'f'y., '86); Gardin (Cyclopedia Obs. and Gym., '89); Sexual Hygiene (Clinic Pub. Co.); Brown on Divorce, Manual of Legal Medicine (Herold).

Above all, let it be remembered that we have not written to please. Had such been the ambition, the Author would have selected a widely different class of subjects. We have written to instruct, and we assure our readers that to heed our instructions is their only route to happiness. What greater service could we hope to render our fellow-creatures, than to declare to them the revelations of science in language deprived of ambiguity and cleared of the mists of technology?

Those who shall seek in our pages the gratification of a libidinous curiosity, will be disappointed, but, better still, they will be scared! Their terror will prove eminently salutary, for, in describing the evils of sexual excesses and unnatural practices, we point with the finger of authority which they dare not despise, at the deplorable consequences involved—consequences which none may escape. Indeed, in the whole range of science, there is nothing more inevitable than the dangers we have described.

If you will, suppose that by some chance, a school-girl should embrace stolen opportunities for its inspection. We ask. What harm? We are perfectly sure that the very best treatment of young persons suspected of secret bad habits, would be the leaving of this book in their way; and a young girl who can bring herself to read it, after discovering the subjects upon which it treats, needs to read it, and her parents may wink at her "indiscretion."

We believe our work will prove to be a service to all, both young and old, married or single, who will take the trouble to "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it. Should it teach but one man how a wife should be "initiated," and in consequence, should it rescue but one woman from the sad fate which otherwise awaits her; should it snatch but one boy from the dreadful vortex into which he else had plunged, or save one girl from moral and physical ruin, it will not have been written in vain.

That it may do this for many thousands is the sincere hope and prayer of

The Author.

Part II : Boys and Young Men, Their Education and Training.

PART II.

Boys and Young Men, Their Education and Training.

The evils and dangers of the present system of educating and bringing up the boys of our country are too obvious to require minute description; and yet, startling as are the facts, the remedy is strangely obscure to even the very best thinkers of our time, Irreligion and infidelity are progressing pari passu with the advance guards of immorality and crime, and all are fostered, if not engendered, by the materialistic system of instruction, and the consequent wretched training at home and on the play-ground. The entire absence of all religious instruction from the school-room, which has resulted from the utter impossibility of harmonizing the multiform creeds, and the growing fallacy of "refraining from prejudicing the minds of our children in favor of any particular system of theology until they are able to think and choose for themselves," are fast bearing fruit in a generation of infidels, and we are becoming worse even than the pagans of old, who had, at least, their positive sciences of philosophy, and their religion such as it was, to oppose which was a criminal offense. To those who would dispute this somewhat horrible assertion, the author would point to the published statistics of church attendance, from which it appears that of the entire population but a very small proportion are habitual church-goers. Deducting from these again those who attend church simply as a matter of fashion, or from other than religious motives, and there remains a minimum almost too small to be considered, abundantly sustaining our charge. The disintegration of the prevalent forms of religious belief, the rapid multiplication of sects, the increase in the ranks of intellectual skeptics, the fashionable detractions from, and perversions of, the Holy Scriptures, acting with the influences already mentioned, may well cause alarm.

The boy of the present generation has more practical knowledge of sexual instinct at the age of fifteen than, under proper training, he should be entitled to at the time of his marriage; and the boy of eleven or twelve boastfully announces to his companions the evidences of his approaching virility. Nourished by languishing glances and fanned by more intimate association on the journey to and from school, fed by stolen interviews and openly arranged festivities, stimulated by the prurient gossip of the news-paper and the flash novel, the gallant of twelve years is the libertine of fourteen. That this picture is not overdrawn every experienced physician will bear witness. Revelations are rare; instances of detection are extremely infrequent; so liberal are the opportunities afforded, and so blind are those whose duty it should be to guard. We boldly proclaim that the roues among boys outnumber the onanists by thousands, and that, destructive and revolting as is the latter vice, it is even more tolerable to contemplate than the other. The one, if persevered in, must reveal itself; the other keeps secret its hidden transactions. The one wrecks body and mind; the other grows and fattens to invest the subtlest of demons. The writer could engage to select the onanists of a school by a walk among the pupils; he could not promise so much for the young Lotharios. Indeed, if he could, and it were to be made a cause of expulsion, he fears there would be but a slender attendance in any school thus vised. Onanism, though called the solitary vice, is essentially gregarious in its origin. It is, indeed, by unrestrained intercourse with each other that boys are taught and encouraged to pursue this destructive practice. From false notions of delicacy, with a prudery as astonishing as it is criminal, the parents and guardians of boys refrain from all allusion to the subject, while in their hearts they must realize the imminence of the danger. Ready and willing to acknowledge it in the abstract, they seem to feel, and certainly they act, as though some special immunity were granted to their own proteges. Thus it happens that a boy contracts a habit, which, discovered too late, is well-nigh unconquerable in its thraldom, as it is formidable in its sad results, and which a few earnest, timely words would have surely prevented.

We charge then that the present system of education, by its faults of omission and commission, is directly responsible, not, it is true, for the bare existence, but for the enormous prevalence of vices and crimes which we here deplore, and we call upon the civil authorities to so modify the obnoxious arrangements of our schools, and upon parents and guardians to so instruct and govern their charges, that the evils may be suppressed if not extinguished. By the former this has been measurably effected in isolation of the sexes; by the latter, it may be, in encouraging the confidence and preparing the minds of boys for the great physiological crisis and its consequent dangers, whose advent they can easily and surely discern. In many instances the requisite instruction and counsel may be best imparted by the family physician, who can be consulted for the purpose; and there is no reputable physician who will not undertake the task with both prudence and alacrity, while from such a source the words have an importance and authority which few parents can command. The boy's intercourse with his fellows and with servants should be closely watched and always suspected. Many, alas! have received their first lessons in immorality or crime from the hostler or the cook, while a single night with a strange bed-fellow may initiate a boy in mysteries to which he had else remained a stranger. This last danger is greatly increased if the casual room-mate be by a few years his senior; for the power of mischief possessed by the older boy is increased in proportion to his size, and, alas! his experience. If a boy be an onanist he is sure to corrupt the smaller boys of his acquaintance whenever a safe opportunity presents itself, and thus children of six and twelve fall victims of those of twelve and eighteen.

At the age of six, states a physician in describing his own case, he was allowed to attend an evening party with his sister, many years his senior, for the purpose of taking part in some tableaux. A violent storm compelled several to pass the night with our entertainers and he occupied the same bed with a young gentleman of seventeen. On that occasion a lesson of vice was imparted, whose import was then unknown, but whose impression was indelible.

Another case, of a writer who states : At the age of eight he was lodged, at a watering place, in the same room with three girls, respectively ten, twelve, and fourteen years of age. The elder of these little misses succeeded effectually, during the few weeks' association, in inducting her companions into the science of reproduction, while the male member of the quartet was aptly used in illustration of the subject. The matronly dignity with which this lady now chaperones her young daughters in the most fashionable circles of one of our most fashionable cities, does not, he says, in the least diminish the feelings of hostility with which he, as one of her pupils regards her, and which the publication of this anecdote is the first opportunity afforded him to gratify. His secrecy during his involuntary pupilage, was not the result of an innate sense of wrong or shame, but was induced solely by the subtle representations of his seductress.

The custom of permitting children of different sexes to sleep in the same bed, or in the same room, is surprisingly common in this country, even where the excuse of poverty is wanting. The mere matter of convenience, or of innocent solicitation is often deemed sufficient to warrant a practice which can have but disastrous results, if nothing more comes of it than undue familiarity with the differences of organization. It is astonishing what small credit we give these little people for powers of observation and comparison, while the least intimation of the possession of them, by the wondering query of word or look, is frowned down or rudely checked, with no sufficient explanation of its impropriety. Instances are by no means rare, of girls sleeping with their younger brothers long after womanhood, and the fashion is to retort upon those who remonstrate with the parent, "Evil to him that evil thinks." It is a truth, proven by the experience of ages, that separation of the sexes should begin early, at least at four or five years, for the impressions of early childhood are the most ineradicable of life. Concupiscence, though the strongest and most injurious, is far from being the only passion needlessly and wrongfully developed in boys; those of cupidity, extravagance, dishonesty, and faithlessness are notable. "Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined," is a homely adage, inclosing a deal of Gospel truth, which it is nowadays the fashion to ignore almost as completely as Solomon's aphorism, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." With every allowance for the vast differences in temperament and disposition, we believe the statement axiomatic, that parents are strictly responsible, before God, for the confirmed vices of their children. The punishment meted out to young offenders for drunkenness, stealing, and the like, might too often be more advantageously inflicted upon the really guilty parties, the neglectful parents; and the secret of this truism is precisely the fact that the proclivities of the individual are developed very early. Thus a boy in whom lying seems a part of his very nature is morally certain, if every inch of ground be not vigorously contested, and the habit early eradicated, to become an adult knave. The writer knows of a case of two brothers in whom the opposite qualities of unimpeachable veracity and utter mendacity were fully apparent as early as the fourth and sixth years, yet, by indomitable care and patience, they are now, at the ages of ten and twelve, equally models of irreproachable honor. Innumerable remonstrances, whippings, and privations were vainly tried upon the little reprobate, until a plaster covering the mouth, and duly perforated to admit of respiration (but not of falsehoods), proved specific in a very few applications; so a habit which else had ruined the man was easily uprooted in the boy. A placard announcing "thief," not exhibited beyond the nursery, may do as much for one who manifests an early tendency to kleptomania. The vices of cupidity and extravagance may be early cured by opposite lessons, and great patience and ceaseless observation are required to accomplish a radical cure in either case, but, nevertheless, it can and should be done. Many an avaricious monster may thank his doting parents for the qualities which render him odious, and which were ineradicably fixed upon him in childhood by encouragement of his miscalled "cuteness," while the ruined spendthrift may live to curse the "fond parental ass" for his undue indulgence of mere childish lavishness. Not long since we were quietly examining a little patient, who, not relishing the process, struck us in the face. The mother took the matter as an excellent joke; not so the author, who indulged in the unpleasant reflection that the germ of a possible murderer was being carefully nourished in that fashionable "south front." These fits of rage on the part of little boys, are often foolishly encouraged, or at least quietly regarded as "marks of spirit" and very "comical." So they are in babies; they are terrible in men.

Most vices are only distorted virtues, and the very elements we have so much occasion to dread, are, when properly directed, so many sources of excellence. Positive qualities are of slow growth, and, whether good or evil, they invariably date back to the nursery. Crime, then, may be restricted within very narrow limits, and by proper management, may be banished from good society and monopolized by those who, like Topsy, "only growed."

It will be readily perceived, from what has been already said, that the transition of Young America from boy to man is too brief to be separately considered. The habits acquired at school are perfected in the university or the counting-room. For good or for evil they go on ripening in these arenas, and bear fruit in the hosts of skeptics, infidels, and libertines now crowding our land.

Part III : Girls and Young Women, Their Education and Training.

PART III.

Girls and Young Women, Their Education and Training.

Education, considered in its largest sense, has the mission of rendering the youth of both sexes beautiful, healthful, strong, intelligent and honest. Thus it comprehends such physical and moral training as shall most surely conduce to these objects. We have but to glance around us at the dwarfed, miserable, sickly specimens of feminine humanity, which really constitute the rule rather than the exception, to observe at once how far short of the attainment of these ends is our system as actually conducted. The very name of youth should imply beauty, strength, vivacity, and integrity. We have said sufficient elsewhere to show that these attributes in no way pertain to our American youth as a class. We propose briefly, in this connection, to analyze somewhat philosophically, the errors in practice which have conduced to these disasters. It is conceded on all sides that the race is unmistakably deteriorating. With some it is the fashion to charge this upon the advance of centuries, and to say that as the age of the race increases deterioration advances. If this were true of the human family, it ought also to be true of the brute creation; for the same laws which govern the physical condition of the one, are likewise applicable to that of the other. Sheep, cattle, and horses, however, when placed in conditions favorable to their development, increase in fecundity, in size, in strength, and in beauty. It cannot be otherwise with man. But the mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body), is the desideratum. The soul participates strongly in the vices of the body. Rosseau says, very truly, "The more feeble the body the more it commands; the stronger the body the more it obeys." Among savages and beasts, and even the lowest classes in civilized communities, the feeble or imperfect die before reproducing themselves, so the race is perpetuated only by the strong and healthy ; but with civilized nations, science preserves the existence of debilitated creatures, who marry and reproduce their similars. The art of medicine has altogether failed in that noble duty of bringing the feeble to the condition of the strong; in other words, of eradicating hereditary vices of constitution. The child who inherits the consumption of his father, surrounded by dangers which menace the lungs, is placed in conditions of temperature, air and exercise which are most directly calculated to develop his inherent malady. The son of the madman, in the place of enforced indolence, is daily crowded with excessive study. He who inherits intestinal disease, is delivered to a government of chance or caprice. Neither temperament, constitution, weakness, nor diseased proclivities of children are in any way studied or considered, either in families, or in public and private establishments. These facts apply with still greater force to the ignorant and poorer classes, but happily, with them, misery kills off the weaker, those who are not sufficiently strong to resist it. So we hear much of the health and vigor of the children of the poor. They are dying in hordes! but the blame should not rest wholly upon science. Little thought or attention is paid except for those who are actually and palpably ill ; and advice is unsought, and even despised, for those who are apparently well. When people learn to avail themselves of the means of preven- tion, then they may hope to see the race of pigmies give place to a generation of giants. Based upon an exact knowledge of the constitution of the parents, and foreseeing the dangers which will menace the child, proper physical education will indicate, in due time, the surest means of avoiding them. The varied nutrition, the changes of air, and water, and places, which our wonderful system of rail-roads puts at our disposal; the varied and skillful systems of exercise, the use of all these will enable us to regulate and to change the most deplorable hereditary taints. It is not claimed that vices of constitution can be thus entirely abolished, or that the puny children may be thus brought to the standard of the most robust, but we do claim that natural defects may be so far remedied that a condition of well-being and comparative comfort, as well as a wonderful prolongation of life, may be secured, and that, in a very few generations, these taints may be eradicated, and the race vastly improved.

With few exceptions, we are not born with the diseases with which our parents are afflicted, but only with a tendency to those diseases. These usually declare themselves at about the age at which our parents were first attacked. This affords time and ample warning to pursue such a judicious system of physical and mental training as shall almost certainly prevent them. For example: a child whose father died of consumption at the age of thirty-five, knows that whatever may be his physical conformation, he is at least liable to fall a victim to that disease between thirty and forty. Now, he has twenty or thirty years of preparation to avert a threatened calamity. Who can doubt what the result of a proper effort must be?

The "weakly systems" are not the only ones who suffer from the prevailing notions of education; the most robust and healthy organizations are debilitated and destroyed. At an age when the organism demands air, and space, and sun, and motion, when the senses are dominated by the inherent necessity for exterior action, we behold children, girls especially, condemned to inaction, excluded from light and air in the paternal mansion, carefully secluded from both through tender regard, if not for the fine furniture, at least for the complexion and the clothing of the poor creatures who are thus made to violate the most obvious dictates of nature. Entire days are passed without beholding a ray of sunlight or breathing the external air. In many private and public schools it would really seem as though everything were expressly devised to weaken the body and to enervate the moral senses. Pupils are constrained to breathe the vitiated atmosphere of the study hall during many hours of each day, subjected the while to an amount of mental application to which even adult natures would succumb. In most of these establishments the provisions for physical development are wretchedly defective.

We make these reflections here because the improvement of the race depends so largely upon the physical improvement of the mothers of the race, and because it is the fashion to deprive girls of physical advantages to even a greater extent than boys. The girls of our country who have the misfortune to be bred in city life, whether in fashionable or semi-fashionable circles, are truly objects of commiseration. In this fast age the very methods most calculated to force a premature womanhood, are those universally adopted, and both at home and at school the poor girl sees and hears so much that is positively poisonous that our only wonder should be, not that our women are proverbially sickly and delicate, but that we have any women at all deserving the sacred name.

Much that has been said in the chapter devoted to boys, is equally true of girls, but with the latter a system of training is pursued, which not only forces a precocious sexual development, but wholly destroys that maidenly freshness and innocence which, at the pace we are going, will soon cease to have real examples, and will be ranked only with the dreamy visions of poets and romancers.

We purpose to deal plainly with a few salient facts within the knowledge and observation of all, and to connect these facts with their legitimate consequences in the prevalence of evils so universally deplored. In behalf of girls, even more strongly than of boys, we would plead for early isolation of the sexes—not that complete separation which would exclude children of the same family from innocent and legitimate participation in childish sports and pleasures, but isolation in sleeping, and dressing, and all those little matters which expose the differences of conformation, and are capable of suggesting ideas of curiosity or comparison. "With the opulent there is no sort of difficulty in effecting this to perfection, and with nearly all classes it can be carried to the fullest extent necessary for the purpose. There is required only a full appreciation of its necessity and binding obligation. This kind of isolation should begin as early as the fourth or fifth year, and rigid supervision, with lessons in propriety, should be maintained thereafter. Erotic propensities are often very early manifested, and, if as early detected, can be easily controlled.

Love of dress is less an innate passion with girls than it is one so early implanted by pernicious example and precept as to seem congenital. It is, moreover, fraught with the greatest dangers, not only to the health of mind and body, but even to chastity itself. The statistics of prostitution abundantly prove the correctness of this assertion, and show the ruinous vanity of mothers who inoculate their daughters with this ridiculous rivalry almost with the first words they are taught to lisp. Whatever pride may actuate a mother to decorate her little daughters with the flummery of fashion, should be carefully explained to them as the requirement of neatness and propriety. Surely, a little harmless equivocation here were necessary for those who will engage in this preposterous contest. It were far more honest, however, as well as simply decent, to limit the outward adornment of girls entirely to the requirements of comfort and scrupulous neatness.