, and recommend innumerable miraculous remedies for these
often imaginary ills. Disorders and displacements of the uterus, ulcers
and cancer, gastralgia and gastric spasms, jaundice, pains in the nose,
are supposed in women to result from masturbation, as well as fluor
albus, nymphomania, &c. There is hardly a single organ of the body of
which disease and destruction have not by many been referred to
masturbation. In reality all this is false. It is more than doubtful
whether, as far as adults are concerned, occasional masturbation is
necessarily more harmful than normal sexual intercourse. According to my
own observations, the principal question is whether, in masturbation,
the bodily and mental stimuli employed to obtain sexual gratification
involve an especial shock to the nervous system--a greater shock than
results from normal sexual intercourse. More powerful shock may, indeed,
arise from the fact that the masturbatory act is apt to be repeated with
excessive frequency; and we have to admit that the chief danger of
masturbation lies in the fact that there is so grave a risk of sexual
excess. Owing, too, to the frequency of repetition, a need will very
readily arise for an increase in the stimulation, and this may apply
alike to the bodily stimuli and to the mental; and the stronger the
stimuli have to be, the more powerful also will be the general effect on
the nervous system. Thus the danger of shock to the nervous system from
masturbation will be seen to depend, first, upon the frequency with
which the act is repeated, and, secondly, upon the increasing intensity
of the stimulation. To this extent, therefore, masturbation may be more
dangerous than normal sexual intercourse; for this latter also, unless
it is to exert an unfavourable influence on the health, must not involve
mental and bodily stimulation of too powerful a kind. The good effects
of sexual intercourse depend upon its adequacy to the feelings, upon the
absence of any exhausting imaginative activity, and upon the absence
also of artificial bodily stimulation. But artificial stimuli and
exhausting imaginative activity are often associated with coitus also,
in cases in which the stimulus evoked by the personality of the sexual
partner is inadequate. Again, the powerful efforts which must as a rule
be made by persons who desire to repeat the act of intercourse several
times within a brief period, will have a similar effect upon the system
to the powerful