biting the very morbid symptoms which Tissot and
his followers referred to masturbation; and I was quite unable to
convince myself that abstinence from masturbation secured any notable
advantage. Whilst I do not assert that the morbid phenomena which I
observed in these individuals arose in consequence of their refraining
from masturbation, I consider that there is no justification for the
converse assumption in the case of those who did masturbate. I believe
that many of those patients who never masturbated were the subjects of
congenital morbid predisposition, and that, as a direct consequence of
this fact in many of them, the sexual impulse was of minimum intensity
or developed exceptionally late; I consider, therefore, that the morbid
manifestations in the domain of the nervous system were dependent, not
upon the fact that they did not masturbate, but principally upon the
congenital morbid predisposition.

Whilst I thus reject the view that masturbation in children is generally
dangerous, this must not be regarded as implying that I consider the
practice altogether indifferent as far as its influence upon health is
concerned. In the child, as in the adult, there is danger in the fact
that the act is so easy that it is likely to be repeated very
frequently, and thus to become habitual. In addition, the masturbator is
apt to require strong physical and mental stimuli, and this increase of
the stimulus may become dangerous. A special danger of persistent
masturbation is to be found in the possibility that impotence may
result. The masturbator, being accustomed to stimulate his genital
organs by manipulations, and by various methods increasing in intensity
of stimulus, will often find subsequently that the normal stimuli,
acting in part in the form of the sensory processes in the genital
organs, and in part in the form of the normal psychical influences
proceeding from without, are no longer competent to induce the normal
sexual reactions (erection and ejaculation). This affects chiefly
members of the male sex, but in some instances the same is true also of
women. It is true that in women the sexual act is rather of a passive
character, erection not being in them essential as it is in the male;
but in the case of women also, long-continued masturbation, whether
practised in childhood or subsequently, may bring about so intimate a
dependence of sexual desire, ejaculation, and gratification, upon the
artificial stimuli, t