or sensual. They go for clean fun,
gymnastics, magicians, and other legitimate amusements. The unwholesome
features are thrust upon them.

As a result of these influences on the impressionable mind of the growing
boy, he comes to regard sex as low and vile instead of sacred. He acquires
a vulgar vocabulary which he necessarily uses in his thinking and
sometimes in his conversation. The silence and evasive answers of adults
withhold healthful knowledge and increase curiosity. Curiosity often
leads to investigation, which often results disastrously.

The specific evil results are of three kinds: (1) masturbation; (2)
needless mental suffering due largely to ignorance; (3) illicit
intercourse.

Masturbation is prevalent among boys. Two hundred and thirty-two replies
were received to a question asked college students regarding their
severest temptations of school days. Of these, one hundred and thirty-two
said that masturbation had been one of their severest temptations and one
hundred and thirty-one said they had yielded to it.[42] Similar inquiries
have brought similar results. The sum total of vitality lost to humanity
by this practice is great.

There is much needless mental suffering among boys and young men due to
ignorance and false ideas advanced by quacks. Groundless fear, brooding
anxiety, and despair sometimes start before adolescence and often last
into the twenties. Physical peculiarities of no consequence sometimes
cause boys to fear that they are abnormal. Unaware of the fact that
spontaneous nocturnal emissions are to be expected, many suffer mental
anguish. According to one writer, a single New York dealer had 3,000,000
"confidential" letters, "written to advertising medical companies and
doctors, mostly by youth with their heart's blood."[43] Large sums of
money are obtained by quacks everywhere for treating normal conditions.
Many men have applied to the Advisory Department of the Oregon State Board
of Health after years of worry. Although those who apply are no longer
boys, most of their troubles began in boyhood. A large proportion of the
suffering could have been avoided by simple instruction in sexual hygiene.

Social vice often occurs in adolescent boyhood, both as a direct result of
unmastered passion and as an indirect result of individual vice. In some
cases, the habits a boy forms in his early 'teens make him a subject of
venereal disease in later life. A doctor writes, "I am aware that it i