and bulwarks against love.' Their employment certainly
must produce a feeling of shame and disgust utterly destructive of the
true delight of pure hearts and refined sensibilities. They are
suggestive of licentiousness and the brothel, and their employment
degrades to bestiality the true feelings of manhood and the holy state
of matrimony. Neither do they give, except in a very limited degree,
the protection desired. Furthermore, they produce (as alleged by the
best modern French writers, who are more familiar with the effect of
their use than we are in the United States) certain physical lesions
from their irritating presence as foreign bodies, and also, from the
chemicals employed in their fabrication, and other effects inseparable
from their employment, ofttimes of a really serious nature.

"I will not further enlarge upon these instrumentalities. Sufficient
has been said to convince any one that to trifle with the grand functions
of our organism, to attempt to deceive and thwart nature in her highly
ordained prerogatives--no matter how simple seem to be the means
employed--is to incur a heavy responsibility and run a fearful risk.
It matters little whether a railroad train is thrown from the track
by a frozen drop of rain or a huge bowlder lying in the way, the result
is the same, the injuries as great. Moral degradation, physical
disability, premature exhaustion and decrepitude are the result of
these physical frauds, and force upon our conviction the adage, which
the history of every day confirms, that 'honesty is the best policy.'"

[Footnote 25: Dr. Gardner.]

Within the last ten years we have had under treatment many hundred cases
of ladies suffering from ailments of a character peculiar to the sex;
and in becoming acquainted with the history of individual cases we have,
in many instances, found that the real cause of the disease which had
sapped the vitality and undermined the constitution slowly but surely
until cheerful health and freshness had given place to suffering,
debility, and, in many cases, most deplorable melancholy, was the very
crime against nature mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. The effects
of these sins against nature are frequently not felt for years after
the cause has been at work, and even then are seldom attributed to the
true cause. In some instances we have known persons to suffer on for
many years without having once suspected that the cause of their
sufferings was a palpable v