as to be almost uncontrollable.
Indeed, he showed evidences of having been a gross debauchee, having
contracted venereal disease of the worst form. The general prevalence
of extravagant sexual excitement among the insane is a well-known fact.

Disease.--Various diseases which cause local irritation and congestion
of the reproductive organs are the causes of unchastity in both sexes,
as previously explained. It not unfrequently happens that by constantly
dwelling upon unchaste subjects until a condition of habitual
congestion of the sexual organs is produced, young women become seized
with a furor for libidinous commerce which nothing but the desired
object will appease, unless active remedial measures are adopted under
the direction of a skillful physician. This disease, known as
_nymphomania_, has been the occasion of the fall of many young women
of the better classes who have been bred in luxury and idleness, but
were never taught even the first lessons of purity or self-control.
Constipation, piles, worms, pruritis of the genitals, and some other
less common diseases of the urinary and genital systems, have been
causes of sexual excitement which has resulted in moral degradation.

Results of Licentiousness.--Apparently as a safeguard to virtue,
nature has appended to the sin of illicit sexual indulgence, as
penalties, the most loathsome, deadly, and incurable diseases known
to man. Some of these, as _gonorrhea_ and _chancroid_, are purely local
diseases; and though they occasion the transgressor a vast amount of
suffering, they may be cured and leave no trace of their presence except
in the conscience of the individual. Such a result, however, is by no
means the usual one. Most frequently, the injury done is more or less
permanent; sometimes it amounts to loss of life or serious mutilation,
as in cases we have seen. And one attack secures no immunity from
subsequent ones, as a new disease may be contracted upon every exposure.

By far the worst form of venereal disease is _syphilis_, a malady which
was formerly confounded with the two forms of disease mentioned, but
from which it is essentially different. At first, a very slight local
lesion, of no more consequence--except from its significance--than a
small boil, it rapidly infects the general system, poisoning the whole
body, and liable forever after to develop itself in any one or more
of its protean forms. The most loathsome sight upon which a human eye
can re