bits of these females, generally. Insanity is more
frequently developed than in males. Spinal irritation is so frequent
a result that a recent surgical author has said that "spinal irritation
in girls and women is, in a majority of cases, due to self-abuse."[52]

[Footnote 52: Davis.]

A Common Cause of Hysteria.--This, too, is one of the most frequent
causes of hysteria, chorea, and epilepsy among young women, though not
often recognized.

A writer, quoted several times before in this work, remarks as
follows:--

"This is not a matter within the scope of general investigation; truth
is not to be expected from its _habitues_; parents are deceived
respecting it, believing rather what they wish than what they fear.
Even the physician can but suspect, till time develops more fully by
hysterias, epilepsies, spinal irritations, and a train of symptoms
unmistakable even if the finally extorted confession of the poor victim
did not render the matter clear. Marriage does, indeed, often arrest
this final catastrophe, and thus apparently shifts the responsibility
upon other shoulders, and to the 'injurious effects of early
marriages,' to the 'ills of maternity,' are ascribed the results of
previous personal abuse.

"For statistics and further information on this all-important subject,
we must refer the reader to the opinions of physicians who have the
charge of our retreats for the insane, lunatic asylums, and the like;
to the discriminating physicians of the families of the upper
classes--stimulated alike by food, drinks, scenes where ease is
predominant, where indolence is the habit and novel-reading is the
occupation--for further particulars on a subject here but barely
alluded to."[53]

[Footnote 53: Gardner.]

EFFECTS UPON OFFSPRING.

If sterility does not result, children are liable to be "delicate, puny,
decrepit, or subject to various congenital maladies, especially of the
nervous system, to idiocy from deficient development of the brain, to
hydrocephalus, to epilepsy, convulsions, palsy. The scrofulous
diathesis, tubercular and glandular maladies, diseases of the
vertebrae and of the joints, softening of the central portions of the
brain, and tuberculous formations in the membranes, palsy and
convulsions, chorea, inflammations of the membranes or substance of
the brain or spinal cord, and numerous other affections to which infants
and children are liable, very commonly result from the practice of
self-pollu