c condition of the perineum, which, from
the varying temperatures in which it is at times plunged, produces more
beginnings for diseases in the future, during youth and our prime, as
well as it quite often causes the sudden ending of life in more advanced
periods. People who carefully observe the rule of keeping their heads
cool and their feet warm will stand with outspread legs and uplifted
coat-tails with their backs to a blazing grate, and then, going outside,
incontinently sit down on a stone or iron door-step, or, stepping into a
carriage or other vehicle, they sit down on a cold oil-cloth or leather
cushion, without the least knowledge of the harm or danger that they are
liable to incur. They little dream of the prostatic troubles that lie in
wait for the unwary sitter on cold places, ready to pounce upon him like
the treacherous Indian lying in ambush,--troubles that carry in their
train all the battalions of urethral, bladder, kidney disease and
derangments, and subsequent blood disorganization, which often begin in
a chilled perineum, and, in conjunction with the local disease that may
result, end in handing us over to Father Charon for ferriage across the
gloomy Styx long before our life's journey is half over. It is true,
neither the savage of Africa or America nor the nomads of Asia are
subject to any of these troubles; but with us, hampered with all the
benefits of the dress, diet, habits, and luxuries of civilization, and
with a civilized prostatic gland, it is quite otherwise. Herein, again,
comes that connection between religion, morality, and medicine, that
existed with so much benefit to mankind, but from which we of later days
have, in our greater wisdom, seen fit to separate; although,
inconsistently as it may seem, the present age has done more than any
previous epoch in practically demonstrating the intimate and inseparable
relation existing between the physical and moral nature of man. The
persistent priapism which oftentimes results from riding with a wet seat
and the inordinate morbid sensibility of the sexual organs that may
result from the same cause or from spinal irritation are not to be
allayed by any homily on morality or on the sanctifying attempts at
keeping the animal passions under subjection, any more than will prayers
or offerings to all the gods of Olympus restore the eunuchized, either
through foolish civilized dress and customs or through excessive
indulgence. We must mix medicine w