ome every obstacle opposed to its gratification.
Even while the intellect is still clear, and the sense of wrong keen,
the individual is a slave to this morbid impulse." Though the baneful
effects may not always affect the physical health of the victim, the
unfortunate practice very often engenders in boys and girls tendencies
which in later years lead to all the miseries conspicuous in houses of
debauch and infamy. But I need not dwell on consequences that belong to
pathology rather than to Jurisprudence.

V. Confining myself to my sphere of what is morally right or wrong, I
must be permitted to point out some gross violations of duty in some
members of your honored profession. There are physicians so reckless of
consequences and of principles alike as to advise at times the practice
of illicit sexual intercourse. Let them beware; they are doing a very
unwise and guilty act. Even if an immoral practice should save a human
life, it may not be indulged, on the principle which must be by this
time very familiar to your ears, that the end does not justify the
means. And besides no good result can be expected from what is contrary
to the law of nature and of nature's God. It was to punish sins of the
flesh that the Deluge was sent, which destroyed nearly the whole human
race. "All flesh had corrupted its way," says the sacred historian. It
was to punish unlawful indulgence of lust that Sodom and Gomorrha were
destroyed by fire from heaven; and the memory of these guilty cities is
preserved in the very name of Sodomy. Onan, as the same sacred volume
relates (Gen. xxxviii), performed the marriage act in a manner to
frustrate it of its legitimate purpose, the generation of children, and
the Lord slew him; and his sin is to this very day branded with his name
and called Onanism. And yet in Christian lands physicians are found who
will at times dare to recommend such practices to their patients.

On the occasions mentioned, God punished the guilty miraculously; but
that is not His usual way. He has so contrived our natures that sins
committed against His laws in our bodies ordinarily bring a part of
their punishment in their train, not the less certain because slower in
its operation than a miracle would be. All the venereal diseases are
there to act as earthy ministers of Heaven's justice, anticipating, and
often mercifully averting, the punishments of the future world.

VI. Besides private and secret tortures of body and mind