trong aversion to the normal
sexual act, and their married life is an unhappy one. Their husbands
often have to ask for a divorce. Fortunately, the habit is much less
widespread among girls than it is among boys. While about ninety per
cent. of all boys--nine out of every ten--masturbate more or less,
only about ten or at most twenty per cent. of girls are addicted to
this habit. But whatever the percentage may be, the habit is an
injurious one, and if you value your health, your beauty and proper
growth and mental development, you should not indulge in it. If you
are already indulging, if you are used to handling your genitals, if a
bad companion has initiated you into the habit, you should give it up.
And mothers should watch their children, guard them against developing
the habit, and do everything possible to cure them of it, if
prevention comes too late.

But while as you see I do not deny the evil effects of masturbation,
it is necessary to state that a great change has taken place in our
opinions on the subject, and it is but right that parents should know
of this change of opinion among the medical profession, particularly
among those who specialize in sexology.

=Wrong Behavior of Parents.= When parents make the "awful" discovery
that their child is fondling its genitals or is indulging in
masturbation, they feel as if a great calamity had befallen them.
They could not feel worse if they learned that the child was a thief
or a pyromaniac. Imbued with the medieval idea of the "sinfulness" of
the habit, as well as its injuriousness, they begin to scold the
child, to frighten it, to make it believe that it is doing something
terrible, that it has disgraced them and itself; and they try to
persuade it that, unless it stops immediately, the most direful
consequences are awaiting it. The results of this mode of procedure
are disastrous--much more so than is the masturbation itself.

Often the scolding and the exposure of the child are done in the
presence of others. This implants in the poor girl a sullen resentment
that only makes it more difficult for it to break the habit. When the
child is brought to the physician, you can see by its behavior, by its
downcast looks, by its sulkiness, by its attempt to refrain from
tears, and other signs, that it regards the physician in exactly the
same light as a youthful criminal regards the judge before whom he has
been brought for trial.

It is time, high time, that this