or the laws of
health.

"In a state of health sexual impressions should never affect a child's
mind or body. All its vital energy should be employed in constructing
the growing frame, in storing up proper external impressions and in
educating the brain to receive them." Unfortunately this state of health
is not always attained. Impressions may be exhibited in these organs at
a very early age either from inheritance, from improper handling or from
some morbid condition of the child that could show itself in no other
organ of the body and which, like morbid conditions in general, make
their appearance somewhere in the mind or body.

SEXUAL PRECOCITY.--Many parents who are most particular in all other
respects, as to the moral and physical training of their children,
imagine there is no need to pay any special attention to the genital
organs. This, however, is a grave mistake and needs our careful
consideration. As is well known, some children evince a sexual precocity
which may lead to very serious results. In these it often happens that
the sexual instinct arises long before puberty; such children, if males,
manifest an instinctive attraction towards the female sex which they
show by constantly spying after their nurses, chambermaids, etc.; by
seeking as much as possible to play with children of the opposite sex
and improperly toying with them. [C]"One case is so remarkable that an
abstract of it may be instructive: M. D----, between five and six years
of age, was one day in summer in the room of a dressmaker who lived in
the family; this girl thinking that she might put herself at ease before
such a child, threw herself on her bed, almost without clothing. The
little D---- had followed all her motions and regarded her figure with a
greedy eye. He approached her on the bed, as if to sleep, but soon
became so bold in his behavior that the girl, after having laughed at
him for some time was obliged to put him out of the room. This girl's
simple imprudence produced such an impression on the child that forty
years afterwards he had not forgotten a single circumstance connected
with it."

[C] Lallemand and Wilson, page 140.

Parents are remarkably careless on this point. They allow children to
play together for hours at a time without the surveillance of an older
person, provided only they are removed from any danger. It is sufficient
to merely draw attention to such a custom as every reflective mind can
easily draw th