prone. She should never allow herself to read immoral stories
or books having in the slightest degree even, such a tendency;
theatrical plays with loose morals should also be avoided, and light,
silly novels are very pernicious to the imaginative mind of the young.
On the other hand useful reading stores the mind with high and noble
thoughts, whence spring good and useful deeds.

Unfortunately there are a variety of morbid conditions to which the
female is liable, so that sexual desires arise in spite of every effort
to keep aloof from them--even though there is not the slightest guilt in
mental or bodily transgression. These are owing to disordered conditions
of the sexual system, just as other disorderly desires arise, and are
often _inherited_--remember this all parents!--or they may be caused by
some morbific influences, as are other diseased conditions of the body.
Many a time have I had pure-minded young ladies apply to me for medical
aid in these matters, confessing that they had impure thoughts which
they knew were wrong, but of which they could not rid themselves. In
such cases there are physical symptoms of some kind that incite these
thoughts and feelings. The proper medical and hygienic treatment always
restores order in such functional derangements and the sexual
disturbances of the mind disappear. I have repeatedly cured nymphomania
by curing physical, or constitutional symptoms. In one case which came
under my care, nymphomania appeared in a married woman in the seventh
month of her pregnancy, and so fearfully did her mania rage that it
threw her into convulsions. Her physical and sensational symptoms led me
to the choice of the medicine that cured her, so that she was happily
delivered of a fine, healthy child at full term and no trace of the
disease has ever appeared since. Too often young women err and give way
to such feelings in resorting to _self-abuse_ for relief, or to the
caresses of the opposite sex, when they are ruined forever. It is never
safe to temporize or to tamper in this way with such sensations. Women
have heads and brains, as well as men, and rational faculties, too.
Every digression allowed, only paves the way for others, with less and
less resistance, and more and more ruinous results. Let a judicious
physician be consulted at once in all cases where a morbid condition
seems to excite immoral thoughts and sensations.

The effects of self-abuse upon woman, is as disastrous as mastur