Page:A Treatise on the Diseases produced by Onanism, Masturbation, Self-pollution, and other excesses.djvu/18

 Rh what is their power in this respect? Can they do much injury? This is the question now to be examined.

The injury which the genital organs can do to the rest of the body when they are abused, is the natural consequence of the influence exercised when they are not abused! This injury is in a direct ratio with this influence; it is by this then that it must be measured. In fact, it is clear that if the different organs have in the ordinary state different degrees of power, they must, when they do injury, exercise it in different degrees. Let us then attempt to estimate the influence possessed by the genital organs. If it be demonstrated that when these organs are in a state of rest, of excitement, or in use, their influence on the other functions is considerable, some opinion may be formed as to what may be their influence when abused. It must be admitted that organs, which have a powerful effect on all parts of the body, which regulate all the others, which cannot feel, act, and perform their functions without the others taking part in what takes place in them, it must be admitted I say, that when such organs are made instruments of disorder, the bad consequences which follow may be very great.

The genital organs may be observed in three states; the first state is that of rest. They then merely live, present no special sensation and do not proceed to the act of venery. In the second state they become the seat, the focus of more or less vivid sensations, and which have for a special character to invite and to constrain with more or less power to the act of venery. In animals, this state is called rutting: in our species, it has no special name, except when existing to a very great degree, and then it constitutes a disease, termed Satyriasis or nymphomania: I shall call it the state of excitement. The third is that of action: it is the state in which the genital organs are, when they perform their special functions, when they accomplish the act of venery. They then do not simply live as in the first state, or feel as in the second; but they act, and afterward return to one of the