Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/98

 together, and of them constitutes the one grand unity, Man. It is entirely different from that which binds together persons of the same gender.

I announce another new truth when I affirm, as I do, that love is not only liable to, but often is, the subject of disease, and from the diseases thus originated spring nine-tenths of all human ailments.

Not a tenth part of civilized mankind are free of all effects of diseased passion and love, nor can perfect concord reign until all are so. The existing state of things can and ought to be remedied. If the love of a man be diseased, then there is not sufficient secreting or generating power to- produce the prostatic and seminal lymph, or to effect the chemico-magnetic change into nerve aura, that fluid fire which suffuses and rushes like a dream-tempest through our souls, bodies, and spirits, when in presence of one who evokes our love, — love in its very essence, purity, and power. If a woman's love-nature be diseased, then her whole better mature becomes morbidly changed, and a dreadful catalogue of suffering gradually fastens upon her, not the greatest of which are the innumerable weaknesses, cancers, nervousness, neuralgias, consumptions, and aches, which remorselessly drag her down to premature death, and whereupon unfeeling quacks wax rich. We cannot have great men till we have healthy mothers! It may not, perhaps, be amiss to briefly show the interrelations and mutual interdependence existing between our souls, our spirits, and our material bodies; I will therefore briefly do it. Over eight-tenths of the food we take consists of water and earthy, carbonaceous matter, most of which the body expels, while the fine essences enter the blood, are carried to the heart, and after being charged with additional oxygen and vitality in the lungs, where they are first forced, and afterwards pumped through the body, building it up and renewing every part through which it passes while swinging round its circle, — nervous, osseous, muscular, cerebral, pelvic, — and thus supplying mental, physical, emotional, and passional energy. Now suppose, as is really the case in eight out of ten ailing persons, that the lacteals, the mesenteric glands, and absorbents are broken down by over-use, tobacco, liquor; or that they are packed and clogged with earthy chalky matters, or slimed up with purulent mucus, — why, then