Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/155

150 thing for that man, and death stands close by whenever he forgets that he is no longer a youth. But if such will insist on being foolish, they should first get rid of the Embolism, and cleanse the body of all superfluities in the shape of phosphates, alkaline or acid; dissolve the clayey refuse, and evacuate it at once, else some time he may, in repeating youth-like follies, so shock and shatter his nervous system as to rob him of what few years remain to him on earth. This cleansing process is quite easy of accomplishment, as I have elsewhere stated, and while alive, am ready to instruct about. And this point suggests another closely connected with it:—

CXXX. Self-venery is more often a disease than it is a vice or crime. In either case the fault or habit is easily corrected, cured, and broken. All that is necessary is to exhibit medicines that will repress the amative appetite, and for awhile seal up the ducts. The waste being stopped, of course strength accumulates, for the rich, vital life is retained, assimilated, and the diseases of nerves, brain, and pelvic viscera disappear before the returning march of vigorous and triumphant health.

CXXXI. I cannot resist the desire to repeat my warning against the ruinous and suicidal policy of "conjugal frauds," that is, carrying the marriage to a point short of completion; but I have additional reasons. They are these: The shock to the nervous system is at least ten times greater in such cases than in the normal rite, or even its dreadful counterfeit; and I never saw a case where it had been a habit, that the man was not terribly injured, cerebrally as well as nervously. In all such cases Sanity was a diminishing ratio; and the brain injured almost beyond the power of reparation. The natural office must be naturally fulfilled, else the strain on the blood-vessels of the pelvis is so great, that premature impotence is sure; while that upon the cerebral arteries means insanity, paralysis, brain-softening, spinal disease, apoplexy, and death! Unless both realize what God intended, ruin, sooner or later, is the inevitable result. In cases where the sensuous equations are not alike, the more rapid nervous action can be retarded by an effort of the will, and God's design be accomplished, not frustrated. One-half the sudden deaths of middle-aged men result from this cause!