Thus it is evident that masturbation is always harmful, even if seldom performed, not so much on account of the loss of semen as on account of the deep impression on the central nervous system the brain and spinal cord. Almost always there is required an extraordinary intense ness of imagination out of all proportion to that experienced in the normal act, and so the character is injured, the victim becoming independent of the opposite sex and acquiring imperative mental concepts which may require to be reproduced, either psychically or in reality, if he is to be potent in the sexual act. "The dreams [images] which accompany the onanistic act are not realized in marriage, and to the great surprise of such patients their virility is well nigh extinguished".
The onanist may become both relatively and psychically impotent. By "relative impotence" is meant where a man is potent with special women who please his fancy, and impotent with others; thus a man may be frigid toward his wife, though quite potent with prostitutes.
In "psychical impotence" erection is prevented by inhibitory nerve influence from the brain; thus the consummation of the sexual act may be impossible in normal coitus among those men who have employed unnatural and degrading means for the production of orgasm. The devices employed by prostitutes may stimulate them to an unnatural degree of lustful passion, while they are impotent for marriage with pure women.
If the practice of masturbation be begun before full development is reached it prevents the evolution of the masculine type of mind and body, and if there is any hereditary strain of insanity it is the most favorable means of bringing it to evidence. Furthermore, almost all sexual perverts owe their anomalies of desire, inclination and fancy to the neurasthenia brought on by either their own or their ancestors' onanism. If a man is to have progeny with normal nervous systems, he must not by any manner of onanism abuse those very functions upon which all inheritance depends. The act of "withdrawal", or "conjugal onanism", is merely one form of mutual masturbation; and, if pregnancy by chance follows at some time, the child will certainly show evidences of abnormality of desire or conformation at some stage in its history.
Onanism in any form is thus most unfair to posterity far more so than can be appreciated by a layman who neglects to read works on heredity, criminality and allied medical topics; and no right-minded person can give any quarter to a vice so destructive of everything noble and dignified in human nature. Onanism is, of course, sometimes practised by the other sex, but not nearly to the same extent as by men. The disastrous results in them do not come about on account of the loss of any vital fluid though there is, at the height of orgasm, a secretion from the glands of Bartholin but the act exerts a powerful influence on their more susceptible nervous systems, producing hysteria, convulsions, menstrual disorders, aberrations in the domain of love, etc.
A cloud hangs over thousands of homes which shelter these enervated and neurasthenic individuals; only a few of the unfortunates seek medical advice, partly on account of shame, partly on account of their seeming happiness in their degraded sensuality. The majority a vast number are practising the vice in solitude; some reach the asylums; more fall victims to the wickedness of charlatans and advertising pariahs of the medical profession.
Treatment of Onanism. Every child has good and bad propensities, for health and disease, for morality or vice, which tend to unfold themselves at the different stages of life's drama. No family blood is so noble that it is not in a measure contaminated by the legacy of some ancestor, more or less remote, on either the paternal or maternal side; and a failure to recognize this is to admit one's self to be a fool or a demigod.
Well would it be if families looked forward to posterity, for which they are responsible, with the same pride with which they look backward to their ancestors, for whom they are not responsible! To regard any child as free from sensual danger is criminally negligent, while to recognize that all flesh is susceptible to contamination is the part of wisdom. We have daily evidence of the power of early suggestions over human instincts, and it would be well indeed if we should effectively appreciate the fact that mental and nervous diseases are especially liable to be transmitted to offspring, giving them neuropathic dispositions which are the most favorable foundations upon which to rear temples dedicated to vice.