permanent, and develop into permanent irritations and disorders. Leucorrhea has already been mentioned. Contact with the acrid, irritating internal secretions also causes soreness of the fingers at the root of the nails, and warts. Congestion and other diseases are other ultimate results of the habit; and these congestions to which it gives rise unduly hasten the advent of puberty. Any decided enlargement of the labia and clitoris in a young girl may be taken as a positive evidence of the existence of the habit of self-abuse. Sterility, and atrophy of the breasts—their deficient development—when the vice is begun before puberty, is another result.

PRURITIS AND FEMININE NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS

Pruritis (itching genitals), though not necessarily caused by self-abuse, may be one of its consequences. Continued congestion causes the genital parts to itch terribly. This itching increases until the desire to manipulate the genitals becomes irresistible. It will then be indulged in even in the presence of strangers, though the girl in question at other times may be exceptionally modest. Girls addicted to the vice also suffer from nocturnal emissions. The general effect of self-abuse is much the same in the case of a girl as in that of a boy, for leucorrhea is injurious in somewhat the same fashion as seminal loss. In the case of girls the greatest injury, however, is due to the nervous exhaustion which succeeds the unnatural excitement.

WHAT MOTHERS SHOULD DO FOR THEIR GIRLS

A healthy girl should be happy and comfortable in all respects. She will not be so, especially with regard to her sex problems, unless she can appeal to her mother as a friend and confidant. While keeping your girl's mind pure and healthy by precept and example, do not forget that the best way to protect her against evil influences and communications is to tell her the exact truth about sex facts, as they apply to her, just as the father should his boy. Keep your girl fully occupied and do not leave her sex education to the evil winds of chance.

Let sex knowledge take its place as a proper, necessary part of her general education. If your daughter feels she can at all times talk freely to you all will be well. Gratify her natural sex curiosity in a natural way. See that immediate medical attention is given inflammations, excoriations, itchings and swellings of her genital organs. Such conditions will lead her to rub and scratch these parts—never to be touched—for relief. If, as a result of the sensations experienced, masturbation results, yours is the sin.

CHAPTER V

SEX IN THE ADOLESCENT MALE
(FROM PUBERTY TO MATURITY)

Adolescence is the period when the boy is lost in the man. It is the time of life embraced between the ages of fourteen or sixteen and the age of twenty-five. Every boy, if properly trained, should reach this period in a state of good general health and spirits. Hitherto he has been led and guided. Now he must develop mental strength and will power himself to choose the good and refuse the evil in the sexual problems confronting him.

PUBERTY

According to climate puberty, the age when the human male becomes sexually perfect, varies from ten to fifteen years. In the United States puberty in the male usually occurs at the age of fourteen and a half years. In tropical climates it occurs at nine or ten, and in cold countries, such as Norway and Siberia, it may not take place until eighteen or nineteen. Vigorous physical exercise tends to delay puberty, anything exciting the emotions tends to hasten it. Stimulating foods, pepper, vinegar, mustard, spices, tea and coffee, excess meat nutriment hasten puberty. A cool, unstimulating vegetable and farinaceous diet may delay the development of the sexual system several months or a year.

THE SIGNS AND CHANGES OF PUBERTY

In the boy the signs of puberty are the growth of hair on the skin covering the pubes and in the armpits. Chest and arms broaden, the frame grows more angular, the masculine proportions more pronounced. The vocal cords grow longer and lower the pitch of the voice. Hair grows on chin, upper lip, cheeks, and often on the body surface.

THE SEXUAL MORAL LAW

The sexual moral law is the same for both sexes, and equally binding. It may be summed up as follows: “Your sexual urges, instincts and desires should never consciously injure an individual human being or mankind in general. They should be exercised to further the value and happiness of both.”

THE MALE ADOLESCENT AND CONTINENCE

The perfect carrying out of this general moral law implies continence on the part of the male adolescent until marriage. Continence is positive restraint under all circumstances. Strict continence is neither injurious to health, nor does it produce impotence. While self-denial is difficult, since the promptings of nature often seem imperious, it is not impossible. It is certain that no youth will suffer, physically, by remaining sexually pure. The demands which occur during adolescence are mainly abnormal, due to the excitements of an overstimulating diet, pornographic literature and art, and the temptations of impure association.

WHY YOUNG MEN GO WRONG

Foul thoughts, once they enter the mind, corrode it. The sensual glance, the bawdy laugh, the ribald jest, the smutty story, the obscene song may be met with on street corner, in the car, train, hotel lobby, lecture hall and workshop. Mental unchastity ends in physical unchastity. The habit common to most adolescent boys and young men of relating smutty stories, repeating foul jokes and making indecent allusions destroys respect for virtue. In addition there are such direct physical causes of undue adolescent sexual excitement as constipation and alcoholism, and such mental ones as nervous irritability.

To the constant discussion and speculation regarding sex and its mysteries by the adolescent young male, must be added the artificial idea that idle prattling on the subject is a sign of “manhood.” Thus many young men whose natural trend is in the direction of decency and right sexual living, “step out” or “go to see the girls,” as the phrase is, because they think that otherwise “they are not real men.” More subtle in its evil effect, yet somewhat less dangerous physically, perhaps, than the professional prostitute is the lure of the “hidden” prostitute, who carefully conceals her derelictions, and publicly wraps herself in a mantle of virtue.

PROSTITUTION

The training of the average male mind in impure language and thought during boyhood and adolescence, the cultivation of his animal at the expense of the moral nature, often leads the adolescent to seek satisfaction by frequenting the prostitute.

Prostitution, known as the “social evil,” is promiscuous unchastity for gain. It has existed in all civilized countries from earliest times. Prostitution abuses the instinct for reproduction, the basic element of sex, to offer certain women a livelihood which they prefer to other means. Love of excitement, inherited criminal propensities, indolence and abnormal sex appetite are first causes of prostitution. Difficulty in finding work, laborious and ill-paid work, harsh treatment of girls at home, indecent living among the poor, contact with demoralizing companions, loose literature and amusements are secondary causes. They all contribute to debauch male and female youth and lead it to form dangerous habits of vicious sensual indulgence.

Prostitution seems inseparable from human society in large