A writer of some note, whose work on this and kindred subjects has had quite an extensive circulation, advocates with great emphasis the theory that … - John Harvey Kellogg

IF illicit commerce of the sexes is a heinous sin, self-pollution, or masturbation, is a crime doubly abominable. As a sin against nature, it has no parallel except in sodomy (see Gen. 19: 5, Judges 19:22). It is the most dangerous of all sexual abuses, because the most extensively practiced. The vice consists of any excitement of the genital organs produced otherwise than in the normal way. It is known by the terms, self-pollution, self-abuse, masturbation, onanism, manusupration, voluntary pollution, solitary or secret vice, and other names sufficiently explanatory. The vice is the more extensive because there are no bounds to its indulgence. Its frequent repetition fastens it upon the victim with a fascination almost irresistible. It may be begun in earliest infancy, and may continue through life. Even though no warning may have been given, the transgressor seems to know, instinctively, that he is committing a great wrong, for he carefully hides his practice from observation. In solitude he pollutes himself and with his own hand blights all his prospects for both this world and the next. Even after being solemnly warned, he will often continue this worse than beastly practice, deliberately forfeiting his right to health and happiness for a moment's mad sensuality.

A still greater control is exerted over the thoughts during seep by their character during hours of wakefulness. By controlling the mind during entire consciousness, it will also be controlled during unconsciousness or semi-consciousness. Dr. Acton makes the following very appropriate remarks of this subject:- “Patients will tell you that they ‘’cannot’’ control their dreams. This is not true. Those who have studied the connection between thoughts during waking hours and dreams during sleep know that they are loosely connected. The “character” is the same sleeping or waking. It is not surprising that, if a man has allowed his thoughts during the day to rest upon libidinous subjects, he should find his mind at night full of lascivious dreams--the one is a consequence of the other, and the nocturnal pollution is natural consequence, particularly when diurnal indulgence has produced an irritability of the generative organs. A will which in our waking hours we have not exercised in repressing sexual desires, will not, when we fall asleep, preserve us from carrying the sleeping echo of our waking thought father then we dared to do in the day-time.”

Those lascivious “day-dreams” and amorous reveries, in which young people-and especially the idle and voluptuous, and the sedentary and the nervous-are exceedingly apt to indulge, are often the sources of general debility, effeminacy, disordered functions, premature disease, and even premature death, without the actual exercise of the genital organs! Indeed, this unchastity of thought-this adultery of the mind-is the beginning of immeasurable evil to the human family.