Application of the Law of Heredity.-A moment’s consideration of the physiology of heredity will disclose a sufficient reason why marriage should be d… - John Harvey Kellogg

We again quote from Dr. Acton some observations on the causes of this disorder,-for a grave disorder it is,-as follows:-
”I should specify “hereditary” predisposition as by no means the least common. . . . I believe that, as in body and mind, so also in the passions, the sins of the father are frequently visited on the children. No man or woman, I am sure, can have habitually indulged the sexual passions . . . without , at least, running the risk of finding that a disposition to follow a similar career has been inherited by the offspring. It is in this way only that we can explain the early and apparently almost irresistible propensity in generation after generation indulging similar habits and feelings.”

Instruments of Crime.—"The means through which abortions are effected are various. Sometimes it is through potent drugs, extensively advertised in newspapers claiming to be moral!—the advertisements so adroitly worded as to convey under a caution the precise information required of the liability of the drug to produce miscarriages. Sometimes the information is conveyed through secret circulars; but more commonly the deed is consummated by professed abortionists, who advertise themselves as such through innuendo, or through gaining this kind of repute by the frequent commission of the act. Not a very few women, deterred by lingering modesty or some sense of shame, attempt to execute it upon themselves, and then volunteer to instruct and encourage others to go and do likewise.”

Seminal emissions during sleep, usually accompanied by erotic dreams, are known as nocturnal pollutions or emissions, and are often called “spermatorrhea”, though there is some disagreement respecting the use of the latter term. Its most proper use is when applied to the entire group of symptoms which accompany involuntary seminal losses. The masturbator knows nothing of this disease so long as he continues his vile practice; but when he resolves to reform, and ceases to defile himself voluntarily, he is astonished and disgusted to find that the same filthy pollutions occur during his sleep without his voluntary participation. He now begins to see something of the ruin he had wrought. The same nightly loss continues, sometimes being repeated several times in a single night, to his infinite mortification and chagrin. He hopes the difficulty will subside of itself, but his hope is vain; unless treated, it will probably continue until the ruin which he voluntarily began is completed. <br This disease is the result of sexual excesses of any kind ; it is common in married men who had abused the marriage relation, when they are forced to temporary continence from any cause. It also occurs in those addicted to mental unchastity, though they may be physically continent. It is not probable that it would ever occur in a person who had been strictly continent and had not allowed his mind to dwell upon libidinous imaginations.