Dress and Sensuality.-There are two ways in which fashionable dress leads to unchastity; viz, 1. By its extravagance; 2. By its abuse of the body. Ho… - John Harvey Kellogg

It is a wide-spread and deadly error, that only outward acts are harmful; that only outward acts are harmful; that only physical transgression of the laws of chastity will produce disease. We have seen all the effects of beastly abuse result from mental sin alone. I have traced serious affections and very great suffering to this cause. The cases may occur at any period of life. We meet with them frequently among such as are usually called or think themselves, continent young men. There are large classes of persons who seem to think that they may, without moral guilt, excite their own feelings or those of others by loose or libidinous conversation in society, provided such impure thoughts or acts are not followed by masturbation or fornication. I have almost daily to tell such persons that physically, and in a sanitary point of view, they are ruining their constitutions. There are young men who almost pass their lives in making carnal acquaintances in the street, but just stop short of seducing girls; there are others who haunt the lower classes of places of public amusement for the purpose of sexual excitement, and live, in fact, a thoroughly immoral life in all respects except actually going home with prostitutes. When these men come to me, laboring under the various forms of impotence, they are surprised at my suggesting to them the possibility of the impairment of their powers being dependent upon these previous vicious habits.”

Emission not Necessary to Health.-If it be argued that an occasional emission is necessary to relieve the overloaded seminal vesicles, we reply, the same argument has been used as an apology for unchastity ; but it is equally worthless in both instances. It might as well be argued the vomiting is a necessary physiological and healthful act, and should occur with regularity, because a person may so overload his stomach as to make the act necessary as a remedial measure. Vomiting is a diseased action, a pathological process, and is occasioned by the voluntary transgression of the individual. Hence, it is as unnecessary as gluttony, and must be wasteful of vitality, even though rendered necessary under some circumstances. So with emissions. If a person allows his mind to dwell upon unchaste subjects, indulges in erotic dreams, and riots in mental lasciviousness, he may render an emission almost necessary as a remedial effort. Nevertheless, he will suffer from the loss of the vital fluid just the same as though he had not, by his own consupiscence, rendered it in some degree necessary. And as it would have been infinitely better for him to have retained and digested food in his stomach instead of ejecting it-provided it were wholesome food-so it would have been better for him to have retained in his system the seminal fluid, which would have been disposed of by the system and probably utilized to very great advantage in the repair of certain of the tissues.

It has been authoritatively stated that there are, in our large cities, hundreds of young women who, being able to earn barely enough to buy food and fuel and pay the rent of a dismal attic, take the advice offered by their employers, “Get some gentleman friend to dress you for your company.” Others spend all their small earnings to keep themselves “respectably” dressed, and share the board and lodgings of some young “roué” as heartless as incontinent. Persons unaccustomed to city life, and thousands of people in the very heart of our great metropolis, have no conception of the frightful prevalence of this kind of prostitution. Young women go to our large cities as pure as snow. They find no lucrative employment. Daily contact with vice obtunds their first abhorrence of it. Gradually it becomes familiar. A fancies life of ease presents allurements to a hard-worked sewing girl. Fine clothes and comfortable lodgings increase the temptation. She yields, and barters her body for a home without the trouble of a marriage ceremony. Wealthy women could do more to cure the “social evil” by adopting plain attire than all the civil authorities by passing license laws or regulating ordinances. Have not Christian women a duty here? A few years ago, some Nashville ladies mad e slight move in the right direction, as indicated in the following paragraph; but we have not heard that their example has been followed:- “the lady member of the first Baptist Church, of Nashville, Tenn., have agreed that they will dispense with a ll finery on Sunday, wearing no jewels but consistency, and hereafter appear at church in plain calico dresses.” A more radical reform would have been an extension of the salutary measure to all other days of the week as well as Sunday; though we see no reason for restricting the material of clothing to calico, which might, indeed, be rather insufficient for some seasons of the year.