Various disease which cause local irritation and congestion of the reproductive organs are the causes of unchastity in both sexes, as previously expl… - John Harvey Kellogg

15. Easily frightened children are abundant among young masturbators, though all easily frightened persons are not vicious. It is certain, however, that the vice greatly exaggerates natural fear, and creates an unnatural apprehensiveness. The victim’s mind is constantly filled with vague forbodings of evil. He often looks behind him, looks into all the closets, peeps under the bed, an is consistently expressing fears of impending evil. Such movements are the result of a diseased imagination, and they may justly give rise to suspicion.

While it is true as a fact affirmed by constant observation that men have stronger passions than women, in general and that many men demand of their wives a degree of sexual indulgence which is the cause of serious injury to them, and even impossible for them to grant without doing themselves the greatest wrong, it is by no means proven either that these demands are imperative, that they are natural, or that they are not injurious to the man as well as the woman, much less beneficial to either. On the contrary, there is a great a weight of evidence as could be required that restraint, self-control, and moderation in the exercise of the sexual instinct is in the highest degree beneficial to man, as well as to woman, and necessary for his highest development.

It will be urged that these early destructions are not murders. Murder is an awful word. The act itself is a terrible crime. No wonder that its personal application should be studiously avoided ; the human being who would not shrink from such a charge would be unworthy of the name of human-a very brute. Nevertheless, it is necessary to look the plain facts squarely in the face, and shrink not from the decision of an enlightened conscience. We quote the following portions of an extract which we give in full elsewhere ; it is from the same distinguished authority* whom we have frequently quoted:- “There Is, in fact, no moment after conception when it can be said that the child has not life, and the crime of destroying human life is as heinous and as sure before the period of ‘quickening’ has been attained, as afterward. But you still defend your horrible deed by saying: ‘Well, if there be, as you say, this mere animal life, equivalent at the most to simple vitality, there is no mind, no soul destroyed, and therefore, there is no crime committed.’ Just so surely as one would destroy and root out of existence all the fowls in the world by destroying all the eggs in existence, so certain is it that you do by your act destroy the animal man in the egg and the soul which animates it. . . . Murder is always sinful, and murder is the willful destruction of a human being at any period of its existence, from its earliest germinal embryo to its final, simple, animal existence in aged decrepitude and complete mental imbecility.”