The shame that pursues them infinitely augments their misery. Such, it is true, is the dissoluteness in some places, that debauches with women are hardly looked upon there, but as matter of custom; the guilty of them make no mystery of it, and have no notion of their being the more contemptible for it: But where is the self-pollutor that dares avow his infamy? Ought not this necessity of wrapping himself up in the shades of secrecy, appear, in his own eyes, a proof of the criminality of this act? What numbers have not perished for their never having dared to reveal the cause of their evils? It appears a natural sentiment in several letters of the _Onania_, “_I would rather die than appear before you, after such a confession._” And indeed one cannot help being infinitely more ready to excuse a man, who being seduced by that inclination which Nature has ingraved on all hearts, and of which she makes use for the preservation of the species, is in no wrong but that of not respecting the boundaries set by the laws, and by health. He is one carried away by his passions, and who is wanting to himself. We are much more willing to absolve such an one, than him who in his sin violates all the laws of Nature, perverting all her sentiments, and disappoints all her ends. Sensible of how great a horror he must be in to society, if his crime was known, that idea alone must incessantly torment him. “It seems to me (says one of these criminals, a fragment of whose letter I have above quoted) as if every one could read in my face, the infamous cause of my ailments, and this idea renders company insupportable to me.” They fall into melancholy and despair; of which examples may have been seen in the fourth Section of this work, and they labor under all the evils that are brought on by a continuity of dejection or sadness, without having, and this is dreadful indeed for a criminal, any pretext of justification, any motive of comfort. And what are the effects of such a melancholy? A relaxation of the fibres, a lentor of the circulation, imperfection of the digestions, a deficient nutrition, obstructions occasioned by those shrinkings or contractions which most particularly seem the effect of sadness or melancholy: [“the strainers of the liver, says SENAC, close themselves, and the bilious overflow spreads over the whole body:”] spasms, convulsions, palsies, pains, increase of anguish _ad infinitum_; with all the train of evils consequential to these. It would be superfluous to enlarge more here on the dangers particular to self-pollution: they are but too real, and too self-evident: I proceed to the last part of this work, the methods of cure. ARTICLE III. CURATIVE INDICATION. SECTION IX. _Means of Cure proposed by other Physicians._