A fact published by Alibert is very analogous to the preceding. He states, that a young man, brought up in a boarding-house, contracted the habit of onanism in his childhood. Tissot’s book was put into his hands, which frightened, but did not entirely cure him. After reading it, however, he was more moderate, and indulged only at long intervals, and when he was excited by very violent desires. Hence, his temperament did not change; but he continued robust, and his moral faculties preserved their energy: but the frightful habit which he had contracted, prevented the development of any desire for the other sex. Even when thirty years old, he had never been excited by the sight of a female; and his feelings were called into action only by vain images, or by the phantoms of his depraved imagination. He had early studied drawing, which he had always pursued with ardor. The beautiful forms of men, in this beau-ideal of painters, which nature has never realized, affected him, and finally inspired him with an extraordinary emotion--a vague passion, for which he could not account. It is necessary, however, to remark, that this passion had no connexion with the tastes of sodomy, and that it could not be excited by the sight of any man. Such was his strange situation, when he came to ask my advice. He then presented, as I said before, no physical symptom of impotence. He was healthy and well-made, and nature had not been unkind to him; but he had so abused the use of her gifts, that it was difficult to restore to him their proper use. The patient was perfectly acquainted with his situation. “There is no effort,” said he, “that I am not willing to make, to free myself from my ignominious situation--to drive away from my thoughts the infamous images which haunt me. They have deprived me of the legitimate enjoyments procured by the union of the sexes--of the power possessed by the lowest animals of reproducing their species. I am dying of chagrin and shame.”