Holst has remarked, that paralysis, that fatal symptom which so frequently attends all varieties of derangement, particularly monomania and dementia, is observed particularly in those insane who are addicted to onanism, and to other venereal excesses. This remark is confirmed by the two facts, that paralysis is much less common in females than in males, and that onanism produces mental alienation much less frequently in the former than in the latter. Thus, of 256 persons, admitted at the asylum at Charenton, during 1826-7-8, there were 44 men, in whom derangement could be attributed to libertinism or to onanism, while the same was true of only 3 women. Dr. Holst has shown that a similar proportion exists between the deranged of the two sexes in Norway. This relation, however, must not be considered as strictly correct; for females, being generally very reserved in their disclosures, onanism probably passes undiscovered in them more frequently than it does in men. It is well ascertained, that one twentieth of the deranged at Salpetrière, is composed of public women, who are for the most part affected with dementia and paralysis. Now, consider that masturbation is much more frequently a cause of derangement among the rich than among the poor. (_Dict. des Sc. Med._, vol. xvi., p. 179.) And remark, too, that at the Charenton asylum, where only persons in easy circumstances are received, there are proportionally more patients with paralysis than at Bicetre, the population of which is composed of men, belonging to the poorest classes of society. We have only to consider the phenomena which attend and usually follow the venereal act, to infer that the spinal marrow may frequently be affected in consequence of the abuse of that act. Agitation, the involuntary contractions of the muscles, particularly of those surrounding the pelvis, and the tetanic spasm with which they are affected at the time of the ejaculation of the semen; the cramps which frequently attend it; the general feeling of pain, fatigue, and debility, which follows it--a feeling which is always more perceptible in the loins and lower part of the body, than elsewhere, indicate the powerful impression made on the spinal marrow, and the part which it takes in all going on. This participation is also demonstrated by different pathological facts, and by the results of experiments which we shall mention, when treating of the influence exercised by affections of the spinal marrow, as the cause of venereal excesses.