The most violent effect of this irritation in women is the _furor uterinus_, a kind of mania, which disorders their reason and bereaves them of all sense of shame. With words the most lascivious, and with actions the most indecent, is this melancholy distemper accompanied and its origin revealed. I have seen a girl at the age of twelve years, of a brown but lively and florid complexion, small in size, yet strong and plump, commit the most indecent actions at the very sight of a man, from which nothing could divert her, neither the presence of her mother, expostulation, nor punishment. Her reason, however, forsook her not, and the paroxysms, which were so violent as to excite horror, ceased the minute she was left with her own sex. Aristotle says, it is at this age the irritation is greatest, and girls ought then to be most attentively watched. The remark may be applicable to the climate in which he lived, but in countries more cold, the female constitution does not become warm so early. When the _furor uterinus_ increases to a certain degree marriage is no remedy for it and instances there are of its being fatal. Happily the force of Nature is rarely of itself the cause of such dreadful passions, even when the temperament inclines to them; and before they arrive at this extremity many causes must concur, of which the principal is, an imagination inflamed by licentious conversation and obscene representations. The contrary temperament is infinitely more common among women, the generality of whom are, with respect to this passion, exceedingly cool or indifferent. Of men too, there are many in whose chastity there is little merit; and some I have known, who, at the age of twenty-five and thirty, enjoyed a good state of health without having ever experienced this passion so urgent as to render a gratification necessary. From continence there is less to be feared than from excess, as is strikingly evinced in a number of men, some of whom, by the effects of the latter, lose their memory; some are deprived of sight; some become bald, and many have dwindled into a consumption and died. Of the irreparable injury done to their health by venereal indulgences, young persons can never be sufficiently warned. How many cease to be men, or who at least cease to enjoy the faculty of manhood, before the age of thirty? And how many at fifteen, or eighteen, have received the infection of a disease, which is not only in itself disgraceful, but often incurable.