Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Confidential Chats with Boys _BOOKS BY_ WM. LEE HOWARD, M.D. FACTS FOR THE MARRIED PLAIN FACTS ON SEX HYGIENE CONFIDENTIAL CHATS WITH BOYS CONFIDENTIAL CHATS WITH GIRLS CONFIDENTIAL CHATS WITH BOYS BY WILLIAM LEE HOWARD, M.D. Author of “Plain Facts on Sex Hygiene,” “Confidential Chats with Girls,” “Facts for the Married” [Illustration] New York Edward J. Clode Publisher COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY EDWARD J. CLODE CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE BODY AS A MACHINE 3 II. THE OUTSIDE LUNGS――THE SKIN 26 III. HOW ALL LIFE COMMENCES 45 IV. CARE OF SELF DURING PUBERTY 67 V. NIGHT EMISSIONS AND THE BOY’S WORRY 79 VI. SELF-ABUSE――HOW TO STOP IT――THE QUACKS 95 VII. YOUR VOCATION AND HOW TO FIT YOURSELF FOR IT 124 VIII. ENVIRONMENTS AND DISEASES WHICH RUST BRAIN-TOOLS 138 FOREWORD THE REASON These chats are the pleasurable results of the many little confidential ones I have given at boys’ and young men’s clubs and at preparatory schools. It has been my fortune――for so I consider it――to have been brought into intimate relations with men who are failures. Not the down and out men, but those who are struggling along dissatisfied with what they are doing――what false and wrong training has forced them to do. Many of these despondent and useless men have been guided into places where they fit――where there is conservation of energy, happiness and results. These are the factors for a mentally and physically balanced man――provided he has had early instruction in some vital matters. The impulse to have the future fathers in a position to guide and live in close confidential relations with their sons, is the reason for this book. Professional experience has proven to my complete satisfaction that the many failures, misfits, despondents and diseased in our present generation were not fundamentally ill fitted to battle with life, but that they had never been started right, physically, mentally, vocationally. Physical instructors built muscle, teachers forced much useful and also useless stuff into unwilling brain cells, fathers furnished the money――as a rule I find that this latter was about all the parents did furnish; and thought this all-sufficient.