Our next Chat will be on self-abuse, its causes, how to stop the habit and what it means if you do not stop it. We shall also have another shot at the Quacks. CHAPTER VI SELF-ABUSE――HOW TO STOP IT――THE QUACKS This is a subject, boys, that has been much distorted in its facts and quite frequently put before you in a wrong light. To try and frighten you, to prevent you from making mistakes through ignorance, is not the way to help a worrying boy. If he makes mistakes and falls into injurious habits through lack of knowledge of a certain subject, give him that knowledge. But instead of placing knowledge and truths before you, scarecrows and words to make you fear have been hung for you to see and hear. It is this fear that has been put into you by those who have not fully explained the whole matter, which the Quacks use for extorting money from their victims. Of course the HABIT of self-abuse means ruin to both brain and body. It is degrading to your true self, causes a loss of self-respect and makes a coward of every boy and man. How can it do otherwise? The mere loss of the bubbling spring of manly life, the seminal fluid, would bring about this cowardice in a bravely born boy. Self-abuse is a cowardly way to treat the growing man in you, and it throws that cowardice right back in your face, makes you a real, can’t-help-it coward. All this is true of the HABIT. But this one fact I want to impress upon you――don’t think because you have succumbed to the desire a few times, that you are lost, going to become insane, or show upon your features the wrong acts of youthful ignorance. No, don’t worry yourself ill, don’t become frightened at these misstatements, at what the advertising doctors say in their lying circulars and daily papers. All their statements are lies and used to get your money and ruin your health and happiness. Little slips now and then before you have reached full knowledge of what is right should be forgotten, but the HABIT kept up will, of course, bring you to uselessness and make for failure in life. Let us see how the practice is usually started. I have told you all about the irritation which arises from an unclean penis and a secondary irritation from an unemptied bowel. Also about too warm bed-clothing. In most boys these irritations call attention to the organ. Then there is an itching. This the boy seeks to relieve by scratching or handling his penis. All this sends blood to the organ. The blood enters the spongy penis and causes an erection. Soon the boy finds a new and strange sensation and finally performs the act. What should he do when this strange sensation comes over him? He should immediately rise from the bed and pulling back the foreskin――if he is not circumcised――plunge the organ and surrounding parts into cold water. But you see he has never been told, and so the “first time” happens.