One of the most distinguished hygienists of our age writes thus: ‘The pathological results of venereal excess are now well known. The gradual derangements of health experienced by its victims are not at first recognised by them, and physicians may take the symptoms to be the beginning of very different diseases. How often symptoms are considered as cases of hypochondria or chronic gastritis, or the commencement of heart disease, which are really the results of generative abuse! A general exhaustion of the whole physical force, symptoms of cerebral congestion, or paralysis, attributed to some cerebrospinal lesion, are often due to the same causes. The same may be said of some of the severest forms of insanity. Many cases of consumption appearing in young men who suffer from no hereditary tendency to the disease enter into the same category. So many diseases are vainly treated by medicine or regime which are really caused by abuse of these important functions.’[24] Another of our oldest surgeons writes: ‘Among the passions of the future man which at this period should be strictly restrained is that of physical love, for none wars so completely against the principles which have been already laid down as the most conducive to long life; no excess so thoroughly lessens the sum of the vital power, none so much weakens and softens the organs of life, none is more active in hastening vital consumption, and none so totally prohibits restoration. I might, if it were necessary, draw a painful--nay, a frightful--picture of the results of these melancholy excesses, etc.’[25] Volumes might be filled with similar medical testimony on the destructive character of early licentiousness.