Before the indulgence in frustrate caresses has become a habit, i. e., in the beginning of the practice, erections are vigorous and of considerable duration. But the duration diminishes with each repetition. After a few months or years of these nerve-destroying practices, according to the patient’s nervous constitution, there is no response by erection even to the strongest stimuli. The consentaneous action, which, otherwise, connects the excitement of the organs with erection and completion of the act, does not take place. This lack of consensualism on the part of the several factors which go to make up the orgasm leads finally to complete impotence. Continence, if long continued, has been claimed to be the cause of impotence. But there is no valid reason for this belief. To prove the harmfulness of continence, an analogue is brought forward between the atrophy of a muscle in enforced idleness and the injury to the sex organs in enforced abstinence. But the proof is somewhat feeble. The essential organs of generation are not muscles but glands, and who has ever heard of a tear gland atrophying for lack of crying. Furthermore, abstinence does not condemn the generative organs to absolute rest. Every individual, especially when abstinent, has frequently nocturnal erections through the entire period of his sexual activity, and there is no reason why such erections should not keep the genitals in the required exercise and should not prevent the alleged atrophy. As far as the exercise to prevent atrophy is concerned, nocturnal erections ought to be of the same service as erections followed by intromissions. The nocturnal erections seem to be even more harmless. The engorgement of the colliculus is less pronounced in these erections. Micturition, on awakening with an erection, is immediately possible, while there is a pronounced inability of micturition after an erection and ejaculation either through initu aut stupro manu. The histories of patients are cited to prove the deleterious effects of total abstinence. Cases are known of alleged abstinent neurasthenics, on the point of a complete breakdown, who recovered perfect health after marriage. But even this proof cannot stand a closer scrutiny. Who can prove the total abstinence of these patients? The layman is prone to regard the actual intromission only as sexual activity. If he has abstained from this final phase, he considers himself abstinent. But chastity is not continence by any means. Absolute continence is abstinence not only from the gratification of the impulse of detumescence concarnatione, but also from that of contrectation, i. e., from mental and tactile caresses and from all other abnormal practices. We must distinguish between chastity and abstinence. Those who are chaste out of fear of venereal infection or for lack of opportunity are not always abstinent. They are just the individuals who are indulging immoderately in mental erethism or even masturbation.