In the opening lecture of this course, I remarked to you, gentlemen, that the scope of Medical Jurisprudence is much wider than that of Medical Law. It embraces many subjects of which human laws take no cognizance, and in particular such vicious actions as do not violate the rights of others, but are injurious to those only who practise them. They undermine the health and shorten the lives of the guilty parties, and bring in their train diseases the most destructive and often the most incurable. It is the physician's beneficent task to lessen the weaknesses and sufferings of the body, and to prolong human life in well-preserved vigor to a green old age. It is not the least important part of his valuable services to provide for the sound and vigorous propagation of the human race to future generations. Of this propagation of our race, of the laws which govern it, and of the criminal abuses by which these laws are violated, I am to treat in this present lecture. My subject is "Venereal Excesses." I. If a physician's purpose were only to make money, his task would then be to multiply diseases and infirmities; he would then be as great a curse to mankind as he is really intended to be a blessing; and an immense blessing he will be to his fellow-men if he studies to remove even the remote causes of diseases and untimely deaths. He can do so in a variety of ways and not the least by providing against sexual excesses and abuses. These are a copious fountain of ill to humanity. A host of diseases, such as tuberculosis, diabetes, cardial and nervous affections, epilepsy, hysteria, general debility, weaknesses of sight, languor and general worthlessness, hypochondria, weakness and total loss of reason, and, in married life, impotence and sterility are some of the effects of venereal excesses. Any excitement of the sexual passion before the body has received its full development is more or less injurious to its welfare; and all excesses or unnatural indulgence of it at any period of life is pregnant with deplorable consequences. Now, such evil practices are too much overlooked by many physicians; yet it is certain that thousands of patients might, by timely warning on these matters, be saved from unspeakable mental and physical sufferings. To give sensible and intelligible directions on a subject as delicate as it is important in medical practice, it will be necessary to enter into some scientific details. The passion which prompts to sexual intercourse is altogether natural in itself, and, as such, intended by the Creator to be indulged in at the right time and in the proper manner. It is the stimulus which He has provided for the propagation of the human race. If the stimulus is strong at times, this too is a special effect of His wisdom; because without a powerful prompting of this kind, most men would shirk the burden of married life, just as very many would not care to toil if they had no hunger and thirst and other bodily wants to satisfy.