IV. On the other hand, what sad havoc does not the sexual passion play where it is precociously developed and wantonly indulged. Dr. H. Fournier, one of the most eminent physicians of Paris, says: "There is not a vice more fatal to the conservation of man than masturbation." This unfortunate habit is sometimes acquired by very little boys and girls. Foolish or vicious nurses may bring it on by handling young children most indelicately. This is one of the many reasons why none but virtuous servants and nurses should be employed by wise parents and physicians. In later years, children often learn this degrading and most injurious vice from their depraved companions, some of whom seem even to regard the practice of it as a manly accomplishment. When habitually indulged in, it produces on the health and the strength of the constitution effects the most deplorable. Even the intellect is liable to become thereby enfeebled, a want of virility is exhibited both in the body and in the mind of its victims; then follows a loss of ambition and self-control. "When this morbid passion gets control of a person," writes an experienced practitioner in medicine, "it is as though an unclean spirit had entered, subdued the will, weakened the moral forces, enfeebled the intellectual faculties, lessened the power to resist temptation, and overcome every obstacle opposed to its gratification. Even while the intellect is still clear, and the sense of wrong keen, the individual is a slave to this morbid impulse." Though the baneful effects may not always affect the physical health of the victim, the unfortunate practice very often engenders in boys and girls tendencies which in later years lead to all the miseries conspicuous in houses of debauch and infamy. But I need not dwell on consequences that belong to pathology rather than to Jurisprudence.