Headache, side-ache, back-ache, pains in the chest, and wandering pains
in various parts of the body,--these are but a few of the painful
ailments from which girls who are guilty of this sin suffer. Many of
the tender spines which cause great solicitude on the part of parents
and physicians, who fear that disease of the spine is threatening the
life of a loved daughter, not infrequently originate in this way. Much
of the hysteria which renders wretched the lives of thousands of young
ladies and the fond friends who are obliged to care for and attend them,
arises from sexual transgression of the kind of which we are speaking.
The blanched cheeks, hollow, expressionless eyes, and rough, pimply
skins of many school-girls are due to this cause alone. We do not mean
by this to intimate that every girl who has pimples upon her face is
guilty of secret vice; but this sin is undoubtedly a very frequent cause
of the unpleasant eruption which so often appears upon the foreheads
of both sexes. It would be very unjust, however, to charge a person
with the sin unless some further evidence than that of an eruption on
the face was afforded.
The inability to study, to apply themselves in any way except when
stimulated by something of a very exciting character, which many girls
exhibit, is in a large proportion of cases due to the practice of which
we are writing. Often enough the effects which are attributed to
overstudy are properly due to this debasing habit. We have little faith
in the great outcry made in certain quarters about the damaging effects
of study upon the health of young ladies. A far less worthy cause is
in many cases the true one, to which is attributable the decline in
health at a critical period when all the vital forces of the system
are necessarily called into action to introduce the activity of a new
function.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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