Once this now wretched, disgraced creature was an attractive, pure,
innocent little girl. Her adopted father lavished upon her numerous
presents, and spent hundreds of dollars to obtain her recovery to health.
Yet through this awful vice she was ruined utterly, and rendered so
wholly perverse and bad that she had no desire to be better, no
disposition to reform. God only knows what will be her sad end. May
none who read these lines ever follow in her footsteps.
The Danger of Boarding-Schools.--Some years ago a young lady came under
our medical care who had suffered for some time from a serious nervous
difficulty which had baffled the skill of all the physicians who had
had charge of her case, and which occasioned her a great amount of
suffering, making it necessary that she should be confined to her bed
most of the time, the disease being aggravated by exercise, and the
patient having been much weakened by its long continuance.
All the remedies usually successful in such cases were employed with
little or no effect, and we were feeling somewhat perplexed concerning
the case, when the young lady sent for us one day and upon our going
to her room in answer to her call she immediately burst into tears and
acknowledged that she had been addicted to the habit of self-abuse and
that she was still suffering from involuntary excitement during sleep.
Having been placed in a boarding-school when quite young, she had there
learned the vile habit, and had practiced it without knowing anything
of the ill effects or really appreciating its sinfulness. When she
learned, some years after, that the habit was a most pernicious vice
and of a character to bring destruction to both soul and body of one
addicted to it, she endeavored to free herself from its shackles; but
she found herself too securely bound for escape. It seemed, indeed,
an utter impossibility. Her thoughts had long been allowed to run in
sentimental channels, and now they would do so in spite of the most
earnest efforts to the contrary, during her waking hours; and in sleep,
while the will power was not active, the imagination would run riot
uncontrolled, leaving her, upon awaking, exhausted, enervated, and
almost desperate with chagrin. Knowing that she was daily suffering
for her transgressions, she was filled with remorse and regret, and
would have given all to undo the past; but, alas! she could not, and
could only suffer with patience until relief could be secured. Her love
for sentimental literature occasioned another battle for her to fight;
for she could scarcely resist the temptation daily offered her to while
away some of the weary hours with such stories of love and sentiment
as she had been accustomed to enjoy. But she fought the battle earnestly,
and finally succeeded in conquering the evil tendencies of her mind
both while awake and when asleep; and from that time she began to make
slow progress toward recovery. The last we saw of her she was doing
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