In this manner many promising youths, just as they are blossoming into the pride of early manhood, begin to indulge in sexual thoughts and to allow these thoughts to influence their minds until they commit some of the evils to which perverted and unchaste passions lead them. If this evil be masturbation, then they are on the direct road to ruin, as will be seen described further on. If it be the commission of sexual intercourse with women, their ruin is still more certain, and in the latter case they are exposed to one of the worst poisons that can possibly infect the human race. I do not overdraw the picture when I declare that _millions of human beings die annually from the effects of poison contracted in this way_, in some form of suffering or another; for, by insinuating its effects into and poisoning the whole man, it complicates various disorders and renders them incurable. When gonorrhoea is contracted, although frequently suppressed by local treatment in the form of injections, it is never perfectly cured thereby. No; the hidden poison runs on for a life time producing strictures, dysuria, gleet and kindred diseases; finally, in old men, a horrible prostatitis results from which the balance of one's life is rendered miserable indeed. If inflammation of the lungs supervenes, there is often a translation of the virus to these vital organs, causing what is termed "plastic pneumonia," where one lobule after another becomes gradually sealed up, till nearly the whole of both lungs becomes impervious to air, and death results from asphyxia. This horrible infection sometimes becomes engrafted upon other acute diseases when lingering disorders follow, causing years of misery, and only terminating in death.