It is not surprising that the disharmonies in the human reproductive apparatus are a frequent source of trouble. Little children, in whom sexual irritability has awakened prematurely, learn to satisfy it by means called “unnatural.” In many cases damage rapidly follows. “In the child,” wrote Dr. Christian, “there is no secretion of spermatozoa, and it is in the child that the results of onanism are most disastrous to the organism, and disastrous almost in inverse proportion to the age.[118] It is in early infancy that this aberration merits the evil reputation that it has acquired; it compromises health, intelligence, and even life. Quite young children wither, becoming pale, stupid, and fragile, when they have acquired this disastrous habit. The evil is almost entirely a consequence of the unripeness of the organism for sexuality.” Happily these evil occurrences are rare. A publication by Tissot, a Swiss doctor, on the subject of onanism, made a sensation in the eighteenth century. The book was full of exaggeration, and it was very inexact, but it contained interesting confessions from persons who had contracted the habit. A woman wrote to Tissot in the following terms: “But for the restraint of religion, I should have put an end to my life, which is ruined by my own fault.” Not infrequently the vice leads to melancholia. Other unfortunate results come from the ripening of the sexual products before the organism is ready for marriage, and before the character has been formed. As men cannot contract marriage before they are ready for it, irregular and frequently harmful sexual aberration may occur. The survival of this specific irritability until too late a period of life is another source of disaster. Old men who can neither excite passion nor satisfy it, often become victims of their own amorousness and unassuaged passions. It has been shown that passion may survive after the complete atrophy of the functions of the organs. Similarly it is the case that women from whom the ovaries have been removed, may continue to retain sexual irritability completely. Disharmony of sexuality may also occur between persons of different sexes. The fact that sexuality is usually more precocious in the male sex often produces a disharmony in the case of married persons. At the time when a woman is still in full possession of this specific irritability, the appetite in the man may be on the wane. From this disharmony there often follows conjugal infidelity or passion between persons of the same sex. Schopenhauer devoted attention to this subject and wrote as follows: “That nature herself may produce a condition totally opposed to the natural function offers a paradoxical problem of very deep interest.”[119] It is clear, however, when we consider the disharmonies in the development and activities of the functions in question, that the apparently paradoxical and strange aberrations of sexuality are natural enough.