“Any warning against sexual dangers,” says Dr. Acton, “would be very incomplete if it did not extend to the excesses so often committed by married persons in ignorance of their ill effects. Too frequent emissions of the seminal fluid, and too frequent excitement of the nervous system, are in themselves most destructive. The result is the same within the marriage bond as without it. The married man and woman who think that because they are married, they can commit no excesses, however often the act of sexual congress is repeated, will suffer as certainly and as seriously as the unmarried debauchee, who acts on the same principle in his indulgences—perhaps more certainly, from their very ignorance, and from their not taking those precautions and following those rules which a career of vice is apt to teach the sensualist. Many a man has, until his marriage, lived a most continent life; so has his wife. As soon as they are wedded, intercourse is indulged in night after night, neither party having an idea that these repeated sexual acts are excesses which the system of neither can bear, and which to the man, at least, is absolute ruin and to the woman a source of disease. The practice is continued till health is impaired, sometimes permanently, and when a patient is at last obliged to seek medical advice, he is thunderstruck at learning that his sufferings arise from excesses unwittingly committed. Married people appear to think that connection may be repeated as regularly and almost as often as their meals. Till they are told of their danger, the idea never enters their heads that they are guilty of great and almost criminal excess; nor is this to be wondered at, since the possibility of such a cause of disease is seldom hinted at by the medical man they consult. Some go so far as to believe that indulgence may increase these powers, just as gymnastic exercises augment the force of the muscles. This is a popular error, and requires correction. Such patients should be told that the shock to the system, each time connection is indulged in, is very powerful, and that the expenditure of seminal fluid must be particularly injurious to organs previously debilitated. It is by this and similar excesses that premature old age and complaints of the generative organs are brought on.”