Part 64 (2/2)

7. RELIEVE THE SYSTEM.--As much as possible relieve the system of urine before going to sleep. On rising, bathe if practicable. If you cannot bear cold water, take the least possible chill off the water (cold water, however, is best). If bathing is not practicable, wash the body with cold water, and keep scrupulously clean. The reaction caused by cold water, is most desirable. Rub the body dry with a rough towel. Drink a good draught of cold water.

8. EXERCISE.--Get fifteen minutes' brisk walk, if possible before breakfast. If any sense of faintness exists, eat a crust of bread, or biscuit. Be regular in your meals, and do not fear to make a hearty breakfast. This lays a good foundation for the day. Take daily good, but not violent exercise. Walk until you can distinctly feel the tendency to perspiration. This will keep the pores of the skin open and in healthy condition.

9. MEDICINES.--Take the medicines, if used, regularly and carefully.

Bromide of Pota.s.sium is a most valuable remedy in allaying l.u.s.tful and heated pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes. Unless there is actual venereal disease, medicine should be very little resorted to.

10. AVOID THE STREETS AT NIGHT.--Beware of corrupt companions. Fast young men and women should be shunned everywhere. Cultivate a taste for good reading and evening studies. Home life with its gentle restraints, pure friends.h.i.+ps, and healthful discipline, should be highly valued. There is no liberty like that of a well-regulated home. To large numbers of young men in business houses, home life is impracticable.

11. BE OF GOOD CHEER AND COURAGE.--Recovery will be gradual, and not sudden; vital force is developed slowly from within. The object aimed at by medicine and counsel, is to aid and increase nervous and physical vigor, and give tone to the demoralized system. Do not pay the slightest heed to the exaggerated statements of the wretched quack doctors, who advertise everywhere. Avoid them as you would a pestilence. Their great object is, through exciting your fears, to get you into their clutches, in order to oppress you with heavy and unjust payments. Be careful, not to indulge in fancies, or morbid thoughts and feelings. Be hopeful, and play the part of a man determined to overcome.

MANHOOD WRECKED AND RESCUED.

1. THE n.o.bLEST FUNCTIONS OF MANHOOD.--The n.o.blest functions of manhood are brought into action in the office of the parent. It is here that man a.s.sumes the prerogative of a G.o.d and becomes a creator.

How essential that every function of his physical system should be perfect, and every faculty of his mind free from that which would degrade; yet how many drag their purity through the filth of masturbation, revel in the orgies of the debauchee, and wors.h.i.+p at the shrine of the prost.i.tute, until, like a tree blighted by the livid lightning, they stand with all their outward form of men, but without life.

2. THRESHOLD OF HONOR.--Think of a man like that; in whom the pa.s.sions and vices have burned themselves out, putting on the airs of a saint and claiming to have reformed. Aye, reformed, when there is no longer sweetness in the indulgence of l.u.s.t. Think of such loathsome b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, dragging its slimy body across the threshold of honor and n.o.bility and asking a pure woman, with the love-light of heaven in her eyes, to pa.s.s her days with him; to accept him as her lord; to be satisfied with the burnt-out, shriveled forces of manhood left; to sacrifice her purity that he may be redeemed, and to respect in a husband what she would despise in the brute.

3. STOP.--If you are, then, on the highway to this state of degradation, stop. If already you have sounded the depths of lost manhood, then turn, and from the fountain of life regain your power, before you perpetrate the terrible crime of marriage, thus wrecking a woman's life and perhaps bringing into the world children who will live only to suffer and curse the day on which they were born and the father who begat them.

4. s.e.xUAL IMPOTENCY.--s.e.xual impotency means s.e.xual starvation, and drives many wives to ruin, while a similar lack among wives drives husbands to libertinism. Nothing so enhances the happiness of married couples as this full, life-abounding, s.e.xual vigor in the husband, thoroughly reciprocated by the wife, yet completely controlled by both.

5. TWO CLa.s.sES OF SUFFERERS.--There are two cla.s.ses of sufferers.

First, those who have only practiced self-abuse and are suffering from emissions. Second, those who by overindulgence in marital relations, or by dissipation with women, have ruined their forces.

6. THE REMEDY.--For self-abuse: When the young man has practiced self-abuse for some time, he finds, upon quitting the habit, that he has nightly emissions. He becomes alarmed, reads every sensational advertis.e.m.e.nt in the papers, and at once comes to the conclusion that he must take something. _Drugs are not necessary._

7. STOP THE CAUSE.--The one thing needful, above all others, is to stop the cause. I have found that young men are invariably mistaken as to what is the cause. When asked as to the first cause of their trouble, they invariably say it was self-abuse, etc., but it is not.

_It is the thought._ This precedes the handling, and, like every other cause, must be removed in order to have right results.

8. STOP THE THOUGHT.--But remember, _stop the thought_! You must not look after every woman with l.u.s.tful thoughts, nor go courting girls who will allow you to hug, caress and kiss them, thus rousing your pa.s.sions almost to a climax. Do not keep the company of those whose only conversation is of a lewd and depraved character, but keep the company of those ladies who awaken your higher sentiments and n.o.bler impulses, who appeal to the intellect and rouse your aspiration, in whose presence you would no more feel your pa.s.sions aroused than in the presence of your own mother.

9. YOU WILL GET WELL.--Remember you will get well. Don't fear. Fear destroys strength and therefore increases the trouble. Many get downhearted, discouraged, despairing--the very worst thing that can happen, doing as much harm, and in many cases more, than their former dissipation. Brooding kills; hope enlivens. Then sing with joy that the savior of knowledge has vanquished the death-dealing ignorance of the past; that the glorious strength of manhood has awakened and cast from you forever the grinning skeleton of vice. Be your better self, proud that your thoughts in the day-time are as pure as you could wish your dreams to be at night.

10. HELPS.--Do not use tobacco or liquor. They inflame the pa.s.sions and irritate the nervous system; they only gratify base appet.i.tes and never rouse the higher feelings. Highly spiced food should be eschewed, not chewed. Meat should be eaten sparingly, and never at the last meal.

11. DON'T EAT TOO MUCH.--If not engaged in hard physical labor, try eating two meals a day. Never neglect the calls of nature, and if possible have a pa.s.sage from the bowels every night before retiring.

When this is not done the feces often drop into the r.e.c.t.u.m during sleep, producing heat which extends to the s.e.xual organs, causing the lascivious dreams and emission. This will be noticed especially in the morning, when the feces usually distend the r.e.c.t.u.m and the person nearly always awakes with s.e.xual pa.s.sions aroused. If necessary, use injections into the r.e.c.t.u.m of from one to two quarts of water, blood heat, two or three times a week. Be sure to keep clean and see to it that no matter collects under the foreskin. Wash off the organ every night and take a quick, cold hand-bath every morning. Have something to do. Never be idle. Idleness always wors.h.i.+ps at the shrine of pa.s.sion.

12. THE WORST TIME OF ALL.--Many are ruined by allowing their thoughts to run riot in the morning. Owing to the pa.s.sions being roused as stated above, the young man lies half awake and half dozing, rousing his pa.s.sions and reveling in lascivious thought for hours perhaps, thus completely sapping the fountains of purity, establis.h.i.+ng habits of vice that will bind him with iron bands, and doing his physical system more injury than if he had practiced self-abuse, and had the emission in a few minutes. Jump out of bed at once on waking, and never allow the thought to master you.

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