The more intimately the publication of this work has led us to study and observe the effects of sexual troubles on man - whether those troubles were the results of vice, misfortune or ignorance, whether they were wholly real or partly imaginary - the more have we noted the inadequately great effect they exercise on his mind. The patient attributes to them influences which they certainly never have nor could have; and often lays at their door the failure of faculties and plans of life which an unprejudiced observer would attribute to quite other causes.

For example, nothing is more common than for one who has for a brief period during youth been addicted to solitary bad habits, to assign this as the probable reason of a number of functional ills which the physician, studying his case, cannot see in that relation at all. So, again, in various cases, after appropriate treatment has removed all the prominent symptoms which such a habit has left behind it, the patient is still haunted by a fear that he is not what he should and would have been, that he is deeply and irremediably damaged by his former weakness, and that he never will be his former self again. Hence, instead of becoming cheerful with the obvious improvement of his case. he is apt to remain almost as dispirited as ever, and because he finds that the honest and intelligent physician does not desire to keep him under his care longer, he seeks the advice of the charlatan. The latter, if he does not, by inept and violent measures, actually bring about a condition of positive disease, at least fools him to the top of his bent, and bleeds him to his last dollar, or as near it as possible. Often and often has this history occurred in our knowledge. The same mental characteristic has been noted by others ; and in particular, a lecture by Sir James Paget, the eminent London surgeon, deserves notice in this connection. It is on the subject of