Old age deferred : the causes of old age and its postponement by hygienic and therapeutic measures... / by Arnold Lorand... Translated, with additions, by the author from the second German edition.

  • Lorand, Arnold.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Old age deferred : the causes of old age and its postponement by hygienic and therapeutic measures... / by Arnold Lorand... Translated, with additions, by the author from the second German edition. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    139/482 (page 121)
    ease and premature old age. We should endeavor to interest children while they are yet of a school age in the fine arts, such as music, painting, and literature, as they have a very favorable influence on the hygiene of the mind in after years. Religious instruction also gives good results in this respect. 'When children approach puberty it is important to avoid an agency that may prove very deleterious to certain of the glands with internal secretions, and this is masturbation. We will not commit the error made by so many unscientific writers of ascribing much greater importance to this matter than it deserves. It certainly is not true that tabes dorsalis, dementia paralytica, or other serious nervous diseases will result from this source; but it cannot be denied that neurasthenia or hysteria or impotency—sexual neurasthenia—can be promoted by the exaggeration of masturbation, if indulged in many years. Masturbation is always injurious to the sexual glands, more so to the male than to the female organs, and in addition to the thyroid, and—if in excess—to the adrenals. It also very un- favorably influences the mind and character. In youth, instruction as to the control of the sexual passions will be of the utmost importance, even considering alone the dangers of infections, especially of gonorrhoea, which not only endangers the future husband, but the future wife also. We need here but mention the well-known fact that the thorough and radical cure of syphilis may even more readily be accomplished than that of chronic gonorrhoea. We have mentioned above that after gonorrhoea (every chronic gonorrhoea involves the prostate gland) there are severe disturbances of the nervous system, which may also influence the mind, causing hypochondria. To prevent all these dangers there has been formed in France a society called Societe Franchise de Prophylaxie Sani- taire et Morale, which advocates the necessity of instructing boys and girls as to all the dangers that threaten them and how to avoid them.