Counsel to parents on the moral education of their children / by Elizabeth Blackwell.

  • Blackwell, Elizabeth, 1821-1910.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Counsel to parents on the moral education of their children / by Elizabeth Blackwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    whilst it intoxicates him. Having once tasted these physical pleasures, be can no more do without them, than the drunkard without his dram. He ignorantly tramples under foot his birth- right of rich compound, infinite humam love ; enthralled by the simple limited animal passion. His Will is no longer free. He has destroyed that grand endowment of Man—that freedom of the youthful Will; which is the priceless possession of innocence and of virtue ; and has subjected himself to the slavery of lust. He is no longer his own master—he is the servant of his passions. Those whose interest it is to retain their victim, employ every art of drink, of dress, of excess, to urge him on. The youthful eagerness of his own nature, lends itself to these arts. The power of resistance is lost; until one glance of a prostitute’s eye, passing in the street, one token of allurement, will often overturn his best resolutions, and outweigh the wisest counsel of friends ! The physiological ignorance and moral blindness, which actually lead some parents to provide a mistress for their sons ; in the hope of keeping them from houses of public debauchery ; is an effort as unavailing as it is corrupt. Place a youth on the wrong course, instead of the right one ; lead him into the career of sensual indulgence and selfish disregard for womanhood; instead of manly self-control : and the parent has, by his own act, launched his child into the current of vice, which rapidly hurries him beyond his control. The evils resulting from a violation of Nature’s method of growth, by a life of early dissipation, are both physical, and mental or moral. In some organizations the former, iu some the latter, are observable in the most marked degree; but no one can escape either the physical deterioration, or the mental degradation, which results from the irrational and un-human exercise of the great endowment of sex. The loss of self-control re-acting upon the body, produces a morbid irritability (always a sign of weakness), which is a real disease, subjecting the individual to constant excitement and exhaustion, from slight causes. The resulting physical evils may be slow in revealing themselves; because they only gradually, undermine the constitution. They do not herald