Self-abuse was of course out of the question at all times. The well-known consequences of masturbation covered virtually every undesirable condition known to medical science, not excluding insanity and premature death. Self-polluters—“poor creeping tremulous, pale, spindle-shanked wretched creatures who crawl upon the earth,” as one chronicler described them—were to be pitied. “Every act of self-pollution is an earthquake—a blast—a deadly paralytic stroke,” declared one expert. Case studies vividly drove home the risks. A medical man named Samuel Tissot described how one of his patients
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