is impaired, sometimes permanently, and when a patient is at last 

obliged to seek medical advice, he is thunderstruck at learning that 

his sufferings arise from excesses unwittingly committed. Married 

people often appear to think that connection may be repeated as 

regularly and almost as often as their meals. Till they are told of 

the danger, the idea never enters their heads that they are guilty of 

great and almost criminal excess; nor is this to be wondered at, since 

the possibility of such a cause of disease is seldom hinted at by the 

medical man they consult." 

"Some go so far as to believe that indulgence may increase these powers, 

just as gymnastic exercises augment the force of the muscles. This is 

a popular error; and requires correction. Such patients should be told 

that the shock on the system each time connection is indulged in, is 

very powerful, and that the expenditure of seminal fluid must be 

particularly injurious to organs previously debilitated. It is by this 

and similar excesses that premature old age and complaints of the 

generative organs are brought on." 

"The length to which married people carry excesses is perfectly 

astonishing." 

"Since my attention has been particularly called to this class of 

ailments, I feel confident that many of the forms of indigestion, 

general ill health, hypochondriasis, etc., so often met with in adults, 

depend upon sexual excesses.... That this cause of illness is not more 

generally acknowledged and acted on, arises from the natural delicacy 

which medical men must feel in putting such questions to their patients 

as are necessary to elicit the facts." 

"It is not the body alone which suffers from excesses committed in 

married life. Experience every day convinces me that much of the languor 

of mind, confusion of ideas, and inability to control the thoughts, 

of which some married men complain, arise from this cause."[18] 

[Footnote 18: Acton.] 

The debilitating effects of excessive sexual indulgence arise from two 

causes; viz., the loss of the seminal fluid, and the nervous excitement. 

With reference to the value of the spermatic fluid, Dr. Gardner 

remarks:-- 

"The sperm is the purest extract of the blood.... Nature, in creating 

it, has intended it not only to communicate life, but also to nourish 

the individual life. In fact, the re-absorption of the fecundating 

liquid impresses upon the entire economy new energy, and a virility 

which contributes to the prolongation of life."