The functions and disorders of the reproductive organs in childhood, youth, adult age, and advanced life : considered in their physiological, social, and moral relations / by William Acton.

Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The functions and disorders of the reproductive organs in childhood, youth, adult age, and advanced life : considered in their physiological, social, and moral relations / by William Acton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    20/312 (page 4)
    and wounded conscience shall he added to the victims of sexual precocity and careless training. It ought not to he forgotten that in such cases a quasi-sexual power often accompanies these premature sexual inclinations. Few, perhaps, except medical men, know how early in life a mere infant may experience erections. Frequently it may he noticed that a little child, on being taken out of bed in the morning, cannot make water at once. It would he as well if it were recognised by parents and nurses that this often depends upon a more or less complete erection. Predisposing Causes.—What the cause of this early sexual predis- position in a young child may he, it is difficult to lay down with certainty hi any given case. My own belief is, that there are sexual predisposing causes. I should specify hereditary predisposition as by no means the least common. It cannot he denied that as children soon after birth inherit a peculiar conformation of features or frame from the parent, so they frequently evince, even in the earlier years of childhood, mental characteristics and peculiarities that nothing hut hereditary predisposition can account for. I believe that, as in body and mind, so also in the passions, the predispositions of the father are frequently inherited by the children. No man or woman can inordinately indulge their own sexual passions without at least running the risk of finding a disposition to gratify their sensual passions at an early age inherited by their offspring. In this way only can we explain the existence in generation after gene- ration of an early and apparently almost irresistible propensity to similar tastes and feelings. No doubt vicious tendencies are frequently, perhaps most frequently acquired. But I firmly believe that moral as well as physical tendencies and irregularities can be transmitted to the progeny. Exciting Causes.—There are, however, not a few directly exciting causes which can, and do frequently, not only foster this early proclivity to sexual feeling when there is hereditary predisposition, but even of themselves alone beget it. We see in some children at a very early age an almost ungovernable disposition to touch or excite the sexual organs. This most dangerous habit is not unfrequently, I believe, produced by irritation in the rectum arising from worms. In other instances it arises from excessive irritability of the bladder. In addition to the manipulation another symptom often supervenes, viz., the constant wetting of the bed at night. There is, besides, in many young persons, as will be mentioned here- after (p. 32), a morbid sensibility of the external organs that is exces- sively troublesome and often painful. This symptom may, I believe, appear very early in life, and, if not removed, lead to consequences