WILD OATS IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE: A MEDICAL COMMENTARY.
[To ma EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIn,—The recent correspondence in the Spectator on the sowing of wild oats will be none the worse for a medical com- mentary. Here comes the doctor. He has nothing to say about the ethics of literature ; he has never read the " Areo- pagitica," nor ever will ; and "the liberty of the Press" is five words to him, and no concern of his. But be does know some- thing about the sowing of wild oats : and, what is more, lie knows something about the reaping of them.
Let us, he says, take the point of view of physiology. Is it true to say that abstinence is harmful? The sower may like to think that it hi, but where is his evidence ? Can he show us any cases of the bad results of such abstinence ? Has he ever beard on good authority of any harm done thereby to any man? Has he ever come across a man invalided or run down as the result of chastity ? Is the sower's creed "I believe that chastity may injure a man's health," true or false ?
There is plenty of evidence that it is false. Many of their patients, Sir James Paget told the students at St. BarthOlo- mew's Hospital, would ask them about Sexual questions,-and some would expect them to prescribe immorality. "I would just as soon prescribe theft, or lying, or anything else that God has forbidden. We are not to advise that .which is morally wrong, even if we have some reason to think that patient's health would be better for the wrong-doing."
"But in the cases before us—and I can imagine none in which I should think differently—there is not ground enough for so much as raising a question about wrong- doing. Chastity does no harm to mind or body: its dis- cipline is excellent ; marriage can be safely waited for." Sir James went on to point out that, among the many nervous and hypochondriacal patients who have talked to him, he bad never heard one say that he was better or happier for immoral praztices. If immorality be useless, or worse than useless, in such cases, it cannot be necessary for the health of young men who have nothing the matter with them. "I have not the least hesitation," says Dr. Herringham, "in saying that in my opinion sexual intercourse is neither necessary for health nor for the preservation of fertility. So far as we know in man, and can judge by animals, both ideas are entirely untrue." Sir Dye° Duckworth declares that, "from the aspect of physiology and good medicine," it is not neces- sary for any young man to adopt immoral courses. "The sexual organs can lie dormant for years, can be left alone, out of consideration, and forgotten, so to speak, until the time comes for matrimony, as it should come and may be expected to come to every young man." Dr. Bezly Thorne declares that in the course of some 35 years of medical practice he had never met with a young man who had suffered in any way as the result of abstinence. "Such have, on the contrary, excelled in physical and mental energy, and have come to the fore in life's struggle."
It would be easy, if these four statements were not enough, to collect a hundred more. The belief that by this abstinence a man's bodily vigour may be impaired is false. If a man attributes his want of complete fitness to his want of indul- gence, let him try more sleep and fresh air, less alcohol, meat, and tobacco, and more exercise and occupation.
But, as a matter of fact, a young man, committing for the first time an act of immorality, is not thinking about his health. He knows quite well that there is nothing the matter with him. He does what be does because he has made up his mind to have, at all costs, a certain pleasure, a certain ex- perience. He has persuaded himself, or has been persuaded by other men, that he is fairly entitled by nature to them; he has been waiting for them ever since he was born ; the whole world is full of them. From insects up to man, all life depends on this exercise of sex. Why is he what he is, if he is not to have this expenience ? What else is all life about? Is he not, as things are, less than a man ?
His pride cries out under this insult. Though he were almost passionless, he cannot bear his ignorance. It torments him, be among men who know and understand what he does not : he plays with their vocabulary as a baby plays with the belongings of grown-up people. And, what is harder to bear than ignorance, all sorts of physical promptings come to him till it seems to him less clean, less gentlemanly, to have these than to have that which they suggest to him. So, at last, he goes wrong ; not from any desire for more health, nor from any compelling passion, but from sheer hatred of his ignorance, his inexperience, his incompleteness.
That is to say, his behaviour is not that of an animal, but that of a complex-minded and very self-conscious young man. It must be judged accordingly. He has thought the thing out : it was not instinct with him, it was elaborate argument. He knew all about ethics when he did it. Therefore he is not justified by any reference to his animal nature apart from his ethical nature.
So much for him : now for his opposite, the young man who "keeps straight." It is not to be doubted that the number of young men in this country who keep straight is very much greater now than it was fifty years ago. Some of them find it easy, some find it hard. The point is that none of them does anything to maintain the wreckage of the women on the streets.
And the young man who keeps straight has this advantage, that he neither gets nor gives disease. That is how wild oats are reaped. Every big town is saturated with these diseases : you could wring them out of London like water, out of a sponge. Our hospitals reek with them; our asylums for the blind and the deaf mutes are full of the results of them. In London alone, at this moment, there must be forty thousand eases of them, if not more. Young men in this condition are not nice : they are infective creatures; they are septic; they carry and spread infection. The prose of wild oats. is just as true as the poetry of them, and truer; and they that so* in joy shall reap in tears. Certain poets forget the contagious legions of young Cockneys whe crowd Our out-patient departments, or waste their Wages on quacks. It has been Calculated of Vienna, and may be Calculated Of London, that every girl who goes on the streets becomes infected with a Constitutional disease within six montht. The proapect is not favourable for the present sowing of wild oats. One poet—a woman—wrote not long ago that youth is a sufficient excuse for "a thousand nighte of sin." It would do her good to attend an out-patient department, till she had seen, not one youth after a thousand nights, but a thousand youths after One night.
The young man who keeps straight is, it is true, devoid of one of life's experiences, but he has his reward. He can say to himself that he has not contributed to any Woman's ruin. He is absolutely healthy and wholesome. He is untainted with disease, and, when he marries, he will neither infect his Wife nor beget tainted children.—I am, .Sir, &e..
A HOSPITAL SURGEON.
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