From the above we gather that various physiologists have had various views respecting the mental and physical effects of masturbation. As for myself, throwing theories aside, appealing to countless authorities, and to the victims themselves, for the truth of what I say, and looking backward to thirty years of more or less extended observation of the vice, I speak with no uncertain voice in pronouncing masturbation a deadly evil.

The Greeks and Romans believed that Mercury invented this act to please and console poor old Pan, when he lost his beautiful mistress, Echo, daughter of Air and Tellus, without having enjoyed her sexual favors. The name Pan was given to him because he was looked upon as the offspring of all the lovers who are said to have had intercourse with Penelope, the wife of Ulysses, while the latter was absent in the Trojan war;' and the name might well be continued in reference to masturbation itself, if we stop to consider the innumerable progeny of evils of which it is the undoubted parent.