“From my observation during five years at a boarding-school, it seems that eight out of ten boys were more or less addicted to the practice.  But I would not state positively that such was the proportion of masturbators among an average of thirty pupils, though the habit was very common.  I know that in one bedroom, sleeping seven boys, the whole number masturbated frequently.  The act was performed in bed, in the closets, and sometimes in the classrooms during lessons.  Inquiry among my friends as to onanism in the boarding-schools to which they were sent, elicited somewhat contradictory answers concerning the frequency of the habit.  Dr. ——­, who went to a French school, told me that all the older boys had younger accomplices in mutual masturbation.  He also spoke with experience of the prevalence of the practice in a well-known public school in the west of England.  B. said all the boys at his school masturbated; G. stated that most of his schoolmates were onanists; L. said ‘more than half’ was the proportion.

“At my school, manual masturbation was both solitary and mutual; and sometimes younger boys, who had not acquired the habit, were induced to manipulate bigger boys.  One very precocious boy of fifteen always chose a companion of ten ’because his hand was like a woman’s.’  Sometimes boys entered their friend’s bed for mutual excitement.  In after-life they showed no signs of inversion.  Another boy, aged about fourteen, who had been seduced by a servant-girl, embraced the bolster; the pleasurable sensations, according to his statement, were heightened by imagining that the bolster was a woman.  He said that the enjoyment of the act was greatly increased during the holidays, when he was able to spread a pair of his sister’s drawers upon the pillow, and so intensify the illusion.

“Before puberty the boys appeared to be more continent than afterward.  A few of the older and more intelligent masturbators regulated the habit, as some married men regulate intercourse.  The big boy referred to, who chose always the same manipulator, professed to indulge only once in twenty days, his reason being that more frequent repetition of the act would injure his health.  About twice a week for boys who had reached puberty, and once a week for younger boys, was, I think, about the average indulgence.  I have never met with a parallel of one of those cases of excessive masturbation recorded by many doctors.  There may have been such cases at this school; but, if so, the boys concealed the frequency of their gratifications.

“My experience proved that many of the lads regarded masturbation as reprehensible; but their plea was ‘everyone does it.’  Some, often those who indulged inordinately and more secretly than their companions, gravely condemned the practice as sinful.  A few seemed to think there was ‘no harm in it,’ but that the habit might stunt the growth and weaken the body