[312] R.T.  Morris, of New York, has also pointed out the influence of traditions in this respect.  “Among boys,” he remarks, “there are traditions to the effect that self-abuse is harmful.  Among girls, however, there are no such saving traditions.”  Dr. Kiernan writes in a private letter:  “It has been by experience, that from ignorance or otherwise, there are young women who do not look upon sexual manipulation with the same fear that men do.”  Guttceit, similarly, remarks that men have been warned of masturbation, and fear its evil results, while girls, even if warned, attach little importance to the warning; he adds that in healthy women, masturbation, even in excess, has little bad results.  The attitude of many women in this matter may be illustrated by the following passage from a letter written by a medical friend in India:  “The other day one of my English women patients gave me the following reason for having taught the 17-year-old daughter of a retired Colonel to masturbate:  ’Poor girl, she was troubled with dreams of men, and in case she should be tempted with one, and become pregnant, I taught her to bring the feeling on herself—­as it is safer, and, after all, nearly as nice as with a man.’”

[313] H. Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, volume ii, “Sexual Inversion,” Chapter IV.

[314] See, also, the Appendix to the third volume of these Studies, in which I have brought forward sexual histories of normal persons.

[315] E.H.  Smith, also, states that from 25 to 35 is the age when most women come under the physician’s eye with manifest and pronounced habits of masturbation.

[316] It may, however, be instructive to observe that at the end of the volume we find an advertisement of “Dr. Robinson’s Treatise on the Virtues and Efficacy of a Crust of Bread, Eat Early in the Morning Fasting.”

[317] Pouillet alone enumerates and apparently accepts considerably over one hundred different morbid conditions as signs and results of masturbation.

[318] “Augenkrankheiten bei Masturbanten,” Knapp-Schweigger’s Archiv fuer Augenheitkunde, Bd.  II, 1882, p. 198.

[319] Salmo Cohn, Uterus und Auge, 1890, pp. 63-66.

[320] Fonctions du Cerveau, 1825, vol. iii, p. 337.

[321] W. Ellis, Treatise on Insanity, 1838, pp. 335, 340.

[322] Clara Barrus, “Insanity in Young Women,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, June, 1896.

[323] See, for instance, H. Emminghaus, “Die Psychosen des Kindesalters,” Gerlandt’s Handbuch der Kinder-Krankheiten, Nachtrag II, pp. 61-63.

[324] Christian, article “Onanisme,” Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales.

[325] Naecke, Verbrechen und Wahnsinn beim Weibe, 1894, p. 57.

[326] J.L.A.  Koch, Die Psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten, 1892, p. 273 et seq.

[327] J.G.  Kiernan, American Journal of Insanity, July, 1877.