with “theft or lying.”  Sir William Gowers (Syphilis and the Nervous System, 1892, p. 126) also proclaims the advantages of “unbroken chastity,” more especially as a method of avoiding syphilis.  He is not hopeful, however, even as regards his own remedy, for he adds:  “We can trace small ground for hope that the disease will thus be materially reduced.”  He would still, however, preach chastity to the individual, and he does so with all the ascetic ardor of a mediaeval monk.  “With all the force that any knowledge I possess, and any authority I have, can give, I assert that no man ever yet was in the slightest degree or way the worse for continence or better for incontinence.  From the latter all are worse morally; a clear majority are worse physically; and in no small number the result is, and ever will be, utter physical shipwreck on one of the many rocks, sharp, jagged-edged, which beset the way, or on one of the many beds of festering slime which no care can possibly avoid.”  In America the same view widely prevails, and Dr. J.F.  Scott, in his Sexual-Instinct (second edition, 1908, Ch.  III), argues very vigorously and at great length in favor of sexual abstinence.  He will not even admit that there are two sides to the question, though if that were the case, the length and the energy of his arguments would be unnecessary.

Among medical authorities who have discussed the question of sexual abstinence at length it is not, indeed, usually possible to find such unqualified opinions in its favor as those I have quoted.  There can be no doubt, however, that a large proportion of physicians, not excluding prominent and distinguished authorities, when casually confronted with the question whether sexual abstinence is harmless, will at once adopt the obvious path of least resistance and reply:  Yes.  In only a few cases will they even make any qualification of this affirmative answer.  This tendency is very well illustrated by an inquiry made by Dr. Ludwig Jacobsohn, of St. Petersburgh ("Die Sexuelle Enthaltsamkeit im Lichte der Medizin,” St. Petersburger Medicinische Wochenschrift, March 17, 1907).  He wrote to over two hundred distinguished Russian and German professors of physiology, neurology, psychiatry, etc., asking them if they regarded sexual abstinence as harmless.  The majority returned no answer; eleven Russian and twenty-eight Germans replied, but four of them merely said that “they had no personal experience,” etc.; there thus remained thirty-five.  Of these E. Pflueger, of Bonn, was skeptical of the advantage of any propaganda of abstinence:  “if all the authorities in the world declared the harmlessness of abstinence that would have no influence on youth.  Forces are here in play that break through all obstacles.”  The harmlessness of abstinence was affirmed by Kraepelin, Cramer, Gaertner, Tuczek, Schottelius, Gaffky, Finkler, Selenew, Lassar, Seifert, Gruber; the last, however,