94-95.)
Again, at the outset of the article on "Masturbation," in Tuke's
_Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_, Yellowlees states that,
on account of the mischief formerly done by reckless statements,
it is necessary to state plainly that "unless the practice has
been long and greatly indulged, no permanent evil effects may be
observed to follow." Naecke, again, has declared ("Kritisches zum
Kapitel der Sexualitaet," _Archiv fuer Psychiatrie_, 1899): "There
are neither somatic nor psychic symptoms peculiar on onanism. Nor
is there any specific onanistic psychosis. I am prepared to deny
that onanism ever produces any psychoses in those who are not
already predisposed." That such a view is now becoming widely
prevalent is illustrated by the cautious and temperate discussion
of masturbation in a recent work by a non-medical writer,
Geoffrey Mortimer (_Chapters on Human Love_, pp. 199-205).
The testimony of expert witnesses with regard to the influence of
masturbation in producing other forms of psychoses and neuroses is
becoming equally decisive; and here, also, the traditions of Tissot are
being slowly effaced. "I have not, in the whole of my practice," wrote
West, forty years ago, "out of a large experience among children and
women, seen convulsions, epilepsy, or idiocy _induced_ by masturbation in
any child of either sex. Neither have I seen any instance in which
hysteria, epilepsy, or insanity in women after puberty was _due_ to
masturbation, as its efficient cause.
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