This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1838 edition. Excerpt: ... lent and hazardous to life. And where it is promiscuous, the genital organs are almost continually stimulated by the mind. Every female that is a little more comely, or a little more meretricious than others, in her appearance, becomes an object of desire; the contemplation of her charms, and all her movements, increase the lust, and thus the genital organs are kept under an habitual excitement, which is reflected or diffused over the whole nervous system; and disturbs, and disorders all the functions of the body, and impairs all the tissues, and leads to that frequency of commerce which produces the most ruinous consequences. But, between the husband and wife, where there is a proper degree of chastity, all these causes either entirely lose, or are exceedingly diminished in their effect. They become accustomed to each other's body, and their parts no longer excite an impure imagination, and their sexual intercourse is the result of the more natural and instinctive excitements of the organs themselves;--and when the dietetic and other habits are such as they should be, this intercourse is very seldom. Moreover, a promiscuous commerce between the sexes would be terribly pernicious to the female and to the offspring, as well as to the male. Debility, abortion, barrenness, and painful diseases of various forms, would be the inevitable result in the female; and that peculiarly loathsome, virulent and ruinous disease which is generated and perpetuated by such commerce, and which has already been so dreadful a scourge to millions of the human family, would prevail on every hand, and become a common calamity of society. With equal certainty, the offspring would be very generally feeble, puny, and extremely predisposed to disease. A large...