Early Environ- ment Among the poor, large families are ofter crowded into one or two rooms. Decent privacy is impossible. Bad habits of thought and sexual associations are often formed in mere childhood. Even in the homes of the richer classes the environment of childhood is often no better. The obscene language and perverted sexual practices of servants, both men and women, in the presence of children and taught personally to them can not be put in print.
Many parents are criminally negligent.
They neither teach their children truths pertaining to sex nor do they quarantine against misinformation, obscenity and stories of sexual perverts. Narcotics and Stimulants Tobacco and alcohol have a tendency to awaken passion, and, as a rule, men addicted to these habits are more passionate than those free from them. The use of cigarettes often hastens by several months the approach of puberty, and premature puberty is always a misfortune, for several secretions take place before the body is prepared to absorb and retain them. There waste produces stunted, dwarfed and lustful men. Eminent doctors in France tell us that there are more inveterate tobacco users in that country than in any other civilized nation, and that many of these men are sterile.