Girls of this age have much need of surveillance. For then in
particular they feel a natural impulse to make usage of the sexual
faculties that are developing in them; so that unless they guard
against any further impulse beyond that inevitable one which their
bodily development of itself supplies, even in the case of those who
abstain altogether from passionate indulgence, they contract habits
which are apt to continue into later life. For girls who give way to
wantonness grow more and more wanton; and the same is true of boys,
unless they be safeguarded from one temptation and another; for the
passages become dilated and set up a local flux or running, and
besides this the recollection of pleasure associated with former
indulgence creates a longing for its repetition.
Some men are congenitally impotent owing to structural defect;
and in like manner women also may suffer from congenital incapacity.
Both men and women are liable to constitutional change, growing
healthier or more sickly, or altering in the way of leanness,
stoutness, and vigour; thus, after puberty some lads who were thin
before grow stout and healthy, and the converse also happens; and
the same is equally true of girls.
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