To a student beginning to be acutely conscious that his
sexual nature differed profoundly from that of his fellows,
nothing could be more perplexing and disturbing, and it shut me
up more completely in my reserve than ever. I felt that this
teaching must be based on some radical error or prejudice or
misapprehension, for I knew from my own very clear remembrance of
my own development that my peculiarity was not acquired, but
inborn; my great misfortune undoubtedly, but not my fault.
"It was still more unfortunate that in the course of the lectures
on Clinical Medicine there was not the slightest allusion to the
subject. All sorts of rare diseases--some of which I have not yet
met with in the course of twenty-one years of a busy
practice--were fully discussed, but we were left entirely
ignorant of a subject so vitally important to me personally, and,
as it seems to me, to the profession to which I aspired. There
might have been an incidental reference to masturbation--although
I do not remember it--but its real significance received no
attention; and what we students knew of it was the result of our
reading or of our personal experiences.
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