Disquisition by Scripps, E.W., Pure pessimism, September 6, 1915

              I am writing this the morning after a severe attack of indigestion.
I was kept awake for several hours9 There being considerable periods of
time tween the attacks of excruciating paint my mind got to running
through a noli, ;whatts the usen channel ..
In the evening before,I had been some chapters on psycho-sex-pathology
- a disgusting. but vary instructive work.
Congeni tal or acquired sex abnormality, whether physioal or psychical,
is, as me, far more prevalent than would appear from surface
ind ications. Venereal diseases are to the lay observer in
their last stages. Neurasthenia, resulting from sex disturbances or causing
same, never becomes apparent to the publio until after some monstrous crime
been co:mmi tted.. It is even d.:ifflicult for the most skillful psyohologist
to exact ions when patients coma to them making
oonfessions ••
It is supposed, by some, to be doubtful as to whe thar or not more
thar:, a very smnll peroentage of a total population is entirely fl"ea from.
pl1ysical or psychical sex diseases ..
appears that a very proportion, by far the gieatermajor ,of
nenrotics beoome such by their own willful se ter pleasures forbidden
by nature.
Even large nU1llbers of men and women who commit no impure acts and
succeed in keeping their secrets even from the ir greatest intimates,
indulge in most abominable psychic practices.
I reoall an instance of a remarkable expos~:
I was sitting my olub,onoe, discussing some ordinary subject of
the day with a pa:.t1ty of gentlemen. There was one fellow member of the club
,who was notorious, not only as a wag, but as a teller sal ty storiesOb
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Ohio University Libraries, E.W. Scripps Papers, MSS 117, Series 4, http://bit.ly/scripps_mss117