Category Archives: Library

Today’s Frozen Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In July 1967, two separate groups of young men set out to climb Denali (Mount McKinley). Those groups ended up merging into what’s now commonly called the Wilcox Expedition, named after group leader Joe Wilcox. His name is unfortunately associated with the deadliest climbing disaster in American history, as a lethal storm killed seven of the 12 men who set out to summit the mountain.

The Wilcox Expedition, Before Disaster Struck

Though Denali isn’t Mount Everest, it does present its own unique challenge: highly unpredictable weather. In the morning it can be calm; hours later, the mountain can be overtaken by a whiteout with high winds. A seven-day mega-storm descended on Denali during the Wilcox Expedition’s climb, making it impossible for a rescue mission to even attempt to save anyone.

The Wilcox Expedition was the conglomeration of two separate groups. Three men from Colorado – Paul Schlichter, Howard Snyder, and Jerry Lewis – had to join Wilcox’s team after their fourth man was unable to climb. Wilcox’s group included Ansel Schiff, Jerry Clark, Steve Taylor, Dennis Luchterhand, Henry James, Mark McLaughlin, Walt Taylor, and John Russell. The group was not nearly experienced as other climbers, such as Henry Worsley, who also perished under extreme conditions.

The three Colorado men all survived, as did Wilcox and Schiff. The other seven were claimed by the mountain, and there they remain – much like the bodies left on Mount Everest – frozen in time.

When rescuers finally reached the group’s campsite, they found no survivors. Instead, they discovered a tent in pieces wrapped around a body that was holding onto a tent pole. Due to the weather, the body had frozen and thawed, and it had started to decompose. Two more completely frozen bodies were also found.

The other four were never found. One climber’s bamboo stick was found next to a crevasse, but there was no way rescuers could rappel down into it. Babcock’s rescue group noted the climbers were not tied together, indicating their lack of experience.

Through the lens of modern technology and medicine, it may seem unbelievable that a body couldn’t be identified. Between DNA, dental records, and the myriad other ways that technology has enabled to us to identify remains even decades later, it’s hard to recall it wasn’t always so easy. In 1967, this was the reality those involved with the Denali disaster faced.

Between decomposition and bodies being completely frozen and covered in snow, rescuers had no way of telling who was who. To make matters worse, there was also no way to get the bodies down off the mountain. One rescuer said, “I should have taken a photo. I don’t know why I didn’t. It would have helped the family members know who it was and given them the closure.”

A group was later organized to retrieve the seven dead climbers to put their bodies to rest, but they were never located.

Here is the account of the rescue team finding the first body:

… After several more minutes of trudging up through the wind-crusted snow, the Wilcox team’s 17,900-foot-high Camp VII came into view. There was no movement, no welcoming calls, and no survivors. Just silence.

Mark McLaughlin’s homemade tent stood oddly taut in the light breeze. Next to it was, as Bill Babcock described in his journal, “a ghastly sight, a man sitting upright alongside a Logan tent. Face and hands are blue, green, white, frozen yet decomposing.” \

Ireton said the frozen man wore orange and his face was covered with snow. “He was blown over, but during the storm he was holding the pole,” he said. “The tent had probably ripped apart and the sleeping bag had blown away and he was there holding the pole and he obviously froze to death.”

Culled from: Ranker.Com and Denali’s Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America’s Wildest Peak

Wretched Review: Denali’s Howl

Denali’s Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America’s Wildest Peak
by Andy Hall

I’ve read a lot of books about doomed mountaineering expeditions and I have to say this isn’t one of the better ones. It’s not really that the book is poorly written, it’s just that there really isn’t a lot of detail that can be filled in surrounding this tragedy. Basically, 7 men climbed Mt. Denali (McKinley) in 1967, got caught in a terrible storm, and died. Considering they were out of radio contact with the men during the storm and the three bodies that were briefly found (before being covered up in further storms and lost again) didn’t have any documentation with them, there really isn’t much detail that can be filled in. And I can’t blame the author for that. Maybe some stories are better left as single chapters instead of full books.

3/5

My life is finally starting to settle down a bit, after an extended stretch of insanity.  I apologize for being gone for so long, but I couldn’t do much about it.

Today’s Shipwrecked Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Among shipwrecked sailors, “the practice of eating each other when they became hungry” was so well-established that it was widely accepted as an occupational hazard. In November 1820, for example, the Essex, a ship from Nantucket, sank in the South Pacific after being rammed by a mammoth sperm whale (an incident that served as the inspiration for Melville’s Moby-Dick). Though the twenty crewmen might have easily sailed to the relatively accessible islands of the Marquesas, they were terrified of falling into the clutches of the reportedly cannibalistic natives and chose instead to make for the coast of South America, nearly three thousand miles away. After two nightmarish months adrift on the ocean, the starving survivors turned cannibal themselves.

For the most part, they consumed the corpses of shipmates who had perished of exposure or starvation. In one instance, however, a seventeen-year-old seaman named Owen Coffin – cousin of the ships’ captain, George Pollard – was sacrificed for food after drawing a losing lot. When Pollard was finally rescued, he was found at the bottom of his whaleboat, sucking marrow from his butchered cousin’s bones. Despite having engaged in gastronomic incest, Pollard’s townspeople absolved him of blame, the drawing of lots for the purpose of survival cannibalism having long been accepted as the “custom of the sea.”

Culled from: Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal

Wretched Reviews: Man-Eater

Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal
by Harold Schechter

I love true crime books by Harold Schechter. He is so good at getting to the details of the case without leaving anything essential behind. Here, he cuts through to the bone of the Alfred Packer case. You remember Alfred? He went into the Colorado mountains in 1873 with 4 other men, but he was the only one who walked out; the rest were found butchered and devoured. Packer admitted cannibalizing the men but insisted that one of the other men had gone crazy and killed three of them while Packer was away, and that Packer had to kill him in self-defense when he came back to camp. A likely story, and one that was not believed in court.

This book also talks about several other famous cases of cannibalism which I will undoubtedly be using for Morbid Facts in the near future. The only less than stellar thing about the book is its primary subject matter. There really wasn’t a lot to Packer once you got past the cannibalism, so some of the book drags a bit. But hey, at least we got ‘Cannibal: the Musical’ out of Packer’s primal brutality!

4/5

Today’s Mimicking Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The poisonous element thallium mimics the nutritionally essential element potassium, and as a result it passes through the gut wall and into the bloodstream. The body is not fooled for long by thallium and excretes it into the intestines. This is not particularly effective, since a little further along it is once again mistaken for potassium and reabsorbed. The cure for thallium needs to break this cycle of excretion and reabsorption, and the best cure is Prussian blue, the dye of blue ink. This is a complex salt of potassium, iron, and cyanide and was suggested as an antidote in 1969 by a German pharmacologist, Horst Heydlauf of Karlsruhe, at a time when thallium poisoning was believed to be incurable.

Thallium: It’s Bad News!

Before the introduction of Prussian blue, various other treatments were tried such as dimercaprol which in some cases met with apparent success, but is not now recommended. Dithizone or dithiocarb were more successful when administered at the daily rate of about 25 mg/kg body weight. This latter compound had been used in mobilizing nickel and copper in the body and thereby facilitating their excretion, and in 1959 it was shown to protect mice against poisoning by thallium sulphate. It was first used in 1962 in a case of human thallium poisoning and it saved a life. The ability of dithiocarb to increase thallium excretion via the urine was demonstrated in 1967 in the case of an 18-year-old college student who consumed 375 mg of thallium sulphate when she tried to carry out an abortion on herself (in fact it turned out she was not pregnant). Both dithiocarb and dimercaprol were tried as chelating agents. Tests showed that, with no chelating agent, excretion of thallium through her  urine was only 1.7 mg/day, whereas with dimercaprol it was not better at 1.6 mg/day, but with dithicarb it went up to 6.1 mg/day. The young woman eventually recovered and left the hospital after seven weeks but she suffered most of the symptoms of thallium poisoning ranging from the short-term vomiting and diarrhea through the long-term hair loss, blindness, hallucination, and severe headaches and coma, not to mention the terrible pain.

Culled from: The Elements of Murder

P.S. Don’t do thallium, kids!

Arcane Excerpts

Here’s some more sound advice from What A Young Boy Ought To Know (1897) by Sylvanus Stall.

That you may properly guard your heart, you will need to avoid with great care all books which are immodest or impure. Many, very many books are evil and impure in character, and not a few are so in purpose. Never read, handle, or listen to a book or paper which you might not ask your Mamma or Papa to read aloud with you. In all these matters, make your parents your counselors and protectors. Turn away in disgust from those who would pollute your mind with vile stories or immodest conversation. For your companions and associates, choose only the pure and the good. If such could not be found, it were better to abide alone. It would be much easier for a bad companion to pull you down than for you to lift him up.

Today’s Miserable Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The most brutal aspect of slavery was the separation of families. This was a haunting fear which made all of the slave’s days miserable. In spite of the fact that probably a majority of the planters tried to prevent family separations in order to maintain plantation discipline, practically all of the black autobiographers were touched by the tragedy. Death occurred too frequently in the master’s house, creditors were too relentless in collecting their debts, the planter’s reserves ran out too often, and the master longed too much for expensive items for the slave to escape the clutches of the slave trader. Nothing demonstrated his powerlessness as much as the slave’s inability to prevent the forceable sale of his wife and children.

The callous attitudes frequently held by planters towards slave unions are revealed clearly in statistics: 32.4 % of the unions were dissolved by masters. An overwhelming majority of the couples were separated before they reached their sixth anniversary. The heartlessness of the planters is revealed more clearly in their separation of slaves who had lived together for decades. Several instances of this appeared in Louisiana: Hosea Bidell was separated from his mate of twenty-five years; Valentine Miner from his after thirty years; and, in the most horrifying case of them all, Lucy Robinson was separated from her mate after living with him for forty-three years.

Slave Couple

Culled from: The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South

Face of Madness

In The Library Eclectica (the astore of which has been removed, but I will be restoring a version of it online soon), I have a book entitled The Faces of Madness: Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography (edited by Sander L. Gilman), 1977.  It contains a wonderful collection of photographs of asylum inmates taken in the 1850’s by pioneering medical photographer and psychiatrist Dr. Hugh W. Diamond, along with engravings that were made of them and used in teaching. There are also several case studies by Dr. John Conolly (the leading British psychiatrist of the mid-nineteenth century) for some of the patients.  The portraits are beautiful and sad and the text reveals the psychiatric thought processes of the mid-19th century.

In… the present number, we have a specimen of the odd characters found among the older inmates of asylums, and which, before this series of papers is concluded, must have, as they deserve, a chapter to themselves. Comical as this picture of an old woman appears at the first view, it tells a somewhat lamentable tale of long mental vexation; supervening probably among the trails of the middle or even the youthful period of life, when carelessness, unheeded or untended, a giddy mind uneducated, wild manners and irregular habits, unrestrained by any care of protection, opened a wide way to disturbance; or when perhaps frequent want, or constant discomfort, and wild disorder, or the sharper sorrows incidental even to almost homeless classes of people, unsettled the intellect altogether. The apparently careless air, the reversed bonnet, and a sort of drollery lurking in the cheeks and chin, are largely mixed with traces both of former agitations and excitement, and also with some shadows of lost hope and joy. Activity, and a certain strength of character seem depicted in the general form of the face; in the well-formed forehead, wide and high; in the broad and pronounced chin; in the development of the superciliary region of the brow, and, perhaps, even in the nose. One feels sure that once this poor woman was of a merry mind, and danced and sang, and turned her bonnet round for very mirth. Even now there is something in the position of her head and her general attitude which betokens a consciousness of being an odd and amusing object presented to the casual visitor; but the delvings of care in the forehead and in the whole face are still many and deep: the strong descending lines form the alae nasi to the depressed corners of the mouth, speak of alternations of depression with excitement, and make the physiognomy indicative of past attacks of mania and melancholia, both of which have left their traces there.

This odd facial expression, and combination of various expressions, seem, indeed, to be the natural results of what was known to have been her mode of life. She was by occupation a washerwoman, and, no doubt, for a time active and hard-working. Advancing to middle age, and beginning to feel the exhaustion incidental to daily labour, she began to seek the resource of temporary stimulants, and, soothed and stupefied with gin, became less and less careful as to food, or to food of a good description: for gin seems to silence hunger as it silences conscience. She became occasionally violent, and at length, unmanageable except in an asylum; to which she was taken seventeen years ago. The regular life led there, the good food, the general regulations of the place, and occasional Medical treatment, had their usual good effects. In the laundries of our large asylums near London such cases abound. You see a number of active women, busy at the washing-tub, or dexterous in mangling and folding, but whose air and manner, and somewhat fiery countenance, show that they are not always so composed; and, indeed, the nerves of visitors  are generally more likely to be shaken in the crowd of these useful but eccentric laundresses than elsewhere; for it is the custom of many of them, much violence of voice and gesture. Formerly the nurses, as excited as the patients, used to overpower them and carry them off by main force to the refractory ward, in their progress to which their shouts and remonstrances diffused alarm over nearly the whole building. They are now understood much better. The peculiar form and duration of such outbreaks in these hard-working women are quite familiar to the head-laundress and her assistants; and by observing a rule of very wide application and utility in managing asylums, — the rule of letting them alone, — the most obstreperous among them, after satisfying her mind by the unrestrained expression of her uncontrollable anger, will resume all the activity of the washerwoman, and perhaps give no more trouble for weeks to come.

Such appears to have been the character of the old lady in the reversed bonnet. But the maniacal attack being the first she had experienced, and occurring when at a curable age – a little more than forty – the asylum-influences had a happy effect upon her, and in about eleven months she was discharged cured. But there are patients who seem, however apparently well, still to require this external influence to keep their minds rational; and this poor woman appears to have been one of them; for although it was said that she did not relapse in intemperate habits as to drinking, she was not found to be an endurable neighbor when at large, and was very soon taken back to the asylum. She has acquired the habit of taking large quantities of snuff, a fondness for which appeared to have superseded the fondness for gin; and to obtain snuff she was capable of any cunning, or sometimes of any violence. Even the habit of snuff-taking, the most difficult, it is said, of all small indulgences to be wholly abandoned, she was persuaded to give up, and with very great advantage as regarded mental tranquility and general behavior. Now and then fits of violence still occur; but her usual state is that of an odd, cunning, mischievous patient, delighting in eccentricity of dress.

Today’s Chaste Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Let’s have another jolly story of Christian Martyrdom from the classic of the genre, Fox’s Book of Martyrs (1848).  This incident allegedly occurred during the Seventh Persecution, under Decius in A. D. 249:

Agatha, a Sicilian lady, was not more remarkable for her personal and acquired endowments, than her piety: her beauty was such, that Quintian, governor of Sicily, became enamoured of her, and made many attempts upon her chastity without success.

In order to gratify his passions with the greater conveniency, he put the virtuous lady into the hands of Aphrodica, a very infamous and licentious woman. This wretch tried every artifice to win her to the desired prostitution; but found all her efforts were vain; for her chastity was impregnable, and she well knew that virtue alone could procure true happiness. Aphrodica acquainted Quintian with the inefficacy of her endeavours, who, enraged to be foiled in his designs, changed his lust into resentment. On her confessing that she was a christian, he determined to gratify his revenge, as he could not his passion. Pursuant to his orders, she was scourged, burnt with red-hot irons, and torn with sharp hooks. Having borne these torments with admirable fortitude, she was next laid naked upon live coals, intermingled with glass, and then being carried back to prison, she there expired on the 5th of Feb. 251.

Culled from: Fox’s Book of Martyrs
Generously suggested by: Louise

Slovenly Peter

When I was at an antique store recently, I stumbled across a copy of ‘Slovenly Peter’ (aka Der Struwwelpeter aka “Shock-headed Peter”), an 1845 German children’s book by Heinrich Hoffmann. Per Wikipedia: : “It comprises ten illustrated and rhymed stories, mostly about children. Each has a clear moral that demonstrates the disastrous consequences of misbehavior in an exaggerated way.  The title of the first story provides the title of the whole book. Der Struwwelpeter is one of the earliest books for children that combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, and is considered a precursor to comic books.”

Here’s the first “story” of the lot, about Peter himself:

Today’s Unstoppable Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In early December 1916 there was a very substantial snowfall in the eastern Alps, continuing on and off for two weeks. Vast amounts of snow were accumulated in the mountains, and the avalanche risk was clearly high. In mid December there was a brief thaw, and many avalanches were set off. A large avalanche from the Marmolada crashed down on a barracks, killing at least 250 soldiers.

Somebody realized that the snow could be used as a terrifying and highly effective weapon. If avalanche slopes were bombed, the falls created would be unstoppable, they could even be directed. The numbers of soldiers annihilated by a few shells would be far greater than through the straightforward use of artillery.

The facts of what happened were suppressed by censorship, and it is difficult to put a figure on the number of fatalities. A conservative estimate puts the number killed in this way as 40,000, on both sides. Matthias Zdarsky, a well-known skier of the time who was involved in training Austrian troops in mountain warfare, is quoted as saying that: “The mountains themselves were far more dangerous than the Italians.” Zdarsky also claimed to have evidence that 3,000 Austrian soldiers died in only 48 hours through avalanches, and that Italian losses were at least as heavy. A Swiss expert, André Roch, has said that the estimate for avalanche victims throughout the war is 40,000 to 80,000.

An Inglorious Death

The ‘avalanche war’ became known as the White Death. A German book on the campaign says that: “Whole barracks, dashing patrols and marching columns, were buried in the raging avalanches. Hundreds of men were gripped by the white strangler; even the bravest of the brave had no escape from the winding-sheet of the avalanche. I have seen the corpses. It is no glorious death. It is a pitiful way to die, a comfortless suffocation in an evil element.”

Culled from: Catastrophes and Disasters

Of course, nowadays, the melting glaciers are revealing the corpses of the war dead, which is another reason I wish I lived in Europe.

Arcane Excerpts: Chlorotic Edition

Here’s an excerpt from Inter-Marriage or the Reason Beauty, Health and Intellect Result from Certain Unions and Deformity, Disease and Insanity from Others by Alexander Walker, 1839 discussing “Chlorosis” (an old term for “iron deficiency anemia”) in girls hitting puberty.

Instead of the natural progression of [normal female puberty] phenomena, there sometimes occurs a state of debility, an absence of excitability, in those organs by which the female participates in reproduction. This appears to cause the non-appearance of the catamenia [menstrual discharge], and of the other phenomena of puberty, as well as great derangement of the general economy, evidenced in extraordinary tastes and depraved appetites.

The majority of chlorotic girls eat with avidity salt, plaster, hair, charcoal, sealing-wax, and drink vinegar and a variety of other unnutritious substances. This is generally accompanied by disorders, more or less intense, of the digestive organs, a softness of the body, a complexion pale and sickly white, with a greenish tint, sunken eyes, extreme nervous susceptibility, and a multitude of nervous disorders.

That these maladies depend on the state of the organs of reproduction, is proved by their yielding in proportion as the activity of these is increased; by their being remedied only when the matrix and the ovaries enter into the regular order of their functions; and by the possibility even of curing them suddenly, by leaving a free course to the exercise of those faculties which have just been developed.

Under these circumstances, it becomes dangerous to increase the young woman’s desire for inactivity, or aversion to society; and it is wisely recommended that she should be induced to read works of imagination, to cultivate music, painting and poetry, and to pass from study to amusement. With those interested in her, it is urged, that every opportunity should be seized of procuring for her lively and pleasing amusement; that she should be constantly led to combat her natural frigidity, and increase her activity.

I’m not sure, but did Walker just suggest that the cure for iron-deficient girls is to be slutty?

Today’s Unsolved Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

When the normally reliable Russell Keith Dardeen failed to report for work at the water-treatment plant on November 19, 1987, his supervisor and parents immediately became worried and called the police. Upon entering the trailer where Keith lived with his family, the reason for his absence from work became gruesomely apparent.

In the master bedroom, Keith’s wife, Ruby Elaine, and their six-year-old son Peter were found dead in the bed. Both had been beaten to death with Peter’s baseball bat. Elaine was bound and gagged with duct tape. Worst of all, she’d been very pregnant, and had gone into labor and given birth during or shortly after the assault. The baby girl, later named Casey by her surviving relatives, was also bludgeoned to death.

The Dardeen Family, in better, if awkward, times.

It was at first naturally assumed that Keith Dardeen had killed his wife and children, as he was nowhere to be found, and his red 1981 Plymouth was also missing. However, later that day his body was found in a wheatfield not far from the family’s home in Ina, Illinois. He’d been shot three times and his penis had been severed. The blood-spattered Plymouth was also recovered nearby.

The murders of the Dardeen family have never been solved, nor has any plausible motive for the crime been established. Nothing was missing from the home, even though cash, jewelry and electronics were easily accessible.

The Dardeens were quiet, law-abiding people, well-liked by everyone, and there was only a small amount of marijuana found at their home, which may have been theirs but also may have been brought by their killer or killers.

Neither Elaine nor Peter had been sexually assaulted, though obviously the mutilation of Keith Dardeen’s genitalia does have a sexual element to it.

While Ina was a rural area, there had been at least fifteen murders in the two years preceding the Dardeen massacre. Some had been solved, but others hadn’t, and Keith Dardeen had told family and friends that he regretted ever moving to the area, and that he and Elaine planned to leave soon. He had become so fearful that when a young woman approached the trailer wanting to use the telephone, he had refused to let her in.

It seemed the case might be solved with the confessions of serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells. Sells was a voluble and enthusiastic confessor, and he described in detail how Keith Dardeen had picked up the transient Sells and brought him home for supper. Sells claimed at various times that Dardeen had then made sexual advances toward him, and that he and Elaine had invited him to participate in a threesome.

However, there were problems with Sells’s confession which cast doubt on his involvement. Most of the details of the crime that he accurately related had already been made public, and when questioned about things which had not been reported, he got several wrong, and the ones he got right appeared to be lucky guesses. Aside from this, the basic implausibility of Dardeen’s bringing a stranger anywhere near his home and family, never mind soliciting sex from him, further weakened the case against Sells. Sells, was however, executed for other murders and is suspected of many more.

Angel Maturino Resendiz, aka the Railroad Killer, was also considered a suspect. He was also a transient and preyed on people living in close proximity to railroad tracks, as the Dardeens did, and he had been known to beat his victims to death. However, there’s no hard evidence to prove he was even in Illinois at the time of the crime, and the quadruple murders remain unsolved.

Culled from: Wikipedia
Submitted by: Aimee

Arcane Excerpts: More Solitary Vice Advice

More urgent advice (and a major guilt trip) regarding the vice of self-pollution from What A Young Boy Ought To Know (1897) by Sylvanus Stall.

CYLINDER XIII.

The Boy who Practices Solitary Vice Not the Solitary Sufferer.—The Sins of Children Visited upon Their Parents.—Parents often the Greatest Sufferers.—What Parents Do for Their Children.—During Infancy.—During Childhood.—Should Not Disappoint Their Hopes.—Brothers and Sisters Made to Suffer.—His Children after Him Must Suffer the Results of His Sin.—We Reproduce Ourselves.—Cannot Transmit what We Do Not Possess.—What We Are That Our Children Will Be.—The Character of the Boys and Girls of To-day Determines the Character of the Nation a Hundred Years to Come.

MY DEAR FRIEND HARRY: From what I told you last night and the night before you will understand something of the sad consequences of solitary vice; yet the boy himself is not the solitary, or only sufferer. No one can do wrong in any way without causing that others must also bear, at least in some measure, the results of his sin. Not only are the sins of the parents visited upon the children, but the sins of the children are also visited upon the parents.

If by your own act you were to impair your health, enfeeble your intellect, and destroy your usefulness, it is a question whether your parents might not be as great or even greater sufferers than yourself. Think for a moment of what your own parents have done for you. After Mamma had brought you into the world at the risk of her own life, and at the cost of much pain and suffering, for months she gave herself almost wholly to nourishing and caring for you. When the various sicknesses peculiar to childhood came, she guarded you carefully lest you should take cold and die, or be left with impaired sight or hearing, or in some other way be caused to suffer during the remainder of your life with some physical infirmity. When you had the scarlet fever, for days and weeks Mamma and Papa gave themselves almost constantly to you. Day and night they watched over you, and for months, for fear of catching this dreadful disease, or communicating it to others, no one came to the house; and for your sake they cheerfully watched and suffered all without complaint.

Ever since you were born, they have been laboring to provide you every comfort. They have been careful about your instruction and education. They have guarded you from evil companions and dangerous influences of every sort, and I am sure you will readily see what a disappointment and sorrow it would be to them, if you were to do wrong.  What a sorrow to Papa and Mamma it would be to see their boy with sallow face, glassy eye, drooping form, without energy, force, or purpose, a laggard in school, shy, avoiding the society of others, disliking good books, avoiding the Sunday-school, and desiring to escape from every elevating Christian influence. Nothing I am sure would bring greater pain to the hearts of Papa and Mamma, than to know that their dear boy, whom they hoped to prepare for great usefulness, had turned aside into ways of sin and evil which were surely disappointing all their hopes and ruining their boy, both for this world and the world to come.

Not only to them, but what a sorrow and regret would come to that little baby sister when she should grow to womanhood, and then, when she should justly be proud to turn to you for counsel, sympathy, and help, be humiliated to find that you were weak, nervous, and unworthy of the respect and love which she would under other conditions have been glad to have bestowed upon you. Not only would you be wronging your own sister, but you would also be wronging that pure, sweet girl, whom, in the providence of God, we may rightly trust is being prepared to crown and bless your manhood, and with whom you cannot expect to be honored and happy unless your life has been characterized by the same purity and honor which you shall have a right to expect of her.

But the consequences which result from masturbation do not stop with the boy who practices it, nor with his parents, brothers and sisters, friends and relatives, but where such a boy lives to become a man, if he marries, and should become a father, his children after him must suffer to some degree the results of his sin. If his life has disqualified him for thrift, and his children on this account are born in poverty, this would be one of the results which they would suffer. But if his physical powers have been impaired by vice, or any other cause, he cannot transmit perfect physical, mental, and moral powers to his children. For neither physically not financially can a man transmit or give to his children that which he does not himself possess. As in grain so in human life, if the quality of the grain which is sown in the field is poor, the grain that grows from it will be inferior. When a boy injures his reproductive powers, so that when a man his sexual secretion shall be of an inferior quality, his offspring will show it in their physical, mental, and moral natures. So you see that even a young boy may prepare the way to visit upon his children that are to be, the results of vices and sins committed long years before they were born. This surely is a very impressive thought, and you will see how even the little boys of to-day are unconsciously molding and shaping not only the character and destiny of the children that are to come after them, but how they are also shaping the history and destiny of the nation. The thought and conduct, the aspirations and ambitions of the boys and girls in the kindergartens and primary schools are to-day cultivating and developing in them that life and character which will determine what shall be the dominant characteristics of this nation a hundred years to come.

I would that every body in the land might know these facts, so that he might intelligently resolve to take such care of his health that his children might be blessed with vigorous bodies; that he would so obey the laws of morality that his children might inherit a tend towards virtue, uprighteousness, and religion.

You see, then, how important it is that nothing should be done that will weaken any of the faculties of powers which God has given you, and to-morrow night I will endeavor to tell you briefly how boys may preserve their entire bodies in purity and strength.

Today’s Vivacious Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

“Adult” motion picture actors – a community not generally known for their precautionary lifestyle – are particularly frequent victims of the automotive crash exit. Death crash porn stars include among their illustrious ranks Veronica Blue (2000), Krysti Lynn (1995), Tommy Wilde (1994), Leo Ford (1991), and Tom Farrell (1993), who was killed by a hit-and-run driver while urinating by the side of the freeway. The archetypal instance of the genre took place on October 3, 1979, when “vivacious 29-year-old Playboy playmate” Claudia Jennings was involved in a fatal accident on the Pacific Coast Highway. This is a stretch of road notorious for its car crashes as well as for its ghost sightings. According to popular superstition, spirits are drawn to the water, and the Pacific Coast Highway is the road at the end of the earth.

Claudia Jennings:  What, me vivacious?

Culled from: Car Crash Culture

Wretched Recommendation!

The other book I read recently is another fascinating work about Chicago’s morbid history…

City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago
by Gary Krist

A fascinating book that tells the story of 12 pivotal days in the life of Chicago during the summer of 1919. A blimp disaster, a transit strike, a race riot, and a child murder all conspire to throw the city into chaos, while the city was led by Big Bill Thompson, a man of great political skill and ambition (we can thank him for making much of the landmark Plan of Chicago a reality), but also deeply flawed in many ways, and ill-equipped to handle the race riot that resulted in numerous murdered Chicagoans who were guilty of nothing more than having the “wrong” color of skin in the “wrong” part of town. The books give great insight into the fractured race relations that are still roiling the city. An excellent book for enthusiasts of Chicago history.

5/5