Dr.Beddoes wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century: "It is in vain that we dissemble to ourselves the eagerness with which children of either sex seek to satisfy themselves concerning the conformation of the other.

No degree of reserve in the heads of families, no contrivances, no care to put books of one description out of sight and to garble others, has perhaps, with any one set of children, succeeded in preventing or stifling this kind of curiosity.

No part of the history of human thought would perhaps be more singular than the stratagems devised by young people in different situations to make themselves masters or witnesses of the secret.

And every discovery, due to their own inquiries, can but be so much oil poured upon an imagination in flames" (T.
Beddoes, _Hygeia_, 1802, vol.iii, p.

59).