Part 22 (2/2)

Eminent Testimony.--An eminent English physician, Dr. Milton, who has treated many thousands of cases of this disease, remarks in a work upon the subject as follows:--

”Anything beyond one emission a month requires attention. I know this statement has been impugned, but I am quite prepared to abide by it.

I did not put it forward till I considered I had quite sufficient evidence in my hands to justify me in doing so.”

”An opinion prevails, as most of my readers are aware, among medical men, that a few emissions in youth do good instead of harm. It is difficult to understand how an unnatural evacuation can do good, except in the case of unnatural congestion. I have, however, convinced myself that the principle is wrong. Lads never really feel better for emissions; they very often feel decidedly worse. Occasionally they may fancy there is a sense of relief, but it is very much the same sort of relief that a drunkard feels from a dram. In early life the stomach may be repeatedly overloaded with impunity, but I suppose few would contend that overloading was therefore good. The fact is that emissions are invariably more or less injurious; not always visibly so in youth, nor susceptible of being a.s.sessed as to the damage inflicted by any given number of them, but still contributing, each in its turn, a mite toward the exhaustion and debility which the patient will one day complain of.”

Diurnal Emissions.--As the disease progresses, the irritation and weakness of the organs become so great that an erection and emission occur upon the slightest s.e.xual excitement. Mere proximity to a female, or the thought of one, will be sufficient to produce a pollution, attended by voluptuous sensations. But after a time the organs become so diseased and irritable that the slightest mechanical irritation, as friction of the clothing, the sitting posture, or riding horseback, will produce a discharge which may or may not be attended by sensation of any kind. Frequently a burning or more or less painful sensation occurs; erection does not take place. Even straining at stool will produce the discharge, or violent efforts to retain the feces when there is unnatural looseness.

The amount of the discharge may vary from a few drops to one or two drams, or even more. The character of the discharge is of considerable importance. When it occurs under the circ.u.mstances last described, viz., without erection or voluptuous sensations, it may be of a true seminal character, or it may contain no spermatozoa. This point can be determined by the microscope alone. The discharge is the result of s.e.xual excitement or irritation, nevertheless, and indicates a most deplorable condition of the genital organs. The patient is sometimes unnecessarily frightened by it, and often exaggerates the amount of the losses, and the symptoms arising from them. However, when a single nocturnal emission occasions such detrimental results, what must be the effect of repeated discharges occurring several times a day, or every time an individual relieves his bowels, urinates, or entertains an unvirtuous thought! If the losses were always seminal, the work of ruin would soon be complete; fortunately, those discharges which are the most frequent are only occasionally of a true seminal character.

It is not true, however, as has been claimed by some writers, one at least, that they are never seminal, as we have proved by repeated microscopic examinations.

Cause of Diurnal Emissions.--The causes of these discharges are spasmodic action of the muscles involved in e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, which is occasioned by local irritation, and pressure upon the seminal vesicles by the distended r.e.c.t.u.m or bladder. They denote a condition of debility and irritation which may well occasion grave alarm.

In occasional instances, the internal irritation reaches such a height that blood is discharged with the seminal fluid.

Internal Emissions.--As the disease progresses, external discharges finally cease, in some cases, or partially so, and the individual is encouraged by that circ.u.mstance to think that he is recovering. He soon discovers his error, however, for he continues to droop even though the discharges apparently cease altogether. This seems a mystery until some medical friend or a medical work calls his attention to the fact that the discharges now occur internally instead of externally, the seminal fluid pa.s.sing back into the bladder and being voided with the urine. An examination of the urine reveals the presence of cloudy matter appearing much like mucus, or a whitish sediment. A microscopic examination shows this matter to be composed largely of zoosperms, which decides its origin.

An Important Caution.--It is necessary, however, to caution the reader not to p.r.o.nounce every whitish sediment or flocculent matter found in the urine to be a seminal discharge, for the great majority are of a different character. They are, most frequently, simply mucus or phosphates from the bladder. Seminal fluid cannot be distinguished from mucus by any other than a careful microscopic examination. A microscope of good quality and capable of magnifying at least one hundred and fifty diameters is required, together with considerable skill in the operator.

Quacks have done an immense amount of harm by frightening patients into the belief that they were suffering from discharges of this kind when there was, in fact, nothing more than a copious deposit of phosphates, which is not at all infrequent in nervous people, especially after eating.

When the condition described does really exist, however, the patient cannot make too much haste to put himself under the care of a competent physician for treatment. If there is even a reasonable suspicion that it may exist, he should have his urine carefully examined by one competent to criticize it intelligently.

By many authors, the term spermatorrhoea is confined entirely to this stage of the disease.

It is said that the forcible interruption of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n has been the cause of this unfortunate condition in many cases. Such a proceeding is certainly very hazardous.

One more caution should be offered; viz., that the occasional presence of spermatozoa in the urine is not a proof of the existence of internal emissions, as a few zoosperms may be left in the urethra after a voluntary or nocturnal emission, and thus find their way into the urine as it is discharged from the bladder.

Impotence.--In the progress of the disease a point is finally reached when the victim not only loses all desire for the natural exercise of the s.e.xual function, but when such an act becomes impossible. This condition may have been reached even before all of the preceding symptoms have been developed. Ultimately it becomes impossible to longer practice the abominable vice itself, on account of the great degeneration and relaxation of the organs. The approach of this condition is indicated by increasing loss of erectile power, which is at first only temporary, but afterward becomes permanent. Still the involuntary discharges continue, and the victim sees himself gradually sinking lower and lower into the pit which his own hands have dug. The misery of his condition is unimaginable; manhood lost, body a wreck, and death staring him in the face.

This is a brief sketch of the local effects of the horrid vice of self-abuse. The description has not been at all overdrawn. We have yet to consider the general effects, some of which have already been incidentally touched upon in describing nocturnal emissions, with their immediate results.

General Effects.--The many serious effects which follow the habit of self-abuse, in addition to those terrible local maladies already described, are the direct results of two causes in the male; viz.,

1. Nervous exhaustion;

2. Loss of the seminal fluid.

There has been much discussion as to which one of these was the cause of the effects observed in these cases. Some have attributed all the evil to one cause, and some to the other. That the loss of s.e.m.e.n is not the only cause, nor, perhaps, the chief source of injury, is proved by the fact that most deplorable effects of the vice are seen in children before p.u.b.erty, and also in females, in whom no seminal discharge nor anything a.n.a.logous to it occurs. In these cases, it is the nervous shock alone which works the evil.

Again, that the seminal fluid is the most highly vitalized of all the fluids of the body, and that its rapid production is at the expense of a most exhaustive effort on the part of the vital forces, is well attested by all physiologists. It is further believed by some eminent physicians that the seminal fluid is of great use in the body for building up and replenis.h.i.+ng certain tissues, especially those of the nerves and brain, being absorbed after secretion. Though this view is not coincided in by all physiologists, it seems to be supported by the following facts:--

1. The composition of the nerves and that of spermatozoa is nearly identical.

2. Men from whom the testes have been removed before p.u.b.erty, as in the case of eunuchs, are never fully developed as they would otherwise have been.

The nervous shock accompanying the exercise of the s.e.xual organs--either natural or unnatural--is the most profound to which the system is subject. The whole nervous system is called into activity; and the effects are occasionally so strongly felt upon a weakened organism that death results in the very act. The subsequent exhaustion is necessarily proportionate to the excitement.

It need not be surprising, then, that the effects of the frequent operation of two such powerful influences combined should be so terrible as they are found to be.

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