RC F5 ^m ^^H ••v.*: to M Book .Fa MATRIMONY, IMPOTENCY AND STERILITY, ANATOxMICALLY, PHYSIOLOGICALLY AND MEDICALLY EXPLAINED, WITH A COMPREHENSIVE EXPOSITION OF THE NATURE AND MODERN TREATMENT OF SYPHILIS, SECONDARY SYMPTOMS, GONORRHOEA, GLEET, STRICTURES, WHITES, SEMINAL WEAK- NESS, NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS. A.\D ALL THE CONSEQUENCES ARISING FROM MASTURBATION, &c. &c. By HEffHY FAWCETT, J!. I>., M. R. C. §• Author of " The Bachelors 9 Guide" Also, Author of "A new Treatise on the Practicability of Removing Strictures by Absorption." u He who in pleasure's downy arms, Ne'er lost his health or youthful charms, A hero lives ; and justly can, Exclaim, * In me, behold a man.' " ^Sts^Sf^fe** rf \^^^^/U^yL M«*eJc /4. /fob. Southern District of New- York, ss. Be it Remembered, that on the second day of January, Anno Domini, 1844, Henry Fawcett, of the said District, hath deposited in this Office the Title of a Book ; the Title of which is in the words following, to wit : — " Matrimony, Impoicncy and Sterility, Anatomically, Physiologically and Medicinally explained ; with a comprehensive exposition of the Nature and Modern Treatment of Syphilis, Secon- dary S>/mp'oms, Gonorrhoea, Gleet, Strictures, Whites. Seminal Weakness, Nocturnal Emissions, and all the consequences arising from Masturbation, $-c, $c" By HENRY FAWCETT, M. D., M. R. C. S., Author of " The Bachelor's Guide ;" also Author of " A New Treatise on the Practicability of Removing Strictures by Absorp- tion." " He, who in pleasure's downy arms, Ne'er lost his health or youthful charms, A hero lives; and justly can, Exclaim, 'In me, behold a man. 1 " The right whereof he claims as Author and Proprietor, in conformity with an Act of Congress, entitled " An Act to amend the several Acts respecting Copy-rights." CHAS. D. BETTS, Clerk of the Southern District of New-Ycrk. 1 •: \ a INTRODUCTION. The Profession and the Public have been so inun- dated with works pretending to describe and cure those ailments which are the subject of the pre- sent treatise, that some reason may be de- manded to justify the obtrusion of a new work upon the already surfeited appetite of the age, my ground of defence, may, perhaps, appear sin- gular, as it rests materially on the multiplicity of the kind ; for, it is notorious, that, with a few ex- ceptions, they are the offspring of interested em- pirics, whose object has been, through these media, to puff into reputation certain nostrums, of which the proprietorship is vested in themselves. Hence, it follows, as a natural consequence, that whatever be the disorders treated of, however opposed in their nature and symptoms, and however antagonist in their operation, the same treatment is directed, and the same medicine is prescribed. Thus a reference to such pages will exhibit venereal com- plaints, epilepsy, cancer and even madness, as being made to acknowledge the talismanic influence of the same omnipotent remedy, alike applicable to, IT INTRODUCTION. the robust and feeble, the plethoric and emaciated, in all stages, varieties and climates. I might quote many instances in proof of this position, where the nostrum venders having compounded a something, which perplexes analysis, immediately write an elaborate descant upon its assumed pro- perties, and no sooner have they succeeded in forcing it into circulation, than in the arrogance of triumphant cunning, they adopt the ejaculation of Ovid— " Jamque opus exegi, quod nee jovis ira, nee ignis, Nee poterit ferrum, nee edax abolore vetustas." Or, perhaps, greet us in simple English — f " Let the wise of all ages e'en langh as they will, A well furnished purse is the best proof of skill."* A very celebrated writer observes, " that those who grow rich by administering physic, are not to be numbered with them that get money by ad- ministering poison." I do not mean, however, to detract from the authenticated merits belonging to certain medicines, the sanative influence of which, upon specific disorders, has been proved and sanctioned by competent judges. My object is merely to point out to the unwary and inexpe- * Among the most general modes of publicity which the empiric adopts, is that of the hand-bill ; this is an old fashion, for in the " March to Finchley," Hogarth makes the anxious countenance of a Sergeant who is micturating against a wall, suddenly illumined by the sight of Dr. Rock's advertisement of an infallible cure for a disease, the most acute sensations of which he at that moment experiences. INTRODUCTION. T rienced, the fallacy as well as the dangerous effects of those empiricisms which would attack all dis- eases with the same medicine; a practice, to speak of it in the least unfavourable terms, is not only inconsistent with established principles, but even opposed to common sense. My attention for many years past, has been exclusively directed to the treatment of venereal diseases, and such complaints as arise immediately from a disorganization of the generative system, whether constitutional or acquired. In this state- ment I must not be considered to cast the slightest imputation upon the skill of the authorized mem- bers of our profession in the treatment of such complaints ; on the contrary, I mean simply to infer, that, as in all important undertakings, much can be effected by a division of labour ; so it may reasonably be assumed, on my own part, that no less can be the result of an unwearied attention to that particular branch of study, wherein I offer to the Public, the knowledge and experience of a. long and extensive practice ; besides, I am further actuated in offering those remarks from the rapid and unprecedented sale of fifteen thousand copies of the " Bachelors' Guide,"* also ? over twelve * A worthless fellow who kept a bookstand in Wall-sfeef, pub-, lished "The Bachelors' Guide" under the name of " The Green Book," and represented it as the production of R J. Cuiverwellof London, and he sold ten thousand copies of it in this city ; on that l* VI INTRODUCTION. thousand copies of my work on " Sterility, Bar- renness, &c, &c." This is the best test of pub- lic opinion, not only in reference to the accuracy of the principles those works contained, but also their practical value and utility. It is well that the publication of works of this tendency have at length aroused the slumbering fears and anxieties of the Clergy, the Heads of our Public Schools, as well as parents and guardians, and those more nearly interested in the watchful training of the rising generation. Let it not be imagined, that indiscriminate cen- sure is applicable, and deservedly to be lavished upon the conductors of those establishments des- tined to the elementary instruction of youth. The most watchful care — the most sedulous attention, is often found insufficient to arrest the develop- ment of depraved habits. That which every thoughtful person must deplore, has been the ignorance, not the apathy, but the perfect uncon- sciousness hitherto displayed on this subject. The following statement is instructive, although the mere mention of its revolting peculiarity, is enough to startle a father into unwonted anxiety for his child, when I say that out of three hundred account, I have avoided, as much as possible, adopting the same strain of language and style which I made use of in the Bachelors Guide; but, by a reference to that book, it will be immediately perceived Ui&t both works were written by the same author, INTRODUCTION. VI* and seven cases of sexual infirmity, the result of self-pollution, which have passed under my review during the space of one year, tivo hundred and sixty voluntarily informed me, or in answer to the question, admitted they had originally contracted the habit at school. I leave this statement to pro- duce its own results. Public attention is at length awakened to one of the most secret, yet deadly and fatal causes of depopulation, premature mor- tality, the production of a delicate, sickly, diseased and puny offspring — the elements of social decline and of national decay ; and that man must indeed be devoid of every generous impulse (and for such a one his country well may blush) who would not hail and urge onward in its course, every move- ment which has for its object the detection of those lurking enemies to her domestic, and consequently her social and political greatness, which lie too often concealed, where the mere party legislator would never dream to find them. The Author. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE VENEREAL DISEASE CHAPTER I. Historical Sketch of the Venereal Disease, from its earliest records — Opinions of the Italians — of Dr. Cullen — of Dr. Hall, of Vienna. The disease introduced by Columbus into . Europe. Dreadful effects on its first breaking out. The Greeks and the Arabians ignorant of the nature of the malady. Obscure notions of the Urethral discharge in the Bible. Prac- tices of Quacks. Opinions of Mr. Hunter and his followers. Practical Experiments of the Army Surgeons in successfully removing that disease without mercury. This disease has been justly described as one of the most surprising phenomena in the history of medicine, whether as regards the newness of its origin, the malignant inveteracy of its symptoms, or the singular mode in which it is produced and pro- pagated. Its consequences travel out of the ordina- ry track of bodily ailment, covering the frame with disgusting evidences of its ruthless nature, and im- pregnating the wholesome stream of life with mortal poison. It conveys into families the seeds of dis- union and unhappiness, undermining domestic har- mony, and striking at the very soul of human inter- course. 10 Historical Sketch of Many are the names by which this malady has been distinguished, in the gradual development of medical science. The natives of the Indies where it is endemical, call it patursa, by many it is styled Lues Venerea ; by Hier Fracastorius* and subse- quently by Dr. Cullen, it has been denominated Syphilis. And this appears to be the established nomenclature. Syphilis is from the Greek wcptog — " Filthy," a term somewhat too severe, since it is not always the result of impure desires. It arises but too often from hereditary taint, or from the im- prudence of husbands. All the primitive writers concur in naming this disease morbus gallicus, or the French disease ; an appellation though employed by innumerable foreign and native writers, at differ- ent periods, is as unjust in fact, as absurd in point of description. There have been some learned disputes as to whether the venereal disease has arisen in modern times, or whether it existed among the Ancients. Dr. Cullen seems to doubt whether to consider it a species of the Leprosy which anciently prevailed in Asia, or an entirely new disease. He says,t " It is * Hier Fracastorius, an Italian, very unfairly charges the French with being the propagators of this scourge, which was evi- dently communicated to that nation by the Italians themselves. He has the following lines in his poem on syphilis : — 44 Qui casus rerum varii, quae semina morbum Insuetum, nee longa ulli per secula visum Attulerint ; nostra qui tempestate per omnem Europeam partimque Asiae, Lebraeque per urbes, Scevit in Latium vero per tristia bella Gallorum irrupuit ; nomenque a gente recepit." t Vide Gullen's First Lines of Physic. Vol. iv. p. 383, The Venereal Disease. 1 1 sufficiently probable, that anciently, in certain parts of Asia, where the leprosy prevailed, and in Europe, after that disease had been introduced into it, a dis- ease of the genitals, resembling that which now commonly arises from Syphilis, had frequently ap- peared ; but it is equally probable that a new dis- ease, and what is at present termed Syphilis, was first brought into Europe about the end of the fif- teenth century ; and that the distemper now so fre- quently occurring, has been entirely derived from that which was imported from America at the period mentioned." The authorities, however, which favor the asser- tion of its being a new disease are so many, and of such considerable reputation, that their opinions may be considered established. Nicholas Leonicenus demonstrates, that it could not be the same disorder with the Eliphantiasis of Arabia, nor the Lepra of Greece, nor the disease called Lichen, which many have asserted it to be, because the symptoms of all these maladies are entirely different from those of syphilis. Fallopius, Massa, Cataneus, Gallus,J. de Vigo, Ubricus de Stutten, with many others, concur with Leonicenus, affirming that the disease, the ap- pearance of which had began to create such divisions in the medical schools, in its origin and progress, its prognostics and diagnostics, differed from all the known maladies of the age. Another proof of the new r ness of this disease has been founded on the silence of all the satirical poets of ancient times, upon the subject which would have afforded them such abundant matter for keen raillery when waging war against the propensities and vices of their days. It is said, indeed, that in the time of 12 Historical Sketch of Tiberius Caesar, anew disease made its appearance, of which Pliny and Martial took some notice ; but this disorder commenced with eruptions on the chin, and during its whole progress was confined to the face; nor do these authors mention any other symptoms by which the disease can be identified with the syphilis of modern times. A modern author of high celebrity,* satisfactorily demonstrates that syphilis and those complaints incidental to the genitals, and treated of by primi- tive writers, are not the same, and in the course of his work deprecates in no measured terms, attempts to cure by the agency of mercurial preparations. And during my sojourn in Edinburgh, in the years 1821 and 1S22, I discovered that the medical faculty of that city, who were attached to the public institutions, eschewed the use of mercury entirely from their practice ; and the fact was well known, that among the shops there, the sale of mercurial articles was much diminished. I have cautiously, in my own practice, watched the progress of the anti-mercurial mode of treatment, and in the many thousand cases which came under my observation, both in Europe and this country, I very seldom had occasion to use mercury. Columbus, the Genoese, doubtless introduced this destructive misery into Europe ; and although the fact has been detailed over and over again, a brief reference to the circumstances cannot be omitted in this place, without creating a palpable hiatus in a treatise professing to be historical. The commission which gave this bold adventurer authority to pursue his thirst for discovery, was. * Carmichael. The Venereal Disease. 13 signed on the 17th April, 1492, by Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Castile ; and in the fol- lowing September, Columbus, with his followers, sailed from Spain, and discovered those rich islands, which, among other things, were abundantly prolific in this virulent disease. The infection is said to have been as endemical among the natives of those newly discovered countries, as the itch or scurvy among ourselves. On the return of Columbus to Andalusia, in the month of March following, the disease was intro- duced into Spain. Some months afterwards, when the siege of Naples took place, a reinforcement of Spaniards was sent to the garrison, among whom were many infected soldiers, who thus introduced the curse into that city, where it spread through the whole circle of the inhabitants, both male and female, with such fearful rapidity, and caused such horrible devastations, that the governor and mng ; strates turned out all the diseased courtezans, as well as all other persons not necessary to the defence of the city. The women thus expelled, being for the most part beautiful, were eagerly received into the French camp. So speedy and terrible was the influence of the disease upon the besieging army, the Physicians being totally unprepared to arrest its progress, that out of a force of sixty thousand men, there scarcely remained a sufficient number to carry on the siege.* * Sieges appear to foster an inveterate lues — this circumstance is often alluded to in modern t : mes. So late as 1688, after the razing of the celebra'ed siege of Londonderry, it is stattd. that in 105 days, the besieging army had sustained a loss of 9,100 men in their abort ve auemp s 'o reduce the city. "Although most of these fell by the sword, the rest died of fever, dysentery, 2 14 Historical Sketch of the On the first appearance of this disorder in the Italian provinces, the horrid lacerations of the human frame, and the attendant excruciating tortures which it inflicted upon its victims, repelled, like a plague, the approach of pity, and deterred those whom na- ture and affection prompted to lend consolation and assistance. Even those afflicted with leprosy counted themselves fortunate in their escape from this still more tremendous evil, and shunned the unhappy vic- tims of this disease as they would the bite of a veno- mous serpent, or the shaft of unerring destruction. The poor were compelled to fly from their habita- tions as soon as any symptoms of the disorder mani- fested themselves, and to take refuge m abodes ot the brute creation, in dens and caverns and trackless forests. Physicians, friends, relations, and even parents, forsook them ; the ties of nature were rent assunder, and all social compact was annihilated— so predominant was the fear of infection.' The Greek and Arabian authors seem to be totally uninformed on the subject.! Prosper BurgMms ft nd Johan de Vigo gave most disgusting details of the fearful appearances which the disease assumed in different subjects, in which they are well corro- borated by Joan, Baptist, Montanus, Cataneus, Sebastian Aquilan, Petrus Maynardus, #c,; but into these details it is unnecessary to enter now when the disorder is so well understood. It will ^~^ZZ of the most inveterate Hnd, and W hich ap- peared in a very remarUoU manner on «he bod.es o some .f < ,r dead Officers and soldiers"-^ of Deny, by the Rev. John Graham, p. 259. * Laurentius Phrysius de Morb. Gallic, t Nic. Leonicenus. Venereal Disease* 15 suffice to remark, that in many instances the symp- toms closely approximated to those of Elephantiasis ; hi others to those of the Leprosy ; that the disorder frequently corroded the septum nasi, levelling it with the face ; and that it fed upon the lips ; sometimes destroyed the uvula ; at others perforated the palate, and completely changed the tones and properties of the voice. These symptoms experienced multitu-^ dinous variations, with change of years, many of the old ones becoming greatly qualified, and new ones developing themselves, to the great alarm of those who groaned under their influence, as well as to the extreme perplexity of the medical practitioners, who were yet in a state of comparative ignorance with re- spect to the real nature of the disease ; and whose en- deavours to repress its tremendous ravages were con- sequently directed rather with a view to speculative results, than by any of those positive rules of practice, which the industrious application of subsequent ages has rendered successful. It is clear, then, from the alarm and astonishment this disease excited amongst the learned, as w r ell as from the silence of the ancient writers, that no disease like a virulent lues could ex- ist. But some have thought that the particular form of disease, which consists simply of a discharge, is of considerable antiquity. Thus learned men have fancied an allusion to this disease in the Psalms of David and the Proverbs of Solomon, where young men are cautioned in very general, but inconclusive terms, against the evil of harlot-hunting. An at- tempt was also made by Mr. Becket, in the 357 and 365th Philosophical Transactions, to show that Gonorrhoea was known to Arden and other English writers, under the name of Brenning or Burning; all those who are affected with this disorder being de- 16 Historical Sketch of scribed as brent or burnt The observations of this author are to the effect — that the disease was given to a man who became connected with a woman whose body had been violently heated by frequent copula- tion with different men, so that the next comer was brent or burnt ; that is, the urethra suffered an exco- riation which caused the urine to be hot and scalding. John Arden defines it "a certain ijiward heat and ex- coriation of the urethra ;" but as there appears to have been no discoloured running, no chancres with callous lips, no chordee,no stricture; in short, no other symp- tom but the heat and excoriation, and as it has been proved in numberless instances since, that heat and excoriation may exist in the absence of disease, here is no proof to bear out the assertion that the Brenning of the old writers can be identified with Gonorrhoea. About the middle of the sixteenth century, that is, some sixty years after the first appearance of the venereal disease in Europe, Alexander Trajan Pe- tronius describes its universal prevalence in this quarter of the globe, affirming that it infected old and young, male and female, the fat and lean, the rich and poor; nay, that it did not spare the infant in the womb, &c. Benedictus Victorius advanced the absurd position, that it might be communicated to a sound person (without any sexual interference) from the state of the heavens, the evil aspect of the planets, or their unlucky conjunction ; probably, however, this strange assertion was hazarded with a view to screen the characters of persons affected with this disease, among whom were eminent car- dinals, right reverend bishops, and the most pious monks and nuns, who were as frequently under its influence as meaner and more worldly personages. This conviction, too, is confirmed by the language of The Venereal Disease. 17 Alexander Petronius, who insinuates that he knew not 'the cause of the disorder, and that if he did know, lie dared- not say it. In former days, as at present, quacks and impostors existed, to whom, the afflicted multitude greedily re- sorted. These depredators upon human life had their specifics > which speedily removed the external symp- toms, and the patient believed himself happy to have so purchased his escape. But, alas ! the suppressed disorder, uneradieated by their superficial remedies, invariably burst forth with renewed malignity, entail- ing upon the credulous sufferer redoubled agonies, which were even heightened by the stings of self- reproach. Impostors of a similar kind still exist — pretending to cure without mercury — they employ it neverthe- less ; and the patient to whom this potent remedy is administered, without confinement or due caution, often becomes seriously disordered or his constitution undermined. I have clearly traced the development of fatal consumption to the intemperate use of mer- cury, administered to young gentlemen of fortune by a quack. The reader is probably not ignorant, that some years ago, experiments, on a large scale, as to the removal of syphilis without mercury, were made by- some of the surgeons of the English army. It is to these experiments, very properly conceived and very carefully executed, that we owe the introduc- tion of the non-mercurial plan. I feel it incumbent on myself to notice this circumstance, because it certainly very justly appeared the results were favourable. And they conclusively point out, that even among soldiers subjected to daily fatigue and 2* 18 Historical Sketch of fyc. exertion, that the disease can be combatted without mercury. And I feel myself perfectly justified in my assertions from practical experience. The day of doubt and delusion has passed away ; all the mists of error which originally surrounded this disorder have been long since dispelled ; — the rays of science has dissipated the mystery which involved it. Yet, increased as the knowledge of the nature of this malady is, and improved as is the mode of treatment, it is by no means to be assumed that the disease has become of trifling influence, or that it carries no menace of consequence to the human frame ; for, with all its modifications, it is still a dis- order of that subtle and 'malignant dipositon, which requires to be watched at its commencement and in its progress with sedulous attention, and to be arrested with all the force of medicine, without put- ting in peril the integrity of the constitution itself. This much may suffice to instruct the reader in the history of the Venereal disease, and to acquaint him with the opinions of learned writers. I shall presently enter into details of its various forms, un- der different chapters, with a view to render the whole subject clear and intelligible to every degree of human capacity. CHAPTER II. Of ihe Symptoms and Treatment of Gonorrhoea, (or Clap,) Gleet, Stricture, Irrilabte Bladder, Swelled Testicles, <$-c. Venereal intercourse is occasionally impure ; and there are animal poisons generated and communi- cated by this intercourse, of a peculiarly malignant character. One is the poison of Gonorrhoea, (the disease vulgarly termed Clap) which falling on the mucous membrane of the urethra, produces from that surface, a discharge of infectious matter ; the other, or the poison of syphilis, being applied to the surface of the skin, or, (as far as is known at pre- sent,) to any surface, produces local inflammation and ulceration ; forming a sore which is called a Chancre. The discharge from this, being received into the absorbent glands, occasions swellings, which have been named Bubo, and from the transmission of the poison into the circulation, there arise respectively, inflammation and ulceration in the throat, on the skin, in the membranes, investing the bones, and even in , those solid bodies themselves. If a healthy individual have sexual intercourse with another, labouring under chronic mucous dis- charge as the result of gonorrhoeal inflammation, in- fection though not absolutely certain^is most likely to 20 Of the Symptoms and Treatment arise, but no certain rule can be laid down with re- gard to the time that a clap will take before it makes its appearance, after infection has been conveyed. In some instances, three or four days elapse, in others, there will not be the least appearance of irritation, before the expiration of ten or even four- teen days, and Sir Astley Cooper, with other writers, record as many weeks. Most commonly, however, the disease is perceptible in the space of from six to twelve days. In the males it commences with a sense of uneasiness, or tingling about the extremity of the penis ; often a thrilling sensation, not of an unpleasant character, and nearly allied to the vene- real oestrum ; presently this is exchanged for itching and soreness, and then a drop of fluid escaping without effort, the attention is called to the part ; and it is found, the lips of the urethra are swollen and inflamed ; a whitish, glutinous, and nearly trans- parent fluid, exuding from its orifice. At first, the discharge from the passage is mucous ; but, after- wards, it assumes a decidedly purulent appearance, that is, resembling " matter." This becomes yellow, or, if the inflammatory symptoms run high, green, and it is often intermixed and streaked with blood. I say resembling matter, for the fact is, that even in these aggravated cases, the discharge contains little beyond the altered mucous secretion of the part. The time this augmented diseased secretion will continue to discharge is quite indefinite. Some peo- ple assert it will wear itself out ; one thing is cer- tain, it will sooner wear out the sufferer ; besides, the doctrine is dangerous, inasmuch as it overlooks the permanent consequences of a disease supposed to pass away. Thickening of the mucous membrane, Of Gonorrhoea, fyc. 21 of the urinary canal is one of the consequences of long protracted and neglected clap, and this state of parts lays the foundation, if not identical with stric- ture. Or the discharge may cease to present its usual characters and leave a surface prone to the secretion of a thin, ichorous fluid, termed Gleet. It is obvious then, that no folly can be greater than that of suffering the disease to end as many others are apt to do, by terminating in another ; and that other, often of a permanently incurable character. Besides these effects on the urethra, gonorrhoea takes a course internally. It does not confine itself to the lips of the urethra, but often produces an erysipelatous in- flammation and swelling of the glands and fore-skin ; occasioning effusion, and the formation of the diseases termed Phymosis and Paraphymosis, in the former of which, the fore-skin cannot be drawn back to cover the end of the penis ; in the latter, the pre- puce forming a tight ring at the back of the gland, cannot again be brought forward ; the pain and stran- gulation in this state of the parts are excessive, and demand prompt surgical interference. The glands of the groin often become affected from sympathy. We say from sympathy, in contradistinction to that swol- len state of the inguinal glands, resulting from the transmission of syphilitic matter, as occurs in the aggravated forms of venereal disease. In the first instance the glands swell, but not the same range of glands as are liable to be affected with syphilitic bubo ; and there is also this distinction, that while in the latter case they almost invariably burst, the gland that is sympathetically inflamed during the progress of gonorrhoea, never or very seldom inflames to suppuration. Where this effect takes place from gonorrhoea, several glands of the groin are apt to be 22 Of the Symptoms and Treatment affected in succession ; whereas, in the absorption of the poison of syphilis, a single gland only is en-, larged on each side. In the course of the disease, swelling and suppuration often takes place in. the mouths of those lacunce, which, like dilated pouches, are situated chiefly near the canal. Matter becomes accumulated there, and this place appears to con- stitute the last entrenchment of the diseased action. Irritation and inflammation occur also in the spongy bodies, forming the bulk of the penis, thus constitut- ing that painful affection termed Chordee, in which the penis becomes partially erect, and feels as if curved and bound down, so as to prevent its com- plete extension. This, of course, is a temporary, though intensely agonizing predicament, and gene- rally takes place in the night, accompanied with great pain, preventing the patient from sleeping. When the parts are not occupied with much inflam- mation, few or none of the last symptoms will ap- pear, and only a discharge of a specific character, with a slight heat or scalding in making water, will prevail. The sensation of scalding varies much in intensity in different individuals, and frequently abates or passes off altogether where the discharge has become established. Generally, from the adja- cent parts sympathising with those already affected, the patient feels a sensation of uneasiness, and dragging down about the thighs and fundament. One of the most painful consequences arising in the course of gonorhcea, is the occurrence of Swelled Testicle. From the statements afforded in the anatomical section of this woik, it will be seen there is a true continuity of mucous surface from the urethra along the cord to the testicles, and it is along Of Gonorrhoea, <£c. 23 this surface that gonorrhoeal inflammation occasion- ally creeps, giving rise to horribly painful enlarge- ment of one or both of these organs. The testicle is enveloped in a dense fibrous capsule, which does not readily yield to distension ; hence, the pain when enlargement is produced by inflammatory action. In consequence of this, there will be excruciating agony extending into the small of the back, heat, restless- ness, and symptomatic fever ; a furred tongue, thirst, quick pulse, and great depression of the vital ener- gies. It not unfrequently happens that the swollen testicle suppurates and bursts ; and whether this occur or no, it is certain that on the subsidence of disease, its functions as a secretory gland in the production and elimination of the seminal fluid, are by no means enhanced by all this mischief. But of all the consequences of gonorrhoea which tell most fatally upon the comfort of married life, and interfere most decidedly with the procreative energies, the formation of stricture is most to be dreaded. Spas- modic stricture, occurs during the progress of (lop, and is produced by temporary spasms of the muscles surrounding the membranous portion of the urinary canal. Inflammatory stricture, generally succeeds acute gonorrhoea, and consists in the effusion of ad- hesive matter around the canal ; while 'permanent stricture is the result of the' thickening of the ure- thra, and consequent narrowing of the canal from a slow inflammatory process. There are many cases ' of permanent stricture besides gonorrhoeal inflamma- tion, and while speaking of this, it will be well to enumerate them. No one is more frequent than excessive prolongation in venereal intercourse. Its constant effect, is the exhaustion of the energy of the 24 Of the Symptoms and Treatment of muscular fibres ; thus are they thrown into irregular action, and permanent contraction of some part of the passage is thereby induced. Indeed so strong is this effect, that symptoms of spasmodic stricture have been known to arise in some patients after every repetition of venereal intercourse, especially if due time for repose have not been afforded for the secre- tory organs; and though these symptoms at first were found on examination, not to be the effect of permanent stricture, yet this was generally produced in the end, and proved most troublesome in its re- moval. Masturbation, in this way, produces the same or worse effects than severe venereal effort. Spasmodic stricture, then, or that too violent excite- ment of the muscles around the neck of the bladder, whether arising from self -pollution, venereal excesses, or inflammation of mismanaged or neglected clap, may, and often does terminate in permanent con- striction of the urinary canal. At the commence- ment of the formation of permanent stricture, the surgeon is made acquainted with the real nature of the complaint by the following indications : — The first is the retention of a few drops of urine in the urethra, after the whole appears to be discharged. The patient, although the stream of urine may be somewhat diminished, feels no particular uneasiness^ until he perceives some difficulty in its expulsion. The effort is greater than usual, and a straining con- tinues, even after the bladder is emptied. Occasional irregularities from cold, indulgence in drink, or change of weather, and even very trifling causes are sufficient to cause the urine to pass only hydrops, or for a time to be totally obstructed. The bladder, in the progress of this disease becomes irritable ; this is Of Gonorrhoea, fyc. 25 evinced by the person not being able to sleep so long as usual, without rising to effect the urinary dis- charge. A man in health will sleep for seven, eight, or nine hours, without being obliged to empty his bladder ; but if he labour under stricture, he cannot continue for a longer period than four or five hours, and frequently much less than this. A patient of mine, who occasionally (but not often) gets tipsy over night, invariably sends for my aid to pass the catheter next morning ; the man is the subject of stricture, and frequently rises in the night to evacuate his bladder ; when under the influence of intoxicat- ing fluid's, he sleeps insensible to the stimulus of an irritable yet distending bladder, and the result on waking is complete powerlessness to effect its ordinary discharge. The next circumstance observ- able in the progress of permanent stricture, is the forked division of the urinary stream, the reason of which is deducible from the uneven, irregular, and swollen, as well as contracted state of the urethra. The urine cannot be ejected to the usual and na- tural distance, although the patient be sensible of the bladder making more than usual exertions. Some- times it assumes a spiral or twisted direction. Even the thread-like stream, conspicuous in the advanced stage of stricture often gives place to a discharge bv mere drops, attended by the strongest efforts and the most excruciating pain. The coats of the bladder become enormously thickened, there is dilation behind the place where the stricture occurs; (which is commonly the membranous por- tion of the urethra anterior to the prostate gland :) the ureters, or canals, leading from the kidnevs to the bladder become distended and dilated, and the 3 H6 Symptoms and Treatment kidneys themselves, the secretory organs of the urine become diseased. Many of these appearances, if not all, are attributable to the existence of a phy- sical impediment, a narrowing, or stricture, of a portion of the urinary canal, — and if viewed in con- nection with the obligation of marriage, are most grave in their consequences. Gleet is one of the sequelae of Clap, and is often exceedingly difficult of removal, sometimes continu- ing for years. The discharge becomes chronic, its character is altered ; and from being purulent, it is now semi-transparent. Its persistence mostly de- pends on the co-existence of stricture in some por- tion of the canal. The term " Gonorhcea" is de- rivable from the Greek, and signifies, literally, a flow of seed ; the earlier writers mistaking the mucous discharge occuring in clap, for the all-important seminal fluid. " Blennorhagia," a flow of mucous, is the more correct classical nominclature, synony- mous with the " claude-pisse" hot urine, of the French, cr " clap," of the vernacular English. Timoeus relates that a young law T student, the victim of self-pollution, was " seized w 7 ith a gonorrhoea, ac- companied with a weakness of the whole body." He observes, " I looked upon the gonorrhoea as a sequel of the relaxation of the seminal vessels," and truly his reasoning was correct ; but as to the dis- charge, termed by him, " Gonorrhoea," it was neither the involuntary escape of semen, nor the infectious matter, correctly indicating the existence of clap ; but a gleety discharge from the prostate, vesicular seminales and urethral surface, certainly very analo- gous in character, to the chronic effusion superven- ing on stricture from neglected clap. Of Gonorrhoea, fyc. 2? There is an exceeding distressing affection fre- quently resulting from gonorrhoea, and thereby fitly to be introduced in this place, named by surgeons — " Irritable bladder." I say frequently arising in this way, but it may also proceed from certain solitary practices ; in fact, is closely identified with all the habits of sensualism. The patient is annoyed by a frequent desire to void his urine, and this symptom becomes ultimately so urgent, that the inclination to empty the bladder occurs as often as every ten or fif- teen minutes. The pain experienced is in exact ratio with the distention of the bladder, and some- times the urine is discharged mixed with blood. Irritable bladder is a dreadful disorder, the patient's life is a burden to him : he is obliged to keep from society, and linger away his hours in solitude. The late Sir Astley Cooper relates the case of a young gentleman, who, being in company with a party of ladies, was about to leave them for the purpose of making water, having at the moment a strong desire ; in the greatest agony he rode with them some miles; when endeavouring at the end of his journey to evacuate his bladder, to his utter astonishment he could not pass a drop ; a surgeon was sent for, who took away the urine by means of a catheter, but from suppuration supervening upon an irritable bladder, he shortly died from exhaustion. Next to those cases which have occurred in connection with gonorrhoeal inflammation, the most frequent instan- ces of this irritable condition of the organ occur, as the result of excessive venereal indulgence in ad- vanced life, or self-pollution in youth. In reference to the treatment of gonorrhoeal affec- tions little need be added. The most important 28 Symptoms and Treatment remark I have to offer, relates to the necessity of the avoidance of its mismanagement. The deplorable results of this form of venereal disease just recited, are easily averted by common care and prudence ; but from negligence, or in the hands of unskilful surgeons, the most calamitous consequences not un- frequently arise. Among the most common of those cases which precipitate these secondary diseases. may be enumerated the use, or rather the abuse of Mercury, (which by unanimous consent has long been banished from the scientific treatment of gonorrhoea,) the employment of stimulant resins, as Turpentine, Cubebs, or the Balsam of Copaiba, before the subsidence of the inflammatory or acute stage : but principally the mismanagement of astringent or irritating Injections. These, however useful and necessary in the chronic stage of the complaint, undoubtedly tend, by destroying the discharge, to fix the specific diseased action upon the testicles, pro- ducing inflammation and enlargment, nay, frequently disorganization there ; consequences far more to be dreaded than the original mischief. For it must carefully be noted, that to arrest the flow of morbid mucous is not to cure the disease. Inflammation of a specific kind, in this instance relieves itself, or terminates in a discharge of a peculiar secretion from the inflamed surface ; and it is only by chang- ing or destroying that diseased action of the vessels which produces the discharge, that a cure can ration- ally be expected to be effected. Gonorrhoea attains its crisis more uninterruptedly in a full than in a languid habit ; but extremes of both are sources of aggravation, the first as regards intensity, the second as regards time. Of Gonorrhcea, <£c. 29 The science of surgery affords no means by which a confirmed clap can be suddenly arrested in its career, and the attempt, if made, is frequently pro- ductive of evil results. The treatment will neces- sarily be modified by the date, the intensity of the disease, and the constitutional peculiarities of the subject ; and hence, though most of the remedies be well known, yet, in their application, they require that discrimination, which renders it necessarily un- wise and unsafe, that a man should venture to treat his own case ; and the records of our practice attest much serious mischief that has arisen in this way. For a period of at least one week, the treatment should be strictly palliative ; the diet should be mo- derately reduced, the bowels relaxed, (but not vio- lently irritated by drastic purgatives,) the local inflam- mation mitigated by frequent fomentation and rest. The smarting which occurs in evacuating the blad- der arises not from any change in the chemical con- stituents of the urine, but from the circumstances of its having to pass over an inflamed and highly sensitive surface ; so when the eye is inflamed, light, which constitutes its natural stimulus, becomes intolerable. This smarting may be much alleviated by taking about thirty drops of the solution of potass three times a day, with sixty drops of the tincture of the herb Fendoni, (which neutralizes the acid the urine naturally contains,) combined with a few drops of tincture of Opium, besides which mucilaginous and diluent drinks certainly render the urine less stimu- lating. The activity of the disease being exhausted, and the acute stage of inflammatory excitement sub- siding, under judicious management, the improve- ment will be indicated by a diminution of pain in* 3* 30 . Symptoms and Treatment making water, and in the quantity of the discharge, which becomes paler in colour and more watery in consistence. In order to effect these salutary changes, there is no necessity for the administration of mercury, as was once the practice. Formerly it was thought, that there is a set of constitutional symptoms super- vening upon the local disease, (in the same way as venereal sore throat follows neglected syphilitic chan- cres ;) that gonorrhoea constituted only a variety of syphilitic disease, and that mercury was absolutely necessary for its cure in every form. Modern science has, however, dispelled this illusion ; there are some accidental complications, but no distinctly regular secondary symptoms, resulting from Gonorrhoea. The first stage then being passed, the treatment should undergo a corresponding change, otherwise the disease will pass into Gleet, and become tediously protracted ; should Chordee, of which we have spo- ken, interrupt the healthy progress of the case, in all probability the cure will be more or less delayed, inasmuch as this painful symptom indicates a hitherto inflammation of the urinary canal, extending to the spongy tissue forming the body of the penis. Chor~ dee is a common symptom of Clap, and the general mode of treating it is a combination of Calomel and Opium, the abstraction of blood from the arm, and the warm bath, &c. ; but it will invariably yield to an ointment composed of the following ingredients, applied along the dorsum of the penis — $ Ungt. Hyd. Fort, - - I ss. Pulv. Opii. Grana, - x gs. Pulv. Camph. - - - 3 ss. Of Gleet, $c. 21 GLEET. The general treatment of Gleet, consists in the administration of large and still larger doses of inter- nal stimuli, of which those in most frequent use are Turpentine, the resinous Balsams of Chio, or Copaiba, and Cubeb Pepper, and of local injections of Alum, the Sulphates of Zinc, or Copper, and Nitrate of Silver ; but the Balm of Zura, taken in- ternally, gives more strength and vigour to those parts than any other medicine hitherto discovered; and even when the procreative energies become torpid or paralized in either sex, it restores the natu- ral functions of those parts, and relieves them of any discharge that may exist. This medicine gives tone to the weakened vessels, and it changes the diseased habits of the organs, the discharge from the penis, and vagina entirely subsides by its use. That very distressing disease peculiar to Females, termed Fluor Albas, or Whites, will yield to its benign in- fluence. Patients who have been labouring for years under this malady have, in less than twelve days, after taking the Balm of Zura, received the most effectual relief. Doctor'N. Barbantine, whose name and character bear with him the admiration of mankind, and whose authority is not to be contro- verted, informs us that he used this medicine with the most astonishing success, in generative debility, seminal iceakness, impotency, nocturnal emissions, and deficiency of the natural strength. The grand secret exists- in the judicious mode of 32 Treatment of its application, and giving it in such doses as will agree with the constitution of the patient. Many- attempts have been made since its first introduction into this city, to counterfeit this invaluable prepara- tion, but there is only one Druggist in this country who imports the genuine article. Gonorrhoea, if neglected or improperly treated, becomes chronic gleet, and in this state is infectious equally with the acute disorder ; if, however, the discharge be kept up solely from the existence of stricture, it is not necessarily communicable. Under any circum- stance, so long as there is the least appearance of discharge, a matrimonial union is unadvisable, and correct surgical advice and treatment is impera- tively necessary. STRICTURE. As to the treatment of Stricture, there are three indications in its cure ; one to produce the requisite physical dilation of the constricted canal ; another method is, the attempt to produce absorption of the thickened organized lymph surrounding the urethras ; and a third is a mechanical destruction of the stric- ture. Elastic or solid instruments, cautiously in- troduced, will often effect the original dilations ; medicine will sometimes succeed in promoting the cure by absorption, and destructive caustic will form a new passage through the thickened parts, when less powerful agencies have failed. It is certain that these means are strictly surgical, and, perhaps, in the whole round of operative Stricture. 33 science, there is nothing demanding a more minute acquaintance with the unseen anatomy of ihe parts, than the treatment of stricture ; none in which blun- dering rashness or ignorance may effect more deplorable mischief. The bougie or catheter may be forced into the bulb of the urethra, or tear its way into the Substance of the prostate gland ; and death may ensue from unrelieved distention of the bladder, and the irritation supervening upon the injury. The use of caustic has been much abused, and indeed ought never to be employed, except in those extreme cases which surgical discrimination alone can detect and justify. All the diseases of this unhappy class are of a complicated and varied nature ; they embrace, in their consequences, so many painful diseases, that I never consider them, however slight in appearance, as mere local effects, but always dread their approach to a constitutional character ; for, by a deplorable fatality, to which limit is unknown, the most trivial cases of these diseases become the fruitful mine of a thousand discordant feelings and symptoms, that harrass their devoted victim for an indefinite period ; therefore I strongly recommend, in all cases, a min- ute investigation, in order that the remedies may be effective on their onset ; the choice of which reme- dies must be governed by the symptoms, constitution and habits of the patient, bearing in mind that in diseases of this kind, large evacuations of any cha- racter are to be carefully guarded against ; for, in all cases, they have done injury, by producing either irritability of the stomach or the bowels, and thus rendering the system unequal to the retention of the necessary remedies. Let not non-medical readers 34 Treatment of Stricture. imagine, that the foregoing sketch of gonorrhoeal disease £nd its consequences, is intended to place the method of cure within their own grasp ; let such a one apply for medical aid on the first outbreak of suspicious symptoms ; by so doing he will save him- self a world of anxiety, arising from the fear of going wrong in the adoption of the curative plan of treatment. In fact all that relates to the manage- ment of the consequences of gonorrhoeal inflamma- tion, as for instance, gleet, stricture, swelled testicle, and other obscure, yet painful, affections of the urinary organs is strictly surgical ; the definition of those principles could little avail the general reader, whose interest is best consulted by referring him directly and at once, not to books, which could only confuse a mind ignorant of anatomical matters, but to that practitioner who has made sexual diseases his exclusive study. CHAPTER III. Of the Symptoms and Treatment of the Venereal Disease in its Local and Constitutional Forms, and the use and abuse of i Mercury. I have already observed, that animal poisons differ, not merely in their intensity, but in their nature ; that some confine their agency to the surface where the contaminating virus is originally applied, pro- ducing rather a peculiarity of disordered action than diseased change of structure ; the constitution sym- pathizing little and distant parts remaining unaffect- ed, such is the poison of clap ; but the virus of syphilis or pox produces local destruction of the surface, and from absorption, the whole mass of circulating blood becomes diseased. After an inde- finite period, and even after the local sores have healed, the throat, the nose, the skin, the bones, be- come often successfully implicated ; and if neglected or maltreated, death may, and not unfrequently does arise from its invasion. The local sores affecting the surface of the external genitals from impure inter- course, are denominated chancres, sometimes single, occasionally more than two or even three are present. The time at which the effect of the poison pro- ducing these ulcerations makes its presence evident 36 Symptoms and Treatment of is very uncertain ; generally speaking, the chancre makes its appearance three or four days after impure sexual contact ; from five to twenty days forming the average period. An inflamed spot is first per- ceptible, presently a minute pimple bursts and dis- plays a rapidly enlarging ulcerated surface. In the centre of the sore an excavation is sometimes ob- servable, of considerable magnitude, extending beneath the skin, exquisitely sensitive and painful, erysipelatous redness surrounding the ulcer, and the skin assuming an unusual firmness. The edges of that sore are irregular, its form often oval, but hard and ragged, its surface yellow, and this feeling of solidity easily perceptible, if the part be grasped between two fingers. In fact the thickened base is a distinguishing peculiarity of syphilitic sores. If a chancre has not penetrated the skin, it heals under the application of proper topical and internal treat- ment, but if once the skin be perforated bv destruc- tive ulceration — if the cellullar tissue underneath partake of the diseased action, it becomes irritable sloughs, or mortifies, and is attended with danger. When a syphilitic sore is confined to the surface of the skin, its progress is slow, and it is comparatively easy of cure ; if, on the contrary, it burrows deeply into the integuments, the sloughing may be expected to be extensive, and the immediate constitutional and febrile symptoms will run high. Syphilitic sores or chancres vary exceedingly in character; this variety is not only produced by the previous mode of living, and the constitution of the patient, but is undoubted- ly ascribable to diversities in the nature of the poison. If two persons differing in irritability absorb the same virus, the more irritable subject of the two The Venereal Disease, 37 will present a sore surrounded by violent inflamma- tion, so that a person labouring under simple sores to day, if he indulge to-morrow in any act of intem- perance or debauchery, will change by that impru- dence the aspect and tendency of the ulcer. In some unfortunate instances we have clap co-existent with chancre; however, the matter of gonorrhoea will not produce chancre, nor will the secretion from a chancre originate clap ; proving, not the identity, but the diversity and the possible absorption of two poisons. Besides these, there are sores (believed to be followed by constitutional and secondary symptoms) produced by the contact of men whose constitutional condition is peculiar with women, whose genital organs secrete a simply irritating fluid, as the whites, the diseased menstrual secretion, or indeed any impure secretion of a puriform character. It happens, not unfrequently, that males become infected with troublesome and suspicious sores from intercourse with women, whose purity is undoubted ; nay, even from contact with their own wives at cer- tain peiiods. These views are fast gaining upon the confidence of the profession, and the result is most salutary, inasmuch as it was formerly the prac- tice to style every sore, without exception, syphilitic, to apply mercury indiscrimately ; and (to say nothing of the injurious moral imputation) mercurial reme- dies unnecessarily and injudiciously applied, have frequently created a diseased condition, mistaken for the undoubted effects of the syphilitic virus itself. Healthy women, in whom not a vestige of actual disease could be traced, upon examination, and so pronounced, have, undoubtedly, in consequence of some diseased peculiarity, totally unconnected with 4 88 Symptoms and Treatment of unchaste intercourse, communicated, by after con- tact with their husbands or lovers, actual sores, closely resembling the previously recognised forms of venereal disease. These ulcers, which are per- fectly simple in character, may be reasonably referred to the presence of matter irritating the surface ap- plied, and co-operating with a constitution prone to the promotion of that peculiar form oj local mischief. Many authors favour the opinion that appears to be warranted by facts, that there exists, not one poison of a specific venereal kind, but many. If the poisons that respectively produce clap and chan- chre, be evidently distinct, forming two, who shall say that the limitation proceeds no farther ? that each of these poisons is not attended by its own distinct results, not only as regards the character of the sore, but also of the secondary and constitutional symp- toms ? Those, on the contrary, who hold the opinion, that the whole train of venereal symptoms, both pri- mary and secondary, are the product of the same poison, refer the diversities in the appearance of the sore to the modifying influence of health, tempera- ment, and especially to the habits of the patient. It is exceedingly probable, that, if these animal poisons producing syphilitic sores, be not all identi- cally the same, at least they are not very unlike, and may be considered as the different genera of one species, owing their differences chiefly to the pecu- liarity of the constitution in which they are engen- dered ; for it is certain, that the poison of one sore in the female, will not invariably give rise to a series of corresponding sores, in each of those individuals of our own sex with whom she may have been placed in contact. The Venereal Disease, fyc. 39 I have sufficiently pointed out in the historical portion of this work, that the sexual diseases which devastated Europe, about the period of the return of Columbus from the discovery of America, are so altered or modified, as to bear no relation to the hor- rible, yet doubtlessly faithful relations of the Histo- rians of that period. ' It w T as the opinion of Hunter, that gonorrhoea and chancre arose from the same specific virus, and his practice was conformable and followed out (until the days of Cline, Cooper, and Abernethy) by the ad- ministration of mercury, equally for the cure of both diseases; but Hunter's authority is fast declining. The late Sir Astley Cooper, in reference to this dis- tinction, was accustomed to observe, " Let me say no greater folly, nor indeed cruelty, can be commit- ted than that of giving Mercury to patients labour- ing under gonorrhoea. I abstain from entering the venereal wards of the other hospital, because patients under gonorrhoea are compelled to undergo so infa- mous a system of treatment." Hunter spoke per- haps truly of a particular species of sore, but he generalized too much, identifying the " Hunterian Chancre" with every other species of ulcer resulting from venereal intercourse ; hence his conclusions are much modified in modern practice. He taught us to believe, that it is the invariable of all truly venereal sores to become progressively worse, and never undergo any amendment unless mercury, the specific remedy, be administered. Thus chancres on the penis, and secondary sore throat, are described as constantly growing worse without the aid of mercury. Now the fact is, there are many sores which become irritable and disposed 40 Symptoms and Treatment of to slough under the mercurial treatment ; and igno- rant surgeons mistaking the true nature of the case, have concluded that a more complete and speedy- saturation of the system alone, could cure the mis- chief their own remedies were actually producing. If a sore were found to heal, as many will, without mercury, then, according to the Hunterian doctrines of the English school, it was declared not to have been venereal; certainly there is nothing in a name, whether ulceration or destruction of parts be styled venereal, syphilitic, or simple, if originating in sexual contact. Men do not, or ought not, prescribe for names, but for an actually existing condition. In doubtful cases I am advised to defer the employ- ment of mercury, for the purpose of judging of the nature of the disease by the foregoing criterion ; but now it is well known, that many rapidly spreading, dangerous sores, arising from sexual intercourse, are not only curable without the administration of a grain of Mercury, but are absolutely rendered malignant by its ignorant and injudicious employ- ment. As the non-mercurial treatment of primary sores gained ground, " secondary symptoms, "(or more cor- rectly speaking, what were formerly mistaken as such,) diminished at the same rate. Many of these miscalled " secondary symptoms," have only lately been found out in many cases to be the primary symptoms of bad practice. Yes, the rotten skulls which are to be found in anatomical museums, with all the other beautiful specimens of diseased bones, which in our younger days were so abundant in hospitals, in the great majority of cases ivere the production of long and harrassing courses of Mer- The Venereal Disease, fyc. 41 eury. When the mercurial treatment was most in vogue, secondary symptoms were most numerous, but the medical men of that day, the blind devotees of the doctrines of Hunter, supposed them to be the result of too little mercury having been employed in the primary treatment. These practitioners resem- bled the celebrated Sangrada, who, when his patients died, after he had drawn almost every drop of blood from their bodies, and drenched them with warm water, while they were able to swallow it, declared "their deaths could not have happened if they had been sufficiently bled or had taken warm water enough." I co-inside entirely in the spirit of the above passage from the published lectures of Dr. Dickson, formerly a medical officer on the British Staff, whose fearful mental independence in the ex- posure of popular and deeply rooted medical falla- cies, is deserving of the highest commendation. The rash, indiscriminate and unqualified abuse of mercury, has been productive of infinite mis- chief, not only in the hands of professedly edu- cated surgeons and ignorant quacks, but from them the practice has descended to patients, who have thought to cure themselves ; under the notion of its being an antidote, the untutored think they have only to saturate the system, or to persevere in the use of some one of the advertised nostrums, such as Hun- ters Red Drop, and the other mercurial dollar bottles and pills, though professedly vegetable and harm, less,* and so thousands are mercurialized out of ex- * We have a great many instances of .he depredations com- mitted on human life in this city, by medicine administered by Quacks. Fourteen of these preparations were recently analysed here. All of them contained sublimate, six contained arsenic,, camphor and mercury / three contained balsam copaiba, «olutioit 4* 42 Symptoms and Treatment of istence, or their constitution so broken, and the func- tions of the living system so impaired as to render the residue of life miserable. It must be recollect- ed, that at best, the peculiar condition which mercury produces upon the system, is in itself a diseased unnatural predicament. For with respect to the principle on which mercury acts, w T e suppose it cures syphilis, not by any chemical operation, but by exciting in the constitution and parts affected, a particular action, to all intents and purposes the effects of a poison, yet not in dose to extinguish life ; and that upon the principle or law of living organization, that no two widely differing morbific agencies can exist together, the syphilitic action is obliterated and put out. No consideration, short of the absolute impossibility of averting its use, should reconcile us to the evil. There certainly are cases where a choice of evils present themselves, where mercury is apparently indispensable, but the selec- tion of these cases, and the judicious administration of the remedy, both as respects the form of the of gum arabic, camphor, red saunderswood, and sublimate. All the pills and pastes which are advertised for (he cure of Gonorrhoea, Syphilis, &c, &c, are composed of aloes, gamboge, colocynth, ginger, balsam copaiba, cubebs, and oxmuriate of mercury. Dr. Chilton (one of the best chemists in this country) has recently analysed " Hunter's Red Drop.'' 1 The following statement of his report, will be found in the New-York Sun paper of August 28th, 1843 : — " I have analysed the contents of a bottle left with me by Mr. Charles Brown, and find it to consist of corrosive sublimate and alcohol, with a little red colouring matter. The proportion of corrosive sublimate is ten grains to the ounce of liquid ; the bottle was labelled as follows — 'Hunter's Red Drop, directions-^-12 drops morning and evening, in water, molasses, or syrup. Dr. U. Leyi- son.' The vial was stamped 'Hunter's Red Drop.' New- York, August 24th, 1843. , j , JAMES R. CHILTON." The Venereal Disease, fyc. 43 preparation, and its dose ; these are matters which require the most nice discrimination. Mercurials are among the edge tools of Physic, and require to be wielded by a competent and practiced hand. True Syphilis ihen,is that disease in which the chan- cre or primary ulcer on the genitals, has a hardened edge and base ; in which the blotches are scaly, ivith excavated ulcers in the throat, or when affections of the bones are complained of; those patients only are truly syphilitic who have nightly pains in the shafts of the long bones, or decided enlargement of the bone, all other cases, although approaching in many of their characters to syphilis are not to be consi- dered as such, but as they generally proceed from sexual intercourse the term " Venereal" is still ap- plied to them. As to the treatment of true syphilitic chancre, this, as I before mentioned, can be cured without mercury ; but this does not warrant the assertion, that mercury ought not to be employed occasionally in some stages of the disease ; when judiciously administered in aggravated cases it sometimes expe- dites that process. From the foregoing description, it appears then, that venereal sores, or the swollen condition of the glands of the groin, termed bubo, may occur without the general system being at all contaminated ; but, when the poison has been conveyed into the blood, unless proper remedies be applied, another order of parts inevitably become affected, namely, the skin, the tonsils, the nose, throat, inside of the mouth and tongue. When absorption of the syphilitic virus has taken place, ulceration of the throat is the ear- liest indication of the general disease, but the erup- 44 Symptoms and Treatment of tion of the skin is usually considered the first of the constitutional symptoms ; this, when truly syphilitic, is scaly, affording an excellent guide in the treatment; a circumstance by which it may be distinguished from those venereal eruptions which neither require nor bear mercury, which are either pimples, pustules* or elevated tubercles. The mucous membrane of the nose is liable to be affected by this disease as well as the lining membrane of the throat. Ulcera- tion in this part very speedily affects the bones, which become diseased, and are thrown off, the pa- tient losing the natural prominence of the nose, as well as the acuteness of smell, and acquiring a most unpleasant peculiarity of tone in speaking. The bones often separate long after the syphilitic action has ceased ; and the treatment of this variety of disease is similar to its management when occurring, in other parts of the body. Under proper treatment no person perhaps lost his nose from syphilis, but the instances are very numerous, in which this de- formity has arisen from the abuse of mercury. Affections of the bones in syphilis (or after the pri- mary symptoms have disappeared) are often mista- ken for Rheumatism. Pain in the bones is often the indication of syphilitic action, after not merely the healing of local sores, but even after ulceration in the throat and eruptive blotches upon the skin have entirely passed away ; it would seem that there is an order of parts, mostly but not always, attacked in succession, of which the solid structure of the bones, as well as their fibrous investment are usually the last to suffer. A most important feature in the history of syphili- tic diseases, is the fact of their transmission from The Venereal Disease, fyc. 45 parent to offspring. Infants may be affected with syphilis in various ways. They may be diseased before birth, in consequence of the state of one or both of the parents. Dr. Burns, in his work on " Midwifery," observes, " that infection may happen when neither of the parents has at the time any venereal swelling or ulceration, and perhaps many years after a cure has been apparently affected. I do not," he says, " pretend to explain here the theory of syphilis, but content myself with relating xuell established facts ." In such cases it is very common for the mother to miscarry, or have a premature labour without evident cause ; frequently the infant, born before the time, has been preceded by one or two dead children. It may be clean, and apparently healthy, and continue so during a month or two, but oftener it is feeble and emaciated, having a wrinkled countenance, with the appearance of old age in miniature. Presently the eyes are inflamed, its cry is husky, low and murmuring, there is purulent dis- charge from the eye-lids, often, though not invariably^ resulting from syphilitic contamination ; copper coloured blotches, ending in ulceration, appear on the shrivelled skin, the nostrils become stuffed, with a •foetid discharge ; the voice becomes hoarse or whist- ling, the throat becomes involved in the ulcerative process, if indeed, as rarely happens, the child lives long enough to arrive at that state. If the un- conscious helpless babe receives the infection from its hired nurse, we discover ulcers on her nipples, and the disease appears on the childs mouth before the surface of the body is affected — sometimes within twenty-four hours after their entrance into the world. Such children have the palms of the hands, the soles 46 Symptoms and Treatment of of the feet, or the buttocks, covered with copper- coloured eruptions, the nails at the same time begin- ning to peel off; and, unless something-be done for the little sufferers, they will quickly be carried off from the violence of the disease ; indeed many chil- dren die of it in consequence of the true nature of the complaint not being understood by the medical practitioner. A case is recorded by Hunter, of a couple having been married for twelve years, during which time neither party had been unfaithful to the other, nor were either diseased ; the husband had had syphilis two years previously to his marriage, but considered himself cured ; about this time the lady bore him herfifth child ; her two first children were healthy, but the two following were feeble, and soon died ; the lady also, was in poor health ; the last child was put out to nurse, and being itself afflicted with blotches resembling venereal, and having a sore mouth, the narse became affected both locally (on the nipples) and constitutionally, with a disease bear- ing every similitude to syphilis. Why this disease should lurk in the system for many years to deve- lope its action on the child in the womb, or through what agency this connection is produced, we know' not. That the association does exist, it would be futile to contradict ; in fact it frequently occurs that we can trace in infants a regular continuity of the action of this virulent poison from its parent. Once having entered the system, and identified itself with the circulating fluids, it engenders a thousand fierce and contending symptoms, which maybe indefinitely postponed ; but so long as a germ remains in the The Venereal Disease, fyc. 47 constitution, a hostile action may be expected, and its half extinguished energy again usurps its power, with gradual and terrible progress. It is to be hoped that, the foregoing outline of the diseases, arising from impure sexual contact, will be found sufficiently precise, to demonstrate at once their complexity and importance. Let not false delicacy induce the sufferer to hazard the dangerous experiment of the management of his own case. Without any knowledge of the modifications which individual temperament produces on the character of disease — without an intimate acquaintance with the nature of disease, rather than with the mere history of symptoms — ignorant of the precise operation of powerful remedies, for such a one to turn those engines of good or of evil upon himself, is a species of weakness truly pitiable. Attempts at self -cure are too frequently finished in self-destruction. It has been said (and not with, out truth) that in the practice of the law, " He who conducts his own case has a fool for his client ;" and much more emphatically may the assertion painfully apply to those who turn, in weakness and suffering, their ill-judged remedies against themselves. The practitioners of the healing art are generally wiser, and silently teach the unprofessional world an impor- tant lesson, in refusing to prescribe for themselves, however trivial or temporary may be their ailments. CHAPTER IV. SENSUALISM. Its General Results — Mental, Moral and Physical, There is no study more interesting or useful than that of the admirable relation existing between the structure of any of the organs of the human frame, and the natural and healthful actions those organs are destined to perform. These relative connections are so close and immediate, so essential, not merely to our personal comfort, but to the happiness and well being of that social circle, either enlivened by our presence or embittered by our distresses, that it becomes an absolute duty, as well as our highest interest, to familiarize the mind with the wise economy of animal nature. These remarks apply with the greatest amount of force to those sub-divisions of the living system, respecting which it may be truly affirmed, that if the consequences of irregularity be not immediate, they are ultimately as deplorable as their approach has been insidious. If the stomach be filled to reple- tion, or if some improper irritant be received within its cavity, if the digestive organs be oppressed with Sensualism and its Results. 49 acid crudities, vomiting or increased action of the intestinal canal, from the natural and instantaneous relief,undcr the pressure and presence of the unhealth- ful load, Nature resumes her wonted elasticity of tone — the balance of harmonious action is restored; if the impropriety be not too frequently repeated, the general health of the system undergoes no material deterioration. The stomach, unlike other organs, cannot be lashed into the gratification of appetite with unnatural readiness ; it is endowed with the power -of instantly disengaging that, which if it re-, tained would be productive of disease ; but the case is widely different, if we transfer this reasoning from the nutritive or digestive organs, to the generative .or reproductive system. ; for such is the mysterious connections between our mental and purely corporeal and physical nature — such the readiness with which- the organs of the reproductive faculty obey the sti~ mulus of a morbidly sensitive, inflamed and excited imagination, that under its influence, poor wearied jaded nature, fain willing to recruit her exhausted energies by time and repose, is roused again and again to emissions of the seminal secretion, which is the most elaborate and valuable fluid of the human frame.* In many instances the form of excess is natural as to the act, and the mischief resulting from its fre- quency, will of course be limited by .the capability of its performance. But it may be, (which is de- plorable, beyond the power of language to depict,) that this excess assumes a horribly unnatural cha- racter, and in this instance it is impossible to define * See the Bachelor's Guide. 5 50* Sensualism and its Results. the limits of those mental and moral disquietudes, the nature and exquisite acuteness of those sufferings which follow in the train. It is a remarkable fact, that the miserable victims of sensual excess, more especi- ally those addicted to self -pollution, (whet e the loss is greater and more frequent than in the natural act,) are especially prone to insanity, or if reason main- tain her tottering throne, it is only that of decrepi- tude and premature loss of manly power. In con- firmation of this remark, I am glad to quote the high authority of the late Dr. John Armstrong, whose recent removal from a sphere of popularity and use- fulness, as a leading Metropolitan Physician, and teacher of medicine, will long be deplored by the profession, of which he constituted so brilliant an ornament. He observes, in his published lectures, l \ Excess of venery and the solitary vice of Onan- ism excite Madness ; they both stimulate the heart excessively ; they both tend to gorge the brain and spinal cord, and they tend to render the individual, Mad" In another place he remarks — " The same state (insanity) may arise from certain solitary prac- tices ; and I know of no individuals whose state is so deplorable as theirs, who give themselves up as slaves to unbridled passions." There are 'also specific forms of local and constitutional disease resulting from venereal excesses, which must not be omitted in the black catalogue of the consequences of sensualism. These are the result of infectious contamination ; some of them inflicting much suffer- ing, yet restricted to the production of functional disorder; others terminating in such changes of structure as lay the foundation for years of future agony and shame. Thus the poison of gonorrhoea Sensualism and Us Results. 51 or clap, ordinarily exciting nothing beyond specific yet temporary inflammation of the living mucous membrane of the canal leading to the bladder, though attended with exquisite torture,, subsides under judi- cious treatment, after the lapse of a short period, and no permanent injury to the generative organs is afterwards perceptible. But in other cases the in- flammatory action being of a severer character, the poison more intense, or the constitutional suscepti- bilites more acute ; we find that thickening of the delicate membrane of the urinary canal lays the foundation of permanent and often incurable disor- ganization, ordinarily denominated stricture. Here then, we have an absolutely diseased deviation from the natural conformation essential to the healthy action of the generative organs; retention of urine, (often till the miserable patient has been known to have perished from bursting of the bladder,) the pain •connected with the frequent introduction of the catheter, for the evacuation of that cavity ; these form only a part of the dreadful penalty appended to the folly of illicit excesses. Inaptitude for the rational indulgences of ,the marriage bed ; the shame, yexation and suffering inflicted upon a warm, passion- ate, yet virtuous, wife ; the embarrassment and strug- gling pain co-incident with every attempt to gratify legitimate desires ; all are the ultimate consequences of stricture. Melancholy has been the fate of modern times, since the venereal poison was first known and pro- pagated, and sad are the sensations which must naturally ajrise in the mind of every friend of hu- manity, who considers its nature and progress. This destructive agent acts riot merely upon individual 52 Sensualism and its Results. life, but it contaminates its very spring, transmitting its horrid influences to generations yet unborn. It embitters life's sweetest enjoyments, separates hus- band and wife, parents from the affection of their chil- dren, and inflicts a stab upon domestic peace, which, however forgivingly the tender look of woman's eye may heal the offensive wound, a scar remains upon memory and affection while life endures. It breaks down the vigor of lusty youth, covering the body with loathsome ulcers, or destroying the bones, and thus defacing the manly beauty (of the human face divine.) The sonorous voice exchanges its deep rich tones for a pitiable, contemptible nasal twang ; thus compelling the miserable victim, with every word he indistinctly utters, to pronounce his own shame. Such are the revolting features of syphilitic disorganiza- tion ; its horrible mutilations are shudderingly hate- ful beyond conception; to crawl upon the face of this fair earth, a noisome mass of living rottenness ; to waste into hideous decay, from slowly consuming, disease and pain — pain which leaves the mind in full consciousness to brood over past folly ; to defile the germ of humanity at the very threshold and onset of its being, to transmit the seeds of disease to inno- cent helpless infancy; to hear the feeble husky wail, and look upon the hue, which marks the contamina- tion of the child which hangs at the breast of a fond and virtuous mother — that child which ought to con- stitute the pride and joy of a father's heart, but to whom his first has been a feeble, puny and diseased organization; the counterpart of his own, the trans- cript of his own excesses; surely if there be within one latent spark of sensibility, that infant cry will harrow inmost feeling, will chase it out, will lash us Sensualism and its Results. 53 with a scorpion whip, or, feeble though it be, speak hi dead whispers to the remorseful soul. Possibly the victim of sensualism may have been spared the pains of parental agony, no wife may be there to pity and to forgive, paid mercenaries surround his couch ; he has ran the round of guilty pleasure, till giddy and weak, he falls upon that couch to die ; *he wreck of youth, and hope, and life, together blended in one awful desolation. Who amongst us is not familiar with the history of some once promising youth whose noon-tide sun of existence has been •thus in tears and death beclouded 1 To die — so to slink into the grave, to be remembered only with fearful regret, to forego the affectionate recollection of surviving friends. These form the slight, yet faithful outlines of a stern reality, and if the con- templation of the picture deter but one thoughtless youth from the path of folly, how much of human misery may thereby be prevented. It is salutary to ponder over the consequences of sensualism ; her facinations derive more than half their charms from our ignorance of the hidden sting that in the end will " bite like an adder." Were these results ever present in all their power and permanency, could we strip the gaudy flattering mask from present sensual gratification, surely we should pause, rather than with reckless, desperate heedlessness, rush upon disease, misery and ruin ; for ff Vice is a monster of such frightful mein, That to be hated needs but to be seen." The late Sir Astley Cooper, Bart., sergeant surgeon to his late Majesty, observes — "If one of these miserable cases could be depicted from the pulpit as an illustration of the evil effects of a vicious anxl 54 Sensualism and its Results. intemperate course of life, it would, I think, strike the mind with more terror than all the preaching in the world. The irritable state of the patient leads to the destruction of life, and in this way, annually, great numbers perish. Undoubtedly the list is con- siderably augmented, from the maltreatment and the employment of injudicious remedies" In the infancy of medical science the wisest practice was but empirical, and though, it must be admitted, we are yet advanced little further than the threshold of those sublime portals which ever stand invitingly open to the laborious lover of truth, yet it is something to know, that the absurd remedies of ancient days are worse than useless ; it is, beyond conception, valuable to hold the torch of science to the book of nature, and to apply our existing amount of knowledge to the elucidation of the causes, and the mitigation and cure of disease. It is well understood, that in reference to syphilitic cases, the majority of deaths arise from mismanage- ment, improper treatment, or the abuse of active and powerful medicinal preparations, by those who, suffering from these diseases, from timidity, fear, or shame, rather venture upon the hazardous experi- ment of self-cure, than consult at once a practitioner, who has devoted the energies of a laborious life in their exclusive study. No position appears theo- retically so clear and undeniable, yet there is none which some are so unwilling to act upon as this, that division of energy, concentration of attention, neces- sarily produces the same beneficial results in the practice of the healing art, as is obvious in the vari- ous other departments of human effort. Even in the surgical profession, have not confirmations been Sensualism and its Results. 55 forced upon us of the truth of this principle ? — Guthrie, White,- Adams, Jacob, Saunders, Travers ; the names of men who have added much to our practical acquaintance with the surgery of the eye, are familiar, as connected with institutions devoted exclusively to the relief of the affections of that organ. And, if the cultivation of one department of sur- gical practice in the hands of zealous men, enthusi- astically devoted to their favourite task, tend to the elevation of knowledge and the possession of a greater number of use fid remedies, by a parity of reasoning, the same attention on the part of other individuals, to the path which the writer has selected, cannot fail, ultimately, to remove much of the oppro- brium connected with the uncertainties of the medi- cal art. The writings of Gooch, Burns, Merriman, Davies, Ingleby, Ryan, and others, have a practical value enstamped upon them, derivable from the fact, that those men devoted themselves almost exclusively to the management of the. diseases and accidents to which woman, in the hour . of sorrow and peril, is liable ; and we have no hesitation in citing the pre- sent low rate of mortality among parturient mothers, to the dissemination of sounder principles of treat- ment among those to whose care they are confided at that important moment. If then, even within the pale of our own profession,* we have abundant evi- * It is with this view, and for the separation of my legitimate claims, as an educated Practitioner % from the pretentions of illiter- ate empirics, to whose mismanagement, through the apathy and neglect of the regular Physician, sexual diseases are too often entrusted, that I have deemed it more satisfactory to append the diplomas and testimonials, which will be found at the close of this 56 Sensualism and its Results. dence of the amount of general good resulting from division of labour, that which holds practically true of one department, will assuredly be found equally to obtain in any other, The experience of the mili- tary surgeons, in referrence to venereal practice, is, as far as it goes, most amply confirmatory of the truth of these observations. It is worthy of remark, that beyond the more open forms of syphilitic disorganization, which leave their ugly trace most obviously, there is not a single form of sensualism that is not branded with its external, yet significant, mark of recognition. Let not the intensely prurient, yet seemingly mo- dest victim of secret pollution, lay the flattering unction to his soul, that from the eye of his fellow mortals he can conceal his unmanly vice. It is written upon his forehead, it is enstamped upon his visage ; his sunken countenance, his frail unmeaning, inexpressive face, his lustreless eye, his attenuated frame, his quick abashed retreat from the gaze of virtuous woman ; all proclaim the enfeebled votary of solitary vice ; a worse than " Monk ob- scene." Here then is the one form of the fulfilment of that prediction — " There is nothing done in secret that shall not be revealed, neither hid even from wen that shall not be known" How much more inti- mately to the Omniscent God ? It is fabled of the Ostrich that she is so devoid of reasoning intelli- volume. Among all the advertising Doctors with which this city abounds, there are only two who are legally qualified, the balance are self-styled Physicians; men of no attainments, practical ex- perience, and without common education. Most of those empirica go under assumed names, and are perfectly reckless of human life. Sensualism and its Results. 57 gence as to hide her head from her pursuers in the nearest thicket, unconsious that her enormous body is unconcealed. And can a stronger illustration be afforded of the effects of sensualism, in darkening the understanding, than is found in the fact that the victims of solitary vice dare to gratify their depraved propensity in the admitted gaze of the Omnipresent Eye, while they would redden with shame to be de- tected in the fact by a child, or even the meanest mortal that lives ? Horrible perversity of Nature's keenest pleasure. How stupifying is that infatua- tion, which deliberately, yet secretly, poisons the power of manly enjoyment ? deprives the lord of this fair world of those temperate gratifications, which the Great Author of Creation has permitted, nay, possitively enjoined and commanded. " Increase and multiply, that you may replenish the earth," is alike the dictate of nature and revelation ; the suf- fering then of the violator of this provision ; his living death, is but the first consequence of his; criminality. . However the Scottish poet Burns might feel dis- posed to " waive the quantum o' the sin," or however in a work intended for practical and popular use, we may feel disposed to refrain from moralizing on the nature of vice, or with him think lightly of " the hazard o' concealing," we cannot pass lightly over its results, inasmuch as these are physical, as well as moral, and mental ; and it can only be a just appli- cation of the character of these results, that wise curative intentions can be founded. Mental and moral aberations require, and absolutely demand treat- ment, having reference to a morbid train of thought. For, apart from other considerations, as it is true of 58 Sensualism and its Results. every form of vice, so most especially of this : — " Tt hardens a* within, And petrifies the feelin'." One part then of our mode of treatment is the incul- cation of right feelings, in reference to the conse- quences of self-indulgence. It is recorded of Archbishop Cranmer, that being brought to the stake, in those troublesome times, when religious frenzy and political fury were pro- digally reckless of human life, he exclaimed in the torments of the fire, as he thrust his right arm amidst the glowing faggots, " That unworthy hand? With that hand he had signed his recantation; and when the light of truth enables the poor victim of detestable vice, to utter against himself a similar apostrophe, the consequences of his folly are all that remain to be overcome. The willing slave of corruption sinks fast into premature wretchedness as his enjoyments are illusory; so unreal miseries throng his pathway, and strew with thorns his cold, dark and dreary passage to the grave. The deli- berate destroyer of his own soul — his end is dark- ness, remorse, and despair. There are men in whom every source of vital sensation and enjoyment is so exhausted, in whom every germ of activity and hap- piness is so deadened, that they find nothing so insi- pid, so disagreeable and disgustful, as life; they have no longer any sympathies in common with their fellow-men ; the pitiable slaves of unbridled pas- sion, it is given to them to know and feel their degradation. Existence becomes an oppressive burthen. They cannot withstand the wish to P shuf- fle off this mortal coil." They have found by pain- ful experience, that the immoderate and exclusive Sensualism and its Results. 59 pursuit of gratifications of animal nature, tend to the destruction of all capacity and all legitimate en- joyment. These unfortunate beings are for the most part, such as by youthful dissipation, by too early and profuse waste of the seminal fluid, have exhausted the flagging powers of life, and ante-dated, in the bloom of youth, the deeripitude of old age- To such I would extend the friendly aid, which, ere madness or incurable impotence preclude the at- tempt, may yet snatch the poor weak sufferer from a worse than living death. With many, the hour of hopeless self-devotion is still distant. The conse- quences of criminal indulgence may not now be very apparent, or the nervous ailments besetting the un- happy patient, may be ascribed ignorantly to any but the true causes. However, ill habits rapidly acquire- the form of exalted vice, subjecting reason, appetite and passion, under indiscriminate controul. To the fearful I offer the way of escape from the dominion., as well as from the consequences of sensualism. To him in whom the divine light of reason is not altogether obscured ; to the poor misguided, yet, un- willing slave of perverted enjoyment, I offer ihe means of restoration to pristine vigour, and the enjoy- ment of a pleasing home. There are many of our youth of the present dav, who by excessive indul- gence and unnatural over stimulation of those organs, the development of which is peculiar to manhood, have called into active disease the lungs or the brain. Predispositions, otherwise so latent, as with care to be kept at bay during a long existence, hav nursed by early sensualism into forms of coi tive disease, so accurately resembling true sen ; lous phthisis as to defy {while the cause is undet 60 Sensualism and its Results. the ordinary modes adopted for the mitigation of its most urgent symptoms. Among the ordinary causes of disease' enumerated by practical physicians, none are so prominently obvious as excessive evacuations, produced naturally or otherwise ; and it is undoubtedly true, that super- vening or extraordinary excitement, the weaker organs of a naturally robust or delicate frame, will be the first to feel the loss of nervous or sensorial energy, of that power, which, carefully guarded, is our surest protection in warding off the attacks of disease, and our most powerful ally in resisting its noxious agency when present. Loss of blood, if repeated, even though trivial in quantity, is a sure and readily acknowledged index of corresponding failure of the vital powers ; but the daily drain upon the nervous system from the loss of the most curi- ously elaborate secretion from the blood, is still more rapidly destructive. The debility produced by this evacuation is greater than any other, inasmuch as important and extensive portions of the brain are concerned in the production of this secretion. The miserable victim of unbri- dled sensualism sinks into the grave, harrassed with cough and hectic fever, the cause of death being mostly ascribed, loosely, and with unpardonable neg- ligence, to disease of the lungs or heart* whereas, had a confession of the true state of the case been confidentially reposed in the proper quarter, a vary- ing treatment, or the moral or mental management of the unhappy sufferer, might have been attended with widely varying results. It is a matter of equal surprise and regret, that the legitimate guardians of the public health, are not sufficiently alive to the Sensualism and its Results. 61 prevalency of sensualism as the exciting cause of disease, unless with a gentleness and address that few can assume, or really possess, the secret be extorted from the pining hypocondriacal sufferer, it is hardly probable that voluntarily, the important dis- closure should be made to the usual medical attendant of the family. His silence is doubtlessly often ascribed to ignorance, apathy, or both. The customs of society, the usages of the profes- sion, seemingly forbid such inquiries ; the fear the suspicion may be false, the consequences resulting from questions conveying unmanly imputations, these may often operate upon the minds of medical mep, in leading them to observe absolute silence upon such topics. The natural and inevitable result of this inattention to one of the most ordinary of the exciting causes of disease, is, that patients of this class, who are unfortunately placed under the care of the family physician, meet, for the most part, at his hands, a mode of treatment which only serves to aggravate existing evils. Anomalous cases are of frequent recurrence in persons of both sexes, where languor, lassitude, and general inaptitude for the business or enjoyments of life, perhaps constant headache or pain in the limbs, irritable cough, irregularity in the action of the heart, or most commonly of all, that long train of hypo- chondriacal disorder connected with indigestion, form the subject of complaint in the ear of the routine practitioner. Let persons suffering thus, be brought under the ordinary cognizance of medical art; under the eye of one who has not deemed it compatible with his professional dignity, to devote special at- tention to the mischievous effects of self-abuse ; and 6 62 Sensualism and its Results, if his patient complain of headache, he will most probably prescribe such depletory remedies as are applicable with propriety, only to an over-gorged brain. What must be the consequence if pain arise, not from repletion of the vessels of the head, but as we know it may, from exhaustion of nervous or sensorial poioer, from sexual excesses, from the con- stant irritation and drain upon the secretory appara- tus of the generative system ? A patient already exhausted by undue excitement, is ignorantly sub- jected to a mode of treatment which is injurious in exact proportion as it is erroneous. The feeble re- mains of active vitality left him by his. pernicious practices, are sure to be overthrown and destroyed, " secundem artem" by the ■' usual remedies." Here, then, arises a proof of the importance and necessity of the arrangement, whereby some well-informed members of the medical profession, should devote their exclusive attention to the diseases arising from the undue excitement of the generative system, toge- ther with those incidental forms of acute disorder, which, if neglected, terminate in the horribly wasting forms of constitutional disorganization. The hidden entrance of these avenues to the grave is often the long indulged and concealed habits of self-pollution. Now, whatever may be the amount of individual talent, or however successful the general treatment of a popular practitioner, in the ordinary run of cases, death maintains the silence of his sanctuary, or the climate is assigned as the uncongenial har- binger of consumption ; the untold secret is pre- served inviolable in the cold receptacle of medical errors and stately professional ignorance ; his repu- tation suffers not. What I would urge upon the Sensualism and its ^Results. 63 serious consideration of the public, is this, that a person totally unaccustomed to detect and investigate such cases, is absolutely unfit, and unlikely to suc- ceed in his first attempt. His hand, his eye, his touch, require to be trained to the well practiced effort. He must possess the incommunicable tact requistite, first to gain, and afterwards to secure, the confidence of his patient. He must be able to sym- pathize with the deplorable weakness of his nature, from a rational estimate of the power and prevalency of mere animal impulse, and possess that deep ac- quaintance with the human heart, which will enable him to correct with tenderness its perverted wan- derings. Unhappily there has long existed in this country, an aversion among medical practitioners, to the selection of this peculiar department of duty ; the diseases of women and children, practical mid- wifery, the operative surgery of the eye or ear, den- tition and the diseases of the teeth; these have formed, for many of the mostdistinguished ornaments of our profession, the ready avenue to scientific dis- tinction and personal wealth. The author of these pages is content to brave the tide of squeamish fastidiousness. He is conscious that in selecting a peculiar department of practice, he has been, and is, the instrument of much practical good ; that he has not lived in vain. The grateful eye of the re- turning wanderer, the rosy hue of health on the pre- viously blanched cheek of premature manhood — these are the trophies of usefulness, and they carry to the heart a more than ample exchange for the sneers of the ignorant, or the envy of the malicious. CHAPTER V. Practical observations on the Surgical Anatomy and Physiology of the sexual organs. There exists among mankind a natural desire to fulfil the primitive intention of the Great Author of our being which secures the perpetuity of our species. The sexual propensity is alike the dictate of chas- tened passion, correct sentiment, and creative impulse. This desire irresistably impels all to wish the re- moval of those infirmities in both sexes which im- pede its object. Incapacity for propagation is instinctively felt to be a degrading evil. Hence sexual diseases are of the greatest importance, whether we regard them as tending to restrict or enfeeble a future population, or in their immediate results, as fatal to individual happiness. A more accurate and enlarged acquaintance with the general structure of the reproductive organs, is absolutely • essential to the comprehension of the nature of the mischief consequent upon undue sensual excitement. From the complicated machinery employed in the formation and conveyance of the seminal fluid, it is evident that nature has intended the importance of a sound and healthy state of parts to be highly appre- ciated and well understood by those for whose use Physiology of the Seconal Organs, 65 and pleasure it was destined. Now in the two frequent and prodigal emission of this prolific liquor, it is manifest a great variety of organs must be cal- led into unnecessary action, suffering from immediate local irritations, and that, at no distant period, owing to the law of sympathy, the brain and nervous sys- tem, the stomach and digestive organs, must follow in this suffering train. A healthy condition of the reproductive apparatus is of the utmost importance, in regard to the maintenance of constitutional energy, inasmuch as the fluid secreted by the testicles, can again be returned and received into the mass of circu- lating blood.* That this really takes place, and that muscular vigour is thereby enhanced, is susceptible of direct proof; and the debility consequent upon its undue discharge, is a negative confirmation of the same truth. Like the brain, therefore, the genital organs in close relation with the nervous system, form the appropriate index of manly power, and injury or abuse of either exerts a corresponding de- trimental influence upon the general health. It is an unniversally admitted doctrine, that the blood is truly vital ; and if among the excretions, the semen be the only fluid re-absorbed into the mass of living circu- lating blood, how shall we escape the conclusion adopted by many Physiologists, that the semen — that which is abl-e to quicken into action the future being, is also itself alive ; or can we imagine a more fit vehicle for restoring and supporting our own vital power. " It is impossible to deny that the male or female, or both, or united genital fluids, are alive, because, from their union, or one influenced by the * For further information on this subject, see " The Bachelor's Guide." 6* 66 The Anatomy and other, a living being is produced, which partakes of the vital qualities of each parent. Accordingly, Blumenbach grants both male and female genital fluids to be alive, We are sufficiently taught by experience, that the body does not acquire its full solidity and consistence until the genital development has attained maturity ; affording the most evident proof, that this arrange- ment is not destined merely for others, but in a most especial manner for ourselves, possessing so extra- ordinary an influence over our whole system, as to impress, at the period of commencing manhood, a new character and feeling upon our entire being. Under this expansive agency, man acquires a new propensity to growth ; his form obtains expression, his muscles and bones the requisite solidity, ihe voice becomes full and strong, in a word, he is now both a man in body and soul. Many animals about this period acquire parts entirely new, such as horns and antlers, which never appear if the creature, when young, has been castrated. This shows how strong must be the force and influence of the new powers acquired by the sexual organs. If the de- cisive and direct confirmation of these views be deemed unsatisfactory, it is certain that no loss of any fluid, not even of blood, weakens the vital pow- er so rapidly, and in so evident a manner, as a pro- fuse waste of the generative juices. Nothing gives life so much stimulus and activity as their free secretion, and conversely, nothing so soon produces dejection and disgust, as their exhaustion and loss. Let us briefly glance at the anatomical and surgical peculiarities of the male genitals. The most simple division will be to adopt the order of Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 67 nature, which has provided secretory glands for the elimination from the blood of the vivifying semen r and secondly, appropriate channels for its discharge. It is obvious, that it was requisite it should be de- posited safely within the cavities destined for the growth of the future embryo, and for this purpose, the urinary canal of the male, which forms a com- mon outlet, is made to pass along an erectile tissue, which, when distended with blood, requires sufficient firmness to effect the necessary penetration. So the sensations which accompany the natural act of mission, may be added as a further evidence of the . ast importance of that fluid. All other evacuations are easily expelled without pleasurable excitement,* but this, if unnaturally produced, aggravates the epileptic convulsion inseperable from the act, and the momentary languor becomes changed into per- manent and deplorable imbecility. The feebleness which follows ordinary emission, shows how much the body loses when it parts with this important fluid ; all the energies of manhood are necessary to replace it ; and in extreme age, or from the presence of disease f of the heart, sudden death has been known to result from the violent shock which the nervous system undergoes from the effort. Morgani, a cele- brated Italian Physician, relates a case where death took place under the circumstances just cited. So Plateros gives an instance of a magistrate of a Swiss city, who married a second time, at an advanced period of life, and when he was endeavouring to consumate his nuptuals, he was obliged to discon- tinue. The like accident happened to him every * See " The Bachelor's Guide" for a more minute description of this subject. 68 The Anatomy and time he made the same attempt. He applied to a variety of quacks. One assured him, after he had taken several remedies, that he had nothing further to apprehend. He ventured a fresh essay upon the faith of his JEsculapius, the event was immediately the same as before, but being resolved to go through with the ^operation, he died in the very act in the arms of his wife. I recollect a case somewhat simi- lar. A misguided youth whose powers had become enfeebled by self-pollution, suffered the usual penalty. He was tormented with intense desire, but on at- tempting to gratify himself in the natural way, foi^ p to his surprise, that his libidinous practices had ,\ completely perverted animal instinct, that erection was impossible ; and after long and irksome struggle with the baffled partner of his bed, sudden pain darting through the head, compelled him to desist ungratified. The next evening he was equally pow- erless, and in a state bordering upon madness, he confessed to me the consciousness of the cause of his inability. Judicious treatment, very steadily pursued, atoned for the visious perversion of his powers ; and he is now fully competent to discharge those natural duties inseperable from due erection and firmness of the external organ. There is no phenomenon in nature more singular than the erec- tile power of the virile member. It is indispensable to the accomplishment of the generative act, and the perversion or loss of this power, from unnatural prac- tices, is an inevitable calamity. A certain amount of distention and firmness appears to be absolutely requisite for its due performance; hence the miserable sensualist, who has accustomed himself to erection from friction or manual irritation^ without the natural Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 69 force of ordinary erection, finds, on attempting the gen- erative act, that however strong the desire, the organ does not acquire the necessary firmness to penetrate the female genitals, or effuses the seminal fluid before the entrance is effected. Ordinarily the instinctive tendency to the sexual act, or repletion of the seminal vessels, produces erection ; if, however, the morbid imagination be the immediate exciting cause, it is seldom permanent ; excretion being, in such cases, scarcely possible, unless some mechanical and unna- tural irritant rouse the sensibility, but not necessarily the physical firmness of the penis. The male and female sexual organs are only the instruments of sensation, in the same manner as the eye is the in- strument of vision, while perception is resident truly in the brain. Observing the changes which occur at puberty, we find the voice becomes altered and discordant, and besides the uterine irritation in the budding woman, there is often, at this period, and never in childhood, a choking sensation in the throat, termed by Physicians " Globus Hystericus." Now the most intense cases of both kinds are found to be invariably associated with large development of the inferior and posterior part of the head, corresponding with the nervous mass contained within ; the change from boyhood or girlhood to adolescence, being, in less excitable temperaments, unmarked by any deci- sive indications of a superadded instinct. It is necessary to add, in connection with this, that the vocal nerves, those delicate threads which establish a communication between the brain and the muscles of the voice, originate near the cerebellum ; and when this organ is under extraordinary excitement, as at the period to which we refer, the neighbouring 70 The Anatomy and parts and the nerves which emanate from them, are also liable to be affected from sympathy. So those miserable wretches, who in infancy have been de- prived of their testicles, for the sake of preserving a boyish counter-tenor voice, are liable to periodical excitement of the sexual feeling, but from deficiency of the instrument, the sensation cannot be gratified in the natural way. We have said that hanging produces erection. This is an established fact. There was one, w r hose case is recorded, who had recourse to partial strangulation to produce for him- self the effects for desire ; he tried the experiment once too often, and became the subject of inquiry before a coroner's jury ; such are the mad operations of sensualism ; but he had been castrated in child- hood, and accidently made out this inlet to a new pleasure. Erection also occurs in criminals at the moment of death on the scaffold, and to suppose that at such an awful moment sexual intercourse is pre- sent in the fancy, is absurd. Women menstruate under similar circumstances. This excitement then of the genital organ, this erection, is undoubtedly involuntary, and dependent on that gorged state of the vessels of the cerebellum which accompanies such interruption of the circulation as would arise from suspension of a cord, with pressure on the blood vessels of the neck, without laceration of the spinal marrow. These remarks are of the utmost practical impor- tance. We are forced upon the inquiry, whether there is not a necessity and invariable connection between the prevalency of certain forms of sen- sualism, and an absolutely diseased state of the brain ; we feel the truth of that doctrine which Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 71 teaches, that this morbid unnaturally inflamed ap- petite may stand in close relation to insanity, pass- ing on b^ repeated indulgence to a state of the brain from ivhich recovery is almost hopeless. We are admonished that our curative energies must be di- rected (with widely different views from the mere routine practitioner) to the organs within the head, in our attempt to eradicate the causes and conse- quences of that excitement, ordinarily supposed to be resident exclusively in the genital organs. The male organ is most curiously complex. Mem- branous and vascular erectile, provided with several muscles, and forming the excretory canal, alike for the urinary and seminal fluids. The various structures which enter its composition may be defined, as the skin (with that prolongation form- ing the foreskin or prepuse ) cellular membrane, the cavernous cells, the urethra or urinary canal, a sus- pensary ligament, the glands/certain muscles, blood vessels and important nerves. Of the skin covering the penis, it is unnecessary to remark further, that in some forms of syphilitic disease, the internal lining of the foreskin becomes the subject of ulcer- ation, and one of the most painful consequences of gonorrhoea or clap, is that inflammatory enlargement and constriction produced by the sympathetic irrita- tion of the skin, know T n as paraphimosis, a state of parts, often engendered by the improper treatment of originally mild and simple affection. The agony of some patients under this distressing evil is most excruciating. The cavernous cells or bodies separated by a central fibrous plate or division, form almost the en- tire bulk of the body of the penis. They enclose the 72 The Anatomy and upper surface of the urinary canal. At one extremity they are attached to the os pubis, or share bone, at the other they terminate at the nut or gland. The tissue of which these bodies is composed is spongy, cellular, and invested with strong fibrous encasement. Blood vessels are sent in profusion to this erectile structure, they interlace freely with each other, the veins following the same course as the arteries. The urethra is a most delicate and important structure, and a knowledge of its anatomical peculi- arities, and course is absolutely essential to a just adaptation of surgical remedies when in a state of disease. Its lining mucous membrane may be in- flamed either from common or specific irritation, its course may be obstructed by preternatural thickening of its investing structure. Indeed some of the most serious diseases infesting humanity, arise from the deviations from a healthy condition frequently ob- servable in this important canal. We find that the internal lining of the urethra is formed by a continu- ation of that mucous membrane which lines the bladder. This internal lining is of an exceedingly delicate texture. It is surrounded by a set of ves- sels, the coats of which are so thin that they are not visible except when injected or filled with blood. These vessels, which are of a very peculiar character, are continued onwards and forwards to the glands. When the anterior part of this canal is laid open, we may observe, that its lining membrane secretes, na- turally, a peculiar mucous fluid, and that there are minute cells which open by mouths, resembling dot- ted points upon the surface, which fulfil the same indication. Near the extremity of the penis there is Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 73 ^ne large cell or " Lacuna" which it is important tp recollect, as it is sufficiently large to. receive the point of a small bougie, and lower down there are two others, which though not so large are still as important in another point of view, for they are the openings of ihe ducts leading to certain secretory glands, very liable in some cases to disease. It is possible to trace the lining mucous membrane of the urethra as continuous, not only along that canal, but forming the whole of the inner surface of the bladder, lining the ureters, those canals leading from that cavity to the kidneys ; besides which it may be traced in another direction, from the urethra along the seminal ducts, and through the convoluted tubes of the testicle ; and again we may follow it as forming the inner coat of the vesiculce seminales, or those receptacles into which (ready for emission) the .seminal fluid is poured, as it is slowly, yet continu- ally, secreted by the testicles. Some parts of the urinary canal are more dilata- ble than others, the orifice is the least dilatable,* and as it is the narrowest part of the whole canal, if a bougie enter it readily it will assuredly pass into the bladder, unless there be diseased contraction along its course. About three quarters of an inch below the orifice the canal becomes a little longer, and there is situated the " Lacuna" already alluded to, as yielding the greater part of the healthy or diseased secretion which bedews its inner surface. The next four inches are nearly of equal diameter ; and now, presently, we arrive at that portion of the urethra, termed by anatomists, " the membranous portion" * See my work on " Strictures of the Urethra." 7 74 The Anatomy and Here we find it suddenly becoming much narrower, in consequence of its being surrounded by a neat circular band, descending from a transverse ligament, which unites these soft structures with the bony skeleton, and this is the situation in which stricture is most apt to occur. Passing onward to the bladder, the urethra is surrounded by the prostate gland, an organ of some size, of a peculiar and very compact texture, and which is frequently, in advanced life, the subject of disease. As its name implies, it stands before the bladder, surrounding that portion of the urinary canal which passes through it } so that the male urethra is the common outlet of three distinct fluids : the semen, the secretion of the prostate gland, and the urine ; to say nothing of the mucous which lubricates the lining of this canal ) the semen is never discharged pure, but mixed with the pros* tate fluid, which is thinner, more glairy, and less gelatinous. It remains next, that we detail so much of the surgical anatomy of the testicle as may enable the reader to comprehend the nature of some of its more obvious diseases. Our attention has been di- rected to the organs which excrete the seminal fluid, and if their healthy and sound condition be essential to the due performance of the duties of conjugal life, how much more important that the structures, which elaborate and separate from the blood the vivifying semen, should not have suffered from the irregulari- ties of sensualism, or mismanagement under disease. The secretion of sexual fluid is intended by nature for the conservation of the species. Though the male genitals rapidly develope from the fourteenth to the eighteenth year ; yet they do not in general Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 75 acquire their complete growth or functions before the twentieth, sometimes not until the thirtieth ; and whether later or earlier, this is the proper period for marriage. It is certain that the body of man is not fully developed before the twenty-first year of age ; the spermatic fluid is less abundant, less fitted for reproduction ; and persons under this age generally beget delicate sickly infants, ivho seldom arrive at maturity ; sexual indulgence, or unnatural excite- ment from solitary practices, before the age of twen- ty-one, according to the laws of nature, not only retards the dev elopement of the genital organs, but of the whole body, impairs the strength, injures the constitution, and shortens life. The testicles, of which we now speak, are not origin- ally suspended in the scrotum or purse. Before birth they are placed in a very different part, and the na- ture and successive changes of their situation, have arrested the curiosity of the physiologist, and the attention of the surgeon, in all ages. The remark- able and perfectly natural passage of the testicles before birth, from the loins to the groin, and forwards to its appropriate situation, generally occurs during the last month of pregnancy. I have, however, seen it delayed, and sometimes this descent of the testi- cles is deferred even until the changing voice pro- claims approaching manhood. I recollect seeing a case where, from ignorance of these anatomical facts, a surgeon had actually directed a youth to the house of a surgical instrument maker, to ask for a double truss, under the impression, that the small enlarge^ ments visible in each groin were protrusions of bowel, when in truth, nature, somewhat tardy in her opera- tions, was about effecting the descent of the testicles T6 The Anatomy and into their ordinary resceptacle. Fortunately, in this instance, the intelligent dealer in trusses detected the real nature of the case ; had it been otherwise, the youth would, doubtlessly, have been maimed and impotent for life, from the pressure of the pad of the truss upon this exquisitely delicate organ. It is well known, that the testicles may not descend into the scrotum, though they may be fully developed in the loins, and perform their functions perfectly, in- deed, according to some writers, much better than in the natural situation, from the warm situation which they occupy, but this is questionable. I was once consulted by a young gentleman who had but one testicle, in the usual situation, as to the propriety of his contracting marriage ; the other testicle had never descended, and he was otherwise well deve- loped, robust and healthy. I advised him to marry, he did so, and became a parent. Similar incidents have occurred in the practice of others. So the destruction of one testicle by cas- tration or disease, is no impediment to procreation, no more than the loss of one eye is to vision. But when both testicles are completely diseased, or where alternately, from repeated attacks of clap, each of these organs becomes in turn inflamed and enlarged, the utmost care, and the most scientifically cautious management is demanded, lest the future power of secretion be materially diminished, or absolutely destroyed. The slightest reflection upon the struc- ture of the testicle, will serve to convince the reader, that it is, in truth, wonderful, that inflammatory swelling does not more frequently disorganize, thicken, and obliterate, the delicate and curiously contorted tubes, of which its substance is composed, Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 77 than is really the case. The testicle then, is of an oval form, and of the size of a pigeon's egg ; it is a little flattened on the sides. It hangs in the scrotum by the spermatic cord, which is, in truth, nothing more than the excretory canal leading from the testi- cle to the urinary passage, the artery or blood vessel destined for the nutriment of the testicle, some nerves and veins, so constituting by their approximation, a species of soft string, occasionally the subject of dis- ease. As to the semen itself, it is eliminated by the testicles, and separated from the blood carried thither by the arteries of the cord. As to the course of the semen, we find it passing first upwards, along the vas deferens, or lengthened canal, leading from the point of its formation, then deeply downwards and backwards, to the termination of this canal on either side, in the urinary passage. It is undoubtedly true, that the thinner parts, dis- tending the vesiculce seminales, or seminal 4 recepta- cles, becomes absorbed into the living mass of cir- culating blood, a fact which furnishes strong collateral evidence of the vitality of the semen itself, for how otherwise were it possible to effect absolute union between a living fluid and a dead inert excretion ? The gelatinous residuum contained in these cells is rendered thereby more acrid and stimulating, provok- ing the natural desire ; and when in this way nature herself solicits the sexual act, as a relief to the dis- tended receptacles, there can be no doubt, that, as Sanctorius observes, moderate coition is good, but when it is solicited by the imagination it weakens all the faculties and particularly the memory. Nor is this difficult of explanation : when the vesiculce seminales are replete with a secretion, that by the 7* 78 The Anatomy and loss of its more fluid parts, has acquired a certain degree of consistency, rendering its entire return into the circulation difficult, if not impossible, and when, under these circumstances, evacuation fol- lows, we may be assured that the body will not thereby become debilitated. The act of evacuation (however induced) is more pernicious as it is unne- cessary, and because the masturbator has the power of exciting these organs, to excrete a thin fluid, when the seminal vesicles contain nothing sufficiently sti- mulating to rouse the erection necessary for the natural sexual act, he is able to perpetrate so much the greater mischief. Unaccustomed to retain the semen, the vesicles become irritable to the last ex- tent, and as the result, if the poor victim of solitary indulgence marry, the thin gleety fluid formed by his seminal organs, is unproductive, and unfit to impreg- nate a perfectly healthy female. As to such cha- racters, it is imagination, habit, not nature, that importune them. They drain the system of that which these receptacles are not naturally too irrita- ble to retain, of that which is necessary, or which, if superabundant, seeks the usual outlet at irregular and uncertain periods. Among the many lamenta- ble diseases, to which the human body is liable, few require greater skill and attention, on the part of the surgeon, than those Which affect the urinary and generative organs. On the due performance of their functions depend, in a great degree, the comfort and health of the individual. It is obvious, that whatever deranges them, must be the source of various con- stitutional disorders, and often of death, after long protracted and sevete sufferings. Our observations upon the surgical anatomy of Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 79 the female reproductive organs will necessarily be limited,* inasmuch as the same elementary princi- ples apply to the treatment of sexual diseases, whe- ther the subject be of our own or of the weaker sex. For instance, all that relates to the diseases of the lining mucous membrane of the male urethra, is generally true of similar affections incidental to wo- man ; and in the same way, as organized secreting structures, endued with identity of operation, are found in both ; so disease produces analogous effects and requires analogous remedies. A minute and detailed anatomical enumeration is, therefore, to avoid repetition, absolutely unnecessary. The general character of the sexes are marked and obvious, and there is little doubt but that this variety of organization and external character, is to be referred to the influence which the generative organs exert over the rest of the body. If it be true that ''propter solum ulerem mulier est, id quod est ;" that is, it is in consequence of the womb only, that woman is what she is ; it is equally true of ourselves. Do we not know that the early re- moval of the male sexual organs retards the growth, and stamps upon man the worse than womanish effeminacy and voice of boyhood ? It has been held by some physiologists, that the generative organs of the human female are more complicated than those of the male, and that there- fore the causes of impotence and sterility are more numerous and less apparent than in man. And so it is, that if a married pair be devoid of offspring, the * For further exp'anation on this subject see Fawcett's work on Ftrnale Complaints. 80 The Anatomy and female is most commonly and often erroneously sup- posed to be the inefficient party. However if we examine the genital organs of both sexes anatomically, we shall find that if complicated they are both equally so, possessing equal adaptation or arrangement of parts, as well as identity of struc- ture. We may urge the truth of this position without pledging ourselves to the literal correctness of the opinion advanced by Aristotle, and revived by some in our day, namely, that the only difference existing between the genital system of the male and that of the female, consists in this — that the one is placed internally and'the other external to the body. How- ever near these coincidences may appear, we should be far from maintaining the doctrine of a perfect similitude between the genital apparatus of both sexes ; each of them performs functions perfectly distinct, though reciprocally essential in the act of reproduction. Of the external female genitals it is only requisite to remark, that their internal surfaces are naturally intended to be placed in contact ; and to answer this intention, as well as for other important uses, we find them invested or lined with a delicate prolonga- tion of mucous membrane, precisely similar in its pathological relations, to the jnucous membrane which forms the internal layer of the male urethra. Hence it is liable to the same diseases. It is upon this surface that the inflammation of gonorrhoea or clap excites its baneful influence. Free and copious suppuration is the method whereby the inflamed vessels relieve themselves, and this being secreted in quantity, and possessing most infectious and acrimo- nious qualities, if coition takes place under these Physiology of the Sexual Organs. 81 circumstances, a similar disease is engendered in the male, obviously because of the identity of structure in the investing mucous membrane common to both. Connected with the cavity of the uterus, there are two delicate canals, called from the anatomist who first correctly described them, "The Fallopian tubes." These are narrow and tortuous, opening by one ex- tremity into the womb, and terminating at the other end in a fringe-like aperture, peculiar and elegant in structure. These canals are of great importance in conception, since they appear to become tinged as well as the tubes themselves, during the excitement of coition, and to embrace the " ovaria" over which they lie. These " ovaria" or as thev were once termed the testes of the female, are composed of a tough and almost tendinous covering, and a dense and closely compacted cellular substance, containing in each ovarium about fifteen ovula, or rudiments of egg; in fact drops of albuminous, yellowish fluid, which coagulates like fine white of egg, if the recent ovarium be plunged into boiling water. The analo- gy between the female ovaria and the male testicles is not fanciful. The ovaria receive the same blood vessels and nerves, as in the male go to the testicle. it has even the form of this organ, though flatter, and perhaps smaller. It would appear that a mere albuminous, coagula- ble drop, is all that the female contributes in the work of conception ; and it is probable that, from the analogy of the vegetable system, during the adult state, these drops become mature in succes- sion ; so that they, one by one, force their way> whether impregnated or no, finally burst their cover- ing, are transmitted along the fallopian tube, to bs 82 The Anatomy and Physiology, §c. involved into perfect humanity, or discharged with the next menstrual evacuation. The fluid called " female semen," supposed to be contributed during the conjugal act, is nothing more than the mucous secretion of the lining membrane of the genitals, suddenly augmented in quantity by the pleasurable irritation of those organs, and of course it contributes nothing to the work of reproduction. The ingenuity and research of man has been vainly, but not perhaps unprofitably excited, in the attempt to unravel the mysterious process of con- ception. The genital organs of both sexes have acquired perfect development, are excited by the animal secretion cf the germ, or egg, in the ovary in woman. This excitement leads to sexual union, by which the elements of both sexes are united, and a new being is the result of such contact. Compara- tive researches on the production of plants and ani- mals, from the highest to the lowest classes, have signally failed in explaining the mystery of human reproduction. Life and organization are neither inseparable nor even identical. After the investiga- tion of ages, the reference must be for explanation to the Creator of all things. Man is still ignorant of how life begins or ceases ; it is all mystery to him. We see the instrument, and can perhaps ex- plain the structure of the keys and finger-board, but the hidden strings that produce the harmony are past the ken of mortal vision, CHAPTER VI. Of Self-pollution and its Consequences* The crimes ofEv and Onan, were committed un- der the full consciousness of their inherent hateful- ness. Sin and suffering are essentially inseparable. Its present and immediate consequences are often visibly severe ; such is the ordination of the Moral Governor. His rational and intelligent creatures are responsible to Him for the use or abuse of those bodily powers, with which, for the wisest of pur- poses he has endued them. We find, that apart from the death of the soul, Er and Onan were instantly destroyed.* They dared to disarrange, to perfect the laws, impressed alike upon the conscience as upon the bodily organization of man. Theirs was presumptuous criminality, not ignorant frailty, but wilful impiety ; and their sad example has been left on record as a fearful warning to all future genera- tions, as equally the measure of the purity and holi- ness of the Divine Nature, the abhorrent depravity of human transgression, and the inevitable certainty of retributive justice. * " And Onan knew that the seed should not be his, and it came to pass, when he went unto his brother's wife, that he spilt it on the ground^ lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord, wherefore he slew him also." — Genesis, 38th chap., 9th and 10th verses. B4 Self -pollution and It is frequently urged, that the destructive habit now under consideration, is essentially distinct from the species of wickedness which forms the special subject of historic reference in the sacred records, and that, therefore, the term " Onanism, " however generally applied or understood, is incorrect. A little reflection will enable us to perceive, that the popular designation is radically consistent with truth. The endeavours or designs of preventing pro-crea- tion, were the crimes for which Er and Onan so miserably and signally perished ; they were instantly consigned to temporal and eternal death for their presumption, in not complying with the command of God; their offences being, negatively, murder, by preventing that increase which was an absolute com- mand given in Adam to all posterity. And what, in effect, is the difference between their criminality and that of the secret victim of self-pollution ? Is not complete impotence the frequent result of the prac- tice ? Are not the intentions of marriage as com- pletely frustrated ? Nay, what is worse, as self- destruction is, of every species of murder, the most horribly vile, do not these entail upon themselves, while life rapidly wasts away, a worse than living death ; do they not dig for themselves untimely graves, and abreviate the term of their own exist- ence, by this unnatural, inexcusable sin ? We trust we shall be able, most clearly, to establish these im- portant positions, and to trace the immediate connec- tion as cause and effect, between the profuse waste of the seminal fluid ; together with the inordinate excitement of the genital organs, and some of the direst forms of disease that infest the suffering frame. its Consequences. 85 Self-pollution is that detestable practice by which persons of either sex may defile their own bodies alone in secrecy, and whilst yielding to lascivious imaginations, they endeavour to imitate and procure to themselves, that sensation which nature has appended to the commerce of the sexes. It appears to be one of those impure habits which is coeval with the world's history* It was the special vice of Pagan Rome. Temples were erected to Venus Fricatrix* in which the most obscene practices, of which self-pollution constituted one, were publicly perpetrated. The Friga, or Venus of the ruder Scandinavians was honoured with the same vile ob- servances ; and from this curious, yet filthy source, we derive the name " Friga-daeg," of the sixth day of the week. A word in vulgar use, expressive of the sexual act, has the same dishonorable origin. Unfortunately for the history of human nature, it has been found coeval with every form of society, savage or civilized, and the denunciations of the ancient moralists are of equal application at the present period. We find them uniformly expressing the most unmitigated horror at this abominable prac- tice, as a crime most monstrous, unnatural, and filthy ; odious to extremity ; its guilt crying, and its consequences absolutely ruinous ; as destroying conjugal affection, perverting natural inclination^ and extinguishing the hope of posterity. " Increase and multiply" is the scriptural text, " Plant trees and beget offspring" is the apothegm of the Magi. The perpetuation of the species being, with the Great Designer of the Universe, an object of the first in- * From the Latin Verb u Frico," to rub or chafe — friction. 8 SB Self -pollution and terest, all living beings are mentally and physically formed with a view to this great end. With what encouragement to virtue, therefore, (says a certain author) may young people behold a man at the age of four score, with a wife of the like antiquity, both blest with healthy hale constitutions, and fresh wholesome countenances, with sound minds and perfect senses, active limbs and of cheerful tempers, presiding over a healthy progeny, perhaps to the third or fourth generation, and all these blessings owing, under Providence, to their temperance and continence; where, if we turn our eyes upon the licentious masturbators, we shall find them with me- gre jaws, pale looks, feeble hands and legs without calves ; their generative faculties weakened, if not destroyed, in the prime of their youth, a jest to others, and a torment to themselves. Let it not be urged, that commentaries upon the evils produced by solitary vice, may be so perverted as to teach the practices we professedly condemn. This is specious yet fallacious reasoning. Indivi- dual perversion is no argument against the general knowledge of necessary truth. There are youths, unfortunately, of dispositions so depraved, that they will turn over the pages of Holy Writ, for the sake of gloating over those darker, yet severely faithful transcripts of human frailty, which have been left on record as monitory proofs of dependence on heaven in the hour of need ; yet, surely, this forms no argu- ment against the divinity, or authority and perusal of the sacred book. To those that will have the effron- tery to assume, that works of this nature tend more to promote vice than to suppress it, and those who were before ignorant -of it will hereby acquire a know- its Consequences. 87 ledge of bad habits, it is only necessary to observe, that the best and purest things are invariably selected by depraved minds to be polluted and distorted, agreeably to a previously corrupt imagination. To such is nothing pure, their touch is contamination, their look defilement. No new development of vice can render them more essentially odious, there is an "internal spring of pollution which petrifies alike all that comes within its influence, whether it be the word of God, or the language of man; they are already past my solicitude. It is, however, the wish of the Author that this publication may become ex- tensively familiar to the superintendents of our schools and collegiate educational institutions. To the clergy, to parents and guardians, and all to whom is entrusted the formation of youthful character. It will be useful without admixture or diminution, in enabling them to make timely discovery of this hate- ful practice, among those committed to their care ; and it may put them upon their guard, so as to ^enable them to take such precautions as may be most fitting to avert the consequences. There are few of those who have devoted themselves exclusively to the treatment of sexual diseases who are not deeply impressed with the general prevalency of self-pollution. It is is doubted by the mere rou- tine practitioner — it is denied ! He of all men is least likely to be able to form an accurate concep- tion. He is precisely the last man to be consulted, or confided with the secret. The family physician may be in possession of family secrets, he may know the hereditary tendencies common to them all, but it is quite another thing to become entrusted with individual secrets, the confession that the soli- 88 Self -pollution and tary victim will not, and cannot make, to a father, mother, a brother or a sister.. The common medi- cal attendant is never consulted,, and very wisely so, he is just as ignorant of the extent and pre valency of these pernicious practices as he is of the best mode for their detection and cure. I am sure that in calling attention to the evils resulting from every form of vicious indulgence, I am adopt- ing the most efficient means to deter the unwary young from the snare ; and by pointing out to per- sons of both sexes the frightful evils, both to body and mind, inseparably attendant upon the grosser habit of self-pollution. I hold the warning becon up to nature, and mark the treacherous quicksand upon which have been wrecked the hopes and pro- mise of many a noble youth, now mouldering in a disgraceful grave.* Temporary distraction may suddenly dethrone the self-determining power of the will, life may become extent under the influence of momentary madness ; but the poor slave of filthy propensities is a deliberate suicide ; and, shall it be said, it is wrong to strip the mask of this infatuation — to paint the horrors which await the unfortunate creatures who venture near the edge of a moral gulf, indiscriminately burying within its insatiable vortex, the happiness of time and the hope for Eter- nity ? There crawls not upon the face of the earth a more truly miserable wretch than the victim of unbri- dled licentiousness. His imagination is on fire,burning with filthy unnatural glow. His bodily organs have been taxed to the utmost. Weary and jaded, they refuse to obey the stimulus of that never-slumber- * See " The Bachelor's Guide." its Consequences. 88 ing depravity which goads his fancy in ihe darkness of night, in the dreams of his broken rest, and in the worse than dreamy abstractions of the cheerless day. He is tormented with desires he can never gratify — he is baffled in every attempt to taste the sweet enjoyments accorded only to virtuous modera- tion. Like the fabled Tantalus of old, thirst is con- suming him, unmitigated by every attempt to force, for a moment, his mouth below the wave. The vulture retribution is preying upon his vitals. Let the thoughtless, inconsiderate youth, who in some un- guarded moment may have been seduced into the commission of this criminality, but who, as yet, is scarcely able to perceive its ill results ; or, if con- scious of suffering, incorrectly ascribes it to any source but his newly acquired habit — let him not imagine that the same joyous flow of vivacity will continue to attend him as now — let him not presume upon his vigour, and rejoice in his seemingly ex- haustless powers. I do not overcharge the miseries of sensualism ; its results are as hideous as they are inevitable. Self-pollution is the most certain, though not always the most immediate and direct avenue to destruction. It constitutes a lingering species of mortality, and if it were possible to study and invent refinement in cruelty, surely that would most dearly deserve the designation, which a man deliberately points against himself — against not merely his temporal but his eternal welfare, not by sudden wrench, to tear himself away from the ameni- ties of wife, children, and home, but with his own hand, imperceptibly, to infuse a deadly poison, slowly to rankle in the cup of life, and imbitter each passr ing day ; to shroud in gloom the darkening future 8* 90 Belf-pollutian and and invite the king, of terrors, prematurely, to do his office. It will be proper to notice a few of the more direct consequences of the habit of Self-pollution. It is chiefly on the youth of both sexes that its ravages are observable ; death mostly removes in silence those who persist in the practice, in complete manhood* That this should constitute a vice of youth is excessively to be deplored ; inasmuch as we find the springs of life contaminated and enfee- bled at the outset, and the transmitted vitality of a succeeding progeny is sure to manifest corresponding imbecility, puny growth and tendency to disease. Whether from the prevalency of self-pollution, or excessive indulgence in sexual commerce, so far as the loss of the vitalizing fluid is concerned, people now leave off: at the period when a rational man i& only beginning to develope his powers. An aged gentleman, a resident of this city, now long past the allotted age of man, became a parent very lately, of a new and healthy progeny ; and in every such in- stance, the early habits have been temperate, hardy, and sparing, of sensual indulgence. The youth of the present day act as if they imagined they could never soon enough get rid of their chastity, that there is something manly in the success of their ex-, ploits, not in the camp of Mars, but in the silken tent of Venus. Long before their bodies are com- pletely finished, they begin to waste those powers which are destined for giving life to others ; the con- sequences are evident— they feel nothing but dejec- tion and misery, and a stimulus of the utmost import- ance, as the seasoning of life's feast is lost to them for ever. To those who devote their time to the relief its Consequences. 91 of such, how many of these debilitated and emaci- ated objects do not daily present themselves ? the countenance sunk, the eyes pallid, an indescriba- ble character of feature, better known than expres- sed ; the recipients of much sympathy from the friends who know not the cause of their apparently consumptive, yet gradual decline ; and all ascriba- ble to this abominable, yet seductive, practice of masturbation. An idea may be formed of the nature of this loss, and of the sacred guard which health imposes on its due preservation, by observing the consequences resulting from its unnecessary, invo- luntary, or too frequent evacuation. Physicians of all ages have been unanimously of opinion, that the loss of one ounce of this fluid, by the unna- tural act of Self -pollution, or nocturnal emissions, weakens the system more completely than the ab- straction of forty ounces of blood. Hippocrates observed ; that " the seed of man arose from all the humours of his body, and is the most valuable part of them." When a person loses his seed, (he says in another place,) he loses his vital spirit ; so that it is not astonishing, that its too frequent evacuation should emaciate, as the body is thereby deprived of the purest of its humours. Another author remarks, that " the semen is kept in the seed vessels until the man makes proper use of it, or nocturnal emissions deprive him of it." During all this time the quantity which is there detained excites him to the act of venery; but the greatest part of this seed, which is the most volatile and odoriferous, as well as the strongest, is absorbed into the blood ; and it there produces, upon its return, very surprising changes ; it makes the beard, hair and nails grow, it changes 92 Self-pollution and the voice and manners, for age does not produce these changes in animals, it is the seed only that operates in this manner, for these changes are never met with in Eunuchs, or those who have been de- prived of their testicles. Can a greater proof of its vitalizing power be shown than this fact, " that one single drop is sufficient (under proper circumstan- ces) to give life to afutiwe being. Those then who waste this precious fluid are truly wretched — dis- abled from rendering any service either to themselves or their friends, they drag on a life totally useless to others and a burthen to themselves, in the midst of that society, which, if it could know, would despise rather than pity them for their self-inflicted sufferings. The moralist and legislator will do well in estima- ting the sources of human wretchedness, intellectual perversity and crime, to take into account those habits which tend, not more to enfeeble the physical constitution of man, than to demoralize his springs of action. The undue loss of seminal secretion in a natural w 7 ay, that is from too frequent intercourse with the other sex, is productive of dire evils, but w 7 hen re- sulting from self-pollution, no language can describe the extent of those sufferings, which violated nature is compelled to endure. All the intellectual facul- ties are weakened, the man becomes a coward, ap- prehensive of a thousand ideal dangers, or sinks into the effeminate timidity of womanhood ; he becomes truly hysterical, sighs or weeps upon the slightest insult, or want of sympathy with his hypochondriacal sensations ; such a one commences the career of incipient manhood by the abuse of nature's most secret and sacred functions, and that at a moment its Consequences. 93 when the system is incompletely formed, when energy and passion need as yet the controling rule of riper reason. Exclusively absorbed by this prin- ciple, all the powers of the body and mind are wasted in delusive enjoyments, in imaginary crea- tions, and an age of care and anxiety follows, broken only by useless and unavailing regrets. Under the various forms of the peculiar excitement, but espe- cially in the diseased fancy of the victim of solitary vice, we find associated every species of morbid insensibility, erratic imaginations, and their conse- quent results, are indicated by an indecision of cha- racter difficult of comprehension by those who are unacquainted with its cause. Waywardness, stub- born self-love, selfishness, in every modification, or that form of it which requires, and would attract, the anxiety and attention of others too exclusively upon himself; such are often the mental outlines of a character which secretly debasing passions have contributed to form. A.n incessant irksome uneasi- ness, continual anguish, or alternating with fits of unreasonable and childish merriment, depressed or excited without adequate cause ; these form some of the mental inquietudes connected with the prac- tice of masturbation. Loss of sleep, or inability to repose calmly until fairly wearied out, midnight watchfulness, and dull sluggish unrest upon waking, with troubles — frightful or lascivious dreams ; such is the history of the hours of darkness. The morn- ing comes, but not with returning day; the blithe song of the early lark, or the birds which chirp in the first beams of the summer sun ; mid-day passes gloomily away, the lazy victim of solitary vice re- quires much sleep, in some measure to atone for the 94 Self -pollution and loss of power, and to recruit exhausted sensorial energy. Left to himself, he is often found at this hour still breathing the impure stifling atmosphere of his own chamber, on that bed from which he feels no cheerful alacrity to rise. An indefinable, muddy, dizzy oppression of brain haunts his waking hours, his brow is often contracted, and his look betrays, either the vacancy of his soul, or that his polluted mind is wandering after some indulgence that ima- gination has conjured up to his disordered fancy. He eats with avidity, sometimes ravenously ; for in this way only can the enormous drain upon the seminal fluid be partially supplied ; at length the nervous power, essential to the digestive process, begins to fail, then slow fever rapidly emaciates his wasting frame. Previously, even to this, we may note that the skin assumes that pale or violet hue easily cognizable by the practised observer, especi- ally around the eyes ; pimples appear on the face, of course defying for their removal the ordinary remedies, the powers of the body decay, the shortest effort to a sudden race, which once formed the ex- ulting display of youthful agility, is now followed by breathlessness and fainting ; the muscular sys- tem becoming strangely enfeebled, and wasting away. The arm that once could bear the savage grasp is now shrivelled, and the muscles of the thigh are shrunk within the ample folds of the dress they once distended with their voluminous rotundity. The body, once erect and stately, assumes the stoop of decrepitude ; the shoulders project forward, the step, formerly light, tripping and elastic, is now a miserable dragging shuffle ; or it is accidentally dis- covered that a walking stick is really something its Consequences. 95 more than an elegant appendage. All his fire and spirit are deadened by this detestable vice ; he is like a faded rose, a tree blasted in its bloom, a wan- dering skeleton, nothing remains but debility, lan- guor, livid paleness, and a degraded soul. A youth, endowed by nature with talent and genius, becomes dull or totally stupid, the mind loses all relish for virtuous or exalted ideas, the consciousness of the purity and essential holiness of the Creator, oper- ates asa bar against any approach to him, or the appropriation of any of those consolations under suffering, which religion is destined to afford. The whole life of such a man is a continued succession of secret reproach, painful sensations arising from the consequences of having been the fabricator of his own distress ; irresolution, disgust of life, and not unfrequently self-murder. Nay, what in effect is this but the consummation of slow self-destruc- tion ? Could we but lift the veil of the grave, how should we startle at the long train of the victims of sensualism. A gentleman of high connections, and apparently possessed of every requisite to make life happy; was found most unexpectedly dead in his bed ; a pistol, the instrument of his death, was clenched in his hand ; none could account for the rash act, and doubtless, but for his own revelation, it would have passed away as unaccountable as the temporary insanity of the newspapers. Upon a piece of paper, in his own hand writing, was discovered, the words, '• / am impotent and unfit to live? Scarcely a day passes that deaths by suicide are not recorded, where no cause is assigned for the deed, but for which, from the result of experience, I am strongly inclined 96 Self -pollution and to believe, could we explore the secrets of the gloomy prison-house, would be easily explained. Generative debility is not so unfrequent as many suppose ; it most frequently is the result of sensual excesses, and the mental agonies of such a one are almost insupportable. What bodily pain can equal the agony of the soul ? A wounded spirit who can bear ? Aggravated as those feelings must, of neces- sity be, by the consciousness that to his own impru- dence, his own base slavery to sensualism, he owes his forlorn, blighted, and miserable condition — a being on whom the eye of beauty beams not with fond and pure affection, an outcast even from the paid embraces of a mercenary wanton. There is in this class of patients an exquisite sensitiveness to external impressions, the slightest change of weather affects the sensualist most severe- ly ; he cannot perceive the correctness of the re- mark, that ours is a temperate climate, for with him the seasons are always in extremes ; the summer scorches him into lassitude, or he becomes peevish at the continuance of the cold. Such individuals are excessively 'prone to catarrhal affections, they take cold from trifling causes, their bodies becoming as keenly delicate to external and atmospheric agen- cies as the most perfect barometer. We find lhat in them the Kning mucous membrane of the nostrils and the eyes is peculiarly irritable,, fits of long-con- tinued sneezing annoy them on getting into a cold t>ed, or on the sudden approach of a strong light. The eyelids become strangely hot and irritable, at night the handkerchief is in frequent requisition, and a continual winking and pressure together of the lids is then observable. The most acute pains from its Consequences: 97 another feature of the aggregate malady. These are sometimes referable to the head or limbs, but more commonly to the stomach, forming the index to that form of indigestion resulting from the drain of sen- sorial energy. Many mis-called rheumatic diseases are solely dependent upon this practice. The organs of generation participate also in the misery of local deprivation. It is a singular fact, that the habit of self-pollution is connected with an inevitable diminu- tion of the size of the penis. The author has had frequent occasions to verify this statement. Of noc- turnal emissions, seminal weakness, diseased testicle, and gleet, as the consequences of masttubation, we will speak separately. The diminution of the size of the penis is one of the first and most obvious effects of this bad habit. The virile organ becomes shrunk into less than half its former outline, and what is worse, the power of perfect erection is alto- gether destroyed. This is not wonderful, if we re- flect upon the diversity of operation between the natural sexual act, and the vile friction of the mas- turbator. With him, even if the seminal vesicles be not sufficiently distended with that natural stimulus which provokes erection, he can produce by friction .a higher degree of irritation than is natural, and he can command the sensation when it would be im- possible to maintain the requisite firmness of the organ for coition. Thus, then, a variety of evils are engendered. The testicles are called upon suddenly and violently to secrete, and the excretory canals to discharge a thin, effete, unprolific semen, and the nerves of the penis are rendered susceptible of an agreeable titillation, without the naturally inseparable adjunct — firm erection of that organ ; hence when 9 D8 Self -pollution and the masturbator tries to indulge in coition, he cannot assume the requisite solidity to effect penetration, or, if he partially effect an entrance into the vagina, it is followed by premature emission. The organs have been accustomed to a vicious perversion, to excrete without erection, or if the penis swell for a moment, the genitals of the female do not grasp the whole length of that organ, with the rude and forci- ble friction it has suffered from the human hand. I enter into these details for the purpose of prov- ing, if indeed it were necessary, that my statements of the consequences arising from self-pollution form no imaginary or over-charged picture, and that those results are susceptible of rational explanation. The reason why masturbators are debilitated more than those who indulge in natural sexual intercourse, is, that independently of the emission of the seed, the frequency of erection (though imperfect) with which they are afflicted greatly weakens them. Every part that is in a state of tension exhausts the powers, and they having none to lose, the spirits are con- veyed thither in greater quantities ; they are dissi- pated, and this occasions weakness ; they are want- ing in the performance of other functions which is thereby only imperfectly done. The concurrence of these two causes is attended by the most dangerous consequences. We may discover another difference between the victims of solitary vice and those who indulge in natural intercourse ; a difference that is totally to the disadvantage of the former, and which I have fully described in the " Bachelor's Guide." That joy which the heart is sensible of, and which should be nicely distinguished from that voluptuous- ness solely corporeal, which man enjoys in common its Consequences. 99 with other animals, and from which it is completely- distinct; this joy aids digestion, animates circulation, accelerates all the functions, restores strength and supports it. If this be found united with the plea^ sures of love, it contributes to repair and restore what it stole by force, and observation proves it, Santorius remarked, " After excessive coition with a woman that is beloved, a man is not sensible of the lassitude which should follow this excess,because the joy which the soul feels increases the strength of the heart, favours the functions, and repairs what was lost." Upon this principle Venette maintains, that having correspondence with a handsome woman does not exhaust so much as with an ugly woman ; beauty has charms which dilate our hearts and mul- tiply our spirits, when we excite ourselves against the laws of nature, the crime is much greater on that side than on the other; and can it be questioned, that nature allots more joy to those pleasures pro- cured in her proper channals, than in those which are repugnant to her ? In the former case the loss is compensated by the gain ; in that of self-pollution, the masturbator loses all and receives nothing. These are a few of the most prominent of the immediate evils resulting from self pollution. That the danger- ous consequences of these acts are not immediately felt, does not prove that they never, will. I hesitate not to say, that in their mischievous progress, they are the heralds of every baneful vice. Nature, prin- ciple, and all correct feeling, are arrayed against the habit of self-pollution ; in its rolling demonology it allures, gradually, from one stage of degradation to another ; the painful impression it engenders is the source of unmanly pusillanimity, and an ab^nr 100 Self -pollution and donmentof the essential position. Man, the rational and intelligent lord of creation, should maintain, as the head of that chain of animated being, which, though inferior, is certainly not invested with those depraved propensities. How fallen from the high and proud estate, how sunk beneath the true nobility of man, is the wretched wreck of humanity, whose deplorable excesses have reduced him to a condition so truly contemptible. Once in the joyous hilarity of youth he rejoiced in the entire command of every manly faculty, now a senseless, yet animated mass of helplessness, exciting the commiseration of those who know not the cause of his ruin, and visited by the bitter scorn of those who, spite of his attempt at concealment, read his degradation enstamped upon every feature. Whither may he fly from the plague that is within him, the evil that haunts him alike in darkness and light ? The quiet and refined enjoy- ments of literary research, once his harmless and delightful recreation, now pall up his morbid viti- ated taste, if he read at all, nothing but the more licentious productions of our older dramatists, or the lewd effusions of the reign of Charles II., proves sufficiently stimulating; or these, it may be, are ex- changed for the mawkish sentimentality, the prurient voluptuousness or concealed obscenity of alow cir- culating library of trashy novels. Forced to con- templete the gloomy spectre, the shadow of his former intellectual and bodily self. It is merciful indeed, that loss of memory, in some faint measure, procures for him, negatively, moments of repose from that murderous racking thought, which can dwell alone upon images the most horrific and revolt- ing. To such a one what misery arises from the -its Consequence? \ Z 101 accidental perception of domestic enjoyments ; he sees a fond falher hug to his bosom his first-born, and cover its little laughing face with kisses. But for him — let fancy complete the picture. Of the serious constitutional diseases to which sensualism gives rise, we must speak more at large. The eloquent Tissot has arranged, under six distinct heads, the evils which arise from self-pollution, and his description accords precisely with my experience, during a practice of thirty years. He observes — First— "All the intellectual faculties are weakened, loss of memory ensues, the ideas are clouded, the patients sometimes fall into a slight madness ; they have an incessant irksome uneasiness, continued anguish, and so often a remorse of conscience that they frequently shed tears. They are subject to vertigoes ; all their senses, but particularly their sight and hearing, are weakened ; their sleep, if they can obtain any, is disturbed with frightful dreams." Secondly—" The powers of their bodies decay ; the growth of such as abandon themselves to these abominable practices, before it is accomplished, is greatly prevented ; some cannot sleep at all, others are in a perpetual state of drowsiness. They are affected with hypocondriac or hysterical complaints, and are overcome with the accidents that accompany those grievous disorders and faintings ; some emit a calcerous saliva ; coughs, slow fevers, and consump- tions, are chastisements which others meet, with their own crimes." Thirdly — " The most acute pains form another object of patients' complaints ; some are thus affected in their heads, others in their breasts, stomach and intestines ; others have external rheumatic pains, 9* 1 02 Self-pollution and aching numbness in all parts of their bodies, when they are slightly pressed." Forthly — " Pimples do not only appear in the face, (this is one of the most common symptoms) but ever suppurating blisters upon the nose, the breast, and the thighs ; and painful itchings in the same parts. One patient complained of fleshy excrescences upon his forehead." Fif I 1 y — •" The organs of generation also partici- pate of that misery, whereof they are the primary causes. Many patients are incapable of erection ; others discharge their seminal liquor upon the slight- est titulation and the most feeble erection, or the efforts they make when at stool. Many are effected with a constant gonorrhoea, which entirely destroys their powers, and the discharge resembles foeted matter or mucous ; others are tormented with pain- ful priapisms, dissuria 3 ,, stranguries, heat of the urine, and a difficulty in rendering it, which greatly torments many patients ; some have painful tumours upon their testicles, penis, bladder, and spermatic cord. In a word, either the impracticability of coi- tion, or any deprivation of the genital liquor, renders every one imbecile, who has for any length of time given way to this crime." Sixthly — -"The functions of the intestines are sometimes quite disordered ; and some patients com- plain of stubborn constipations ; others of the hce- morrhoids, or of the running of a foeted matter from the fundament." Such are the sufferings closely connected with the unnatural and perverted enjoyments of the sen- sualist ; altogether the reverse of that transporting emotion incidental to the caresses of a pure and vir- its Consequences. 103 tuous affection, which in some measure counterba- lances the luxurious fatigue consequent upon xational and temperate indulgence. My immediate object is now to insist upon the fact, that the habit of masturbation is far more dan- gerous than excesses committed with women. This will appear evident from a variety of considerations. A well-known medical writer adopts the axiom, that "Moderate indulgence in the natural way is useful, when the wants of the system imperatively demand it, but when solicited by the diseased fancy, it weak- ens all the faculties, the loss of the seminal fluid occurring, not merely when its excretion is salutary, but too frequently for the constitutional powers to bear up against the repeated evacuation." The loss of the seminal secretion should ever bear a relative proportion to the wants of the animal economy, and to the powers of reparation, and this power varies excessively in different individuals. Now, unfortun- ately, in those who adict themselves to self-pollution, the genitals acquire a state of morbid irritability, which continually craves for diseased enjoyment, and perpetually puts them upon a repetition of the act. I say the power of reparation varies in intensity, and this is regulated much by the habits of the in- dividuals. It is well known that constant employ- ment, both of body and mind, places many beyond the reach of those sensual evils almost inevitably generated in idleness, but so it is, that the victims of self-pollution, and mostly the sedentary (for want of more active thought) are open to illusions of mere animal gratification. The Jewish Rabbies in their anxiety to preserve their nation, are said to have ordered, with a view of preventing the loss of vigour, 104 Self-pollution arid that a peasant or labourer should indulge but once a week, a merchant but once a month, a sailor but twice a year, a studious man but once in two years. However practically inapplicable this may be, the principle involved is essentially a correct one, and the inference we should draw is this — that if natural sexual intercourse is thus wisely susceptible of re- striction, according to the physical circumstances in which we are placed, how horribly destructive of the vital energies must that habit be, which, day by day, regardless of the flagging strength, drains off the richest and most curiously elaborated secretion of the human body. Epicurus and Democritus were nearly of the same opinion with Zeno and the Athletce, and that their strength might remain unimpaired, never married. This is the opposite error, but it may serve to show how clearly the loss of the seminal fluid has been, in all ages, identified with the failure of vital energy. So Moses forbade indulgence be- fore battle. And if we examine the lower forms of the organized world, we shall find that many plants die as soon as they have flowered ; that stags and fish are emaciated after the sexual season ; while the prevention of fructification, by the removal of the sexual organs, renders annual plants biennial, that is doubling the term of their existence ; and that as to those which flower and perish within two years, this process extends their vitality through another or third year. Another reason why this habit is more certainly destructive, Js the unrestricted and indiscriminate ruin it inflicts upon the whole moral and mental con- stitution of man. No sooner has this uncleanliness got the ascendancy over our passions, than forthwith its Consequences. 105 it pursues its slave every where, and retains posses- sion of him at all times and places, and upon the most serious occasions, and in the very acts of out- ward devotion ; he ever and anon finds himself transported with lustful conceptions and desires, which incessantly follow him and take up his thoughts. I remember one who confessed to me, that he could not converse with a female for a few minutes without rushing to some place of secrecy, and there giving way to his vile propensity. His gratification arose from fancying that he was enjoy- ing sexual intercourse with her — can any state be more disgustingly degrading ? The masturbator is subject to all those disorders which arise from the application of the mind to one single thought, upon which all its energies are concentrated. In this way, although exhausted by perpetual excitement, such persons are liable to all the disorders incidental to primary affections of the brain, a state which places man beneath the brute creation, and more justly en- titles him to the contempt than pity of his fellow- creatures. Besides there is a transporting emotion incidental to the caresses of a pure and virtuous affection, which in some measure counterbalances the luxurious fatigue consequent upon rational and temperate indulgence. To this delicate susceptibility the miserable victim of solitary vice is obviously a stranger. The warm and passionate kiss, the unut- terable thrilling embrace that lovers only feel, lives only in his diseased fancy. For it cannot be ques- tioned that nature allots more: joy to those gratifica- tions, procured in her proper channels, than in those, which are repugnant to our organization. The joy which only the heart can appreciate, and which must 106 Self -pollution and be carefully distinguished from that voluptuousness purely sensual, which even a prostitute may inspire, animates the circulation, aids digestion, accelerates all the functions, restores strength and supports it. This it is which gives to marriage that sacred home-felt sweetness which love inspires, and God looks down upon it approvingly. The sensualist affects to despise it, because, owing to the degrada- tion of his soul, there is a purity, and consequently an intensity, in such intercourse, he can never realize, scoffing at that he can never know. I shall next endeavour to trace out some of the ultimate consequences of sensualism. Excess with women (pre-supposing we escape contagious disease) points to the same evils as self-pollution ; but if with less certainty, it is, that it is physically impos- sible to drain the seminal vessels so violently, or so frequently, as from unnatural friction ; the mischief is limited by the capability of its perpetration. Be- sides self-pollution is the more general, and its effects develope themselves upon the young, at a period when the conservation of the vital forces is most important. The impotent from venereal excesses are mostly men who have run the long round of debauchery, and whose constitutional powers have been broken down by many years of irregularity, these are nei- ther irreclaimable nor incurable ; however, the great social evil, with which the guardians of youth have to grapple, is the sensualism that prematurely con- signs, in secrecy and ignorance of its nature, the t blooming girl and thoughtless youth to wasting dis- ease, or the silence of the grave ; that denies the procreative power to the remorseful and repentant wife or husband. its Consequences. 107 The organs of the senses are prone to derange- ment from self-pollution. The nerves which supply the eye, the ear, as well as those which are distri- buted to the heart, stomach and lungs, originate in the base of the brain, in immediate relation with the cerebellum, or that portion of the nervous pulp which ministers specially to the amative functions. Hence it is perfectly natural to expect, that irritation from sympathy, might be transmitted in the roots of those nerves and by a reflex operation, to those organs of external sense, which they supply. A diminution, or total loss of sight immediately dependant upon a paralytic or diseased state of the retina or obtic nerve is by no means unfrequent, often, indeed the first indication of a failure of the cerebral powers, from unnatural stimulation of the sexual organs. This affection, when arising from such causes, is to be viewed as symptomatic of ulterior disease, and not as existing independently. It may occur sud- denly, even so as to be attended with entire blind- ness, or it may come on quickly, that is, it may be complete in a few days or weeks ; or it may arise gradually, and a long time elapse before it attains its utmost degree of obscurity. According to Richter, one of the most eminent of surgical authorities, " nd general iveakening causes operate upon the eyes, and occasion total blindness, so powerfully and often, as premature and excessive indulgence in venereal pleasures." It is the opinion of Mr. Law- rence, one of the council of the College of Surgeons, and Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, that the disease in question is essentially inflamma- tory. At all events we know that the blood vessels of the brain are turgid from unnatural excitement, 108 Self'pollution and and that debility may co-exist with local inflamma- tion. Inflammation or congestion of that portion of the brain, near the origin of the nerves of vision, is undoubtedly the immediate cause of this species of blindness, and this condition of brain is closely iden- tified with the morbid predicament of the slave of sensual excess. Hence the advice of Dr. Armstrong is truly pertinent : " Whenever a patient complains to you of weakness of sight, examine the brain." He might have added trace also, if possible, the causes of disease within the brain as referable to the habits of that patient, Now, if with Richter, we say, that excessive indulgence in venereal plea- sures operates as the most common cause of partial or total loss of sight, how much more closely effec- tive must be the habits of the masturbator in produc- ing such a calamity. Hoffman and Boerhaave r whose names will ever rank among the illustrious in physic, have both alluded to disease of the eyes as the result of unnatural practices and immoderate eva- cuations. "Not only the powers are lost but a cold sensation seizes all the limbs ; the sight is clouded and disturbing dreams preclude relief from sleep." So the Professor of Leydon University remarks — " The loss of too much semen occasions lassitude, de- bility, and renders exercise difficult, it causes con- vulsions and emaciation ; it deadens the senses and particularly the sight. Nature avenges nothing so dreadfully as transgressions against herself. When transgressions prove mortal, they are always offences against nature. Let parents and guaidians mark it well, that there are causes which dilate the pupil of the eye, produce imperfect vision, irritable eyelids, and intolerance of light, which neither the dealer in its Consequences. 109 spectacles, nor the ordinary oculist can cure ; but which are surely susceptible of relief, if his youthful charge become subjected to the appropriate treat- ment. Another of the ultimate and permanent evils resulting from self-pollution is a failure in the powers of the mind, especially in the memory. It would appear, that between the brain, as the organ of the mind, and the genital apparatus, there exists a close and indissoluble relation ; and that disease, or unna* tural excitement of either, is productive of corres- ponding loss of power in both. They act alternately upon each other, in having a mutual and contrary effect. The more we strain the mental faculties, the less vigorous will be the generative organs, and con- versely the more we stimulate the generative power and waste its juices, the more does the brain become enfeebled, the faculties of thought, perception, and acuteness become blunted, and the deprivation of memory is the first to become obvious. A confusion of intellect, indecision and abstraction, are the result of the concentration of the cerebral energies or sensual gratifications. And it is perfectly consistent with what we know of the laws of living organization, that it should be so ; for, assuredly, nothing in the world, not even drunkenness, can so irretrievably ruin the brightest mental talents as the degrading habit of self-pollution. The eighth pair of nerves which supply chiefly the heart, lungs, stomach, and organs of digestion, arise from the base of the brain in close proximity to the nerves of vision Hence disease of this portion of the brain is reflected upon every organ that the nerve is destined to supply. Digestion is dependant upon nervous agency, and painful deviation from this 10 1 1 Self-pollution and unconscious action is often among the first of those permanent sorrows entailed upon the votary of sen- sualism. The change whereby the food is converted into nutricious chyme — the change which elaborates the milky chyle from the substance submitted to the action of the digestive organs, is a purely vital action, and whatever tends to deteriorate or weaken the vital forces, of necessity weakens the tone of the stomach, and produces the multiplied evils which infest the poor, nervous, shattered hypochon- driac ; who, looking to the link that binds cause to effect, can suppose that a fluid so cautiously secre- ted, and one possessed of such peculiar properties as the semen, can be perpetually drawn from the system, without the production of consequences which tell primarily upon the nervous system, and secondarily, upon all the organs under the governance and control of nervous agency ? For, of all the various causes by which diseases of debility and nervous relaxation are solicited and maintained, none are more common than too great evacuations of any character ; and, certainly, of all evacuations, that of the semen is most to be feared, when carried beyond the amount of natural excitement. Those individuals who suffer themselves to be governed rather by passion than reason, and whose vivid imaginations propel them into sensual habits earlier than nature destined, anticipate the ability of manhood ere vigour has established its proper empire, thus demol- ishing the delicate ground-work of physical energy, and soliciting an age of disgraceful imbecility, bringing ere middle life breaks on the summer of adolescence, all the sensitive infirmities of senility; producing in its impetuous current such an assem- its Consequences. Ill falage of morbid feelings, that life becomes a weari- some burden, and its endurance beyond the power of reason to sustain. In this way it is, that, by the repeated excitements of this uncongenial act, the : constitution is left in a very doubtful state of health, and that sensitive irritabi I it y^both of mind and body is produced and kept up, which is absolutely com- patible with the quiet discharge of any organic function, more especially that of digestion. If these premises be true,, and that they are, is unfortunately for the world at large, susceptible of sufficient proof, how absurd is the treatment which is founded upon absolute ignorance of the frequent cause of derangement of the digestive organs ? The late learned Dr. Ryan, whose. abilities as a practical physician, were only equalled by his acquired learn- ing and innate knowledge of human nature, remarks, very pointedly, "There is a vast deal of injury done not merely to public morals, but to individual health by the abuses and excesses of the reproductive func- tions." The Primitive Fathers and Physicians, have duly noticed the evils to which I allude, and every experienced- medical practitioner can attest their fre- quent occurrence. u // is all well" he observes, "for sentimentalists and the mock-modest to de- claim about a notice of the?n y hul justice, morality, and the preservation of health, as well as the perpe- tuation of the human race, demand it; such, howe- ver, is the hypocrisy of the day, that even a notice in a dead language is abused and condemned by ignorant, intolerant bigots, and fools, who are una- ble to appreciate the importance of the subject." I say then, it is absurd to expect rational treat- ment, in these melancholy cases, from practitioners, 112 Self-pollution and who are either wilfully or innocently ignorant of the cause of the disorder. The terms dyspepsia, indi- gestion, bilious complaint, disorder of the digestive organs, are exceedingly common, and no very de- finite or accurate significancy is attached to them ; perhaps, in the whole range of medical science, no terms have been more vaguely employed, even by medical practitioners themselves. Many cases of disease of the stomach or liver are traceable to the state of the mind. The existence of one single cor- roding passion, the unceasing prevelancy of one soul-absorbing morbid appetite, is sufficient, by its reflex operation, to affect the stomach, by its depres- sing or exciting power, exerted through the brain, as the organ of the mind. The tongue becomes furred, the bowels act irregularly, the face is pale, unmean- ing, inexpressive or sad, a livid circle surrounds the eyes, the lips become turned, the cheeks flush in the evening or after a full meal, and an indescribable sensation of giddiness and dullness lasts for an hour or more after dinner. The liver acts irregularly, there is flatulency, acidity, w r ith unpleasant or pain- ful eructations, sleep is obtained with difficulty, or broken with unpleasant dreams. Many cases which have the character of indigestion, are complicated, with true inflammatory thickening, or ulceration of the lining mucous membrane of the stomach or alimentary canal. If this occur in relation to the outer surface of that organ, the tongue is generally pale, there is pain on pressure, flatulence, nausea, retching or vomiting ; most commonly there is a pale face, shortness of breath, a quickened pulse, and gradual emaciation ; a complication of disordered manifestations, more common among females, whose its Consequences. 113 habits have been those of luxurious sensual indul- gence, and sufficiently obvious to the intelligent eye. Sometimes sensualism tells insidiously, but not less fatally upon the liver, and by breaking up the ener- gies of the nervous system, leaves that important organ exposed to the action of the first accidental and exciting cause of inflammatory excitement. In these instances, the spirits are depiessed, there is a weight or uneasiness in the middle of the breast; the patient sighs often and deeply, there is a dry cough, and pain shooting from the right side to the shoulder, sometime the skin has a yellowish or dirty tinge, there is a depravity or deficiency of bile, and very often the urine is distinctly tinged with it; or, as dependant upon an affection of the brain, which may be generated by sensual excess, the stomach may be disordered secondarily, manifesting that con- dition, not by redness, but by a remarkable rough- ness and foulness of the tongue ; and the inference to be drawn as to the results in such cases, are often materially corroborated by the conjoined presence of uneasiness, numbness, tingling in the extremities, indications of inflammation of the spinal cord, and' all arising out of, or dependant upon, irritation of the brain and nervous system, from unnatural excesses. For, let it ever be borne in mind, that many diseased conditions of the stomach, liver, or bowels, are only secondary, following in the train of some primary mischief resulting to the brain or spine, either from excessive stimulation, or what is still worse, from . excessive evacuations, and an unnatural demand from nervous energy. Among females there is a form of disease, indi- cated by a peculiar sallow or greenish hue of tbe: 10* 114 Self -pollution and skin, by a tongue covered with a dirty white fur, clay-coloured stools, and a depraved appetite ; gene- rally with emaciation, retention of the menstrual discharge, and a swollen condition of the feet and ancles. It is invariably secondary of a local affec- tion, chiefly of the stomach, liver or bowels, and this again is very frequently found to originate, if not in actual vicious practices, at least in that moral per- version of the mind, which can exist only in brood- ing over the creations of a prurient fancy, and in nursing the inflamed imagination with the sickly ex- citing sentimentalities of the worst writers on fic- tion. There is a healthy attitude of mind which owns not the falsehood pervading these productions, namely, that passion, blind passion, is omnipotent irresistable, and invincible ; but woe betide the un- happy girl who becomes the slave of this destruc- tive dogma ; it is the vortex of rationality, and down its hateful gulf is oft precipitated, all self-control. Inordinate affections, instead of remaining subju- gated to wholesome restraint, soon run riot in the maddening throbbing bosom. Fuel can scarcely be supplied with sufficient rapidity from the circulating library, volume after volume of mawkish trash, tells with more fatal certainty, because of the thin, yet badly transparent veil of pretended morality, tagged like a tail-piece to the luscious story ; seduction, intrigue, and blind impulse, become to a young girl as familiar as household words; her mind becomes polluted, and bodily suffering is soon the inevitable concomitant of the poison drawn from the book con- cealed under the curtained pillow. Leucorrhoea, jluor albus, or vulgarly the " whites," is a frequent form of disease, even among unmarried females, and ate Consequences. 115 symptomatic of that train of morbid feelings termed nervous, hysterical, or bilious. Systematic writers appear to be fully aware, that sometimes it arises from " certain solitary and, vicious indulgences" respecting the nature of which it is totally unneces- sary to adopt more explicit language. And that this is really the case, the records of my own practice, (were it fitting to reveal the secrets of the confes- sional,) are sufficient to afford startling proof. Let the proud father of the clever girl, whose early spirit he is the first to appreciate, watch closely the associations she may form, even with those of her own sex, and most especially the books that she reads when no eye is near. Female servants have been known to introduce the most villanous practices to the nightly couch of a young mistress, and to pollute, by filthy conversation, the minds of children, inflaming passsion that needs at that age, rather to be suppressed, or at least to be directed aright. I have said that insanity is not an unfrequent result of sensualism. Excess, even of indulgence in the lawful gratifications of the marriage state, is often connected with affections of^the head ; the excitement is so great, from determined effort and failing power, that fatal effects may arise from the gorged state of the blood vessels of the brain, in consequence of the heart being thrown into unna- tural and violent contraction. Nay the heart itself, or a large blood vessel, has burst during the orgasm. My present reference, however, is rather to the effects of excess upon the brain. Attilla, the cele- brated King of the Huns, is said to have died in the act of coition, from the bursting of a blood ves- sel ; and several such cases are on record. It is 116 Self-pollution and seriously to be doubted, whether an immediate fai- lure of nervous energy, or the exhaustion of senso- rial power, might not be the cause of death, in some of the instances supposed to be dependant upon arterial rupture. On this subject I shall be pardoned in again quoting the expressions of Dr. Armstrong, one of the most sensible, intelligent, simple-minded of reasoners, and not more remarkable for his sagacity, than for close observation of facts. He was accus- tomed to say in his public lectures, as a teacher of medicine in London — " The solitary vice of Onan- ism produces affections of the head. I know a boy seventeen or eighteen years old, who went at the age of ten to school, where this vice was very com- mon, and he became the subject of it, and from being a fine active clever boy, he became a perfect idiot — his eyes became prominent, his pupils dilated ; he had pains in his head and down the course of the spine, loss of memory, a sily unmeaning expression of the countenance, and a tottering gait." The doctor observes — " I think I should knoio a person in tli£ street who has addicted himself to tills vice, by merely walking behind him, from his peculiar gait ." Let not ihen the victim of secret vice flatter himself his unmanly act escapes detection. I put it to the com- mon sense intelligence of men, who have not made the sympathies of the nervous system their peculiar study, whether in fact there be any thing wonderful in the relation between sensualism and insanity. Apart from the power of vicious indulgences induc- ing bodily disease — apart from the debility thereby necessarily engendered, and that nervous weakness concomitant wiih the terrific loss and drain of the seminal fluid. I say, excluding these direct and its Consequences. 117 physical causes in themselves sufficient to account for madness, there is enough in moral causation to produce the wreck of intellect. Do we not know that certain pursuits often predispose to madness, where the imagination is much called into exer- cise ? So poets and painters who surround them- selves with an imaginary world of their own, are liable to insanity, and if there be one being, who more completely than another isolates himself in an ideal world, it is the devotee of solitary indulgence ; his mind ever reverting to the polluting theme — his powers of fancy on fire, or actively tasked to invent new shapes of excitement — his depraved imagination incessantly employed in poring over some unattain- able lust, the very slave of that appetite which grows not appeased, but more voracious and insatiable by present gratification. Insanity, then, in its present relation, is to he re- garded, as the melancholy and not unfrequent climax of the consequences of self pollution. The same causes which tend to enervate the general strength, to induce disease of the digestive organs, to break down constitutional energy, by impairing the tone of the nervous system, undoubtedly lead to madness. Generally there is derangement of the functions of the stomach and intestinal canal, sometimes conjoined with these, inflammation of the liver. There is evi- dent manifestation of disordered intellect, seldom furious delirium, but fixed, settled, stupid vacancy, a feeble oppressed pulse, and a cool pallid skin. Suicide is not an unfrequent termination of in- sanity, and doubtless, many cases of self-destruction, which are recorded in the daily journals are attribu- table to vicious practices, A momentary impulse is 118 Self -pollution and suddenly acted upon. The consciousness of impo- tence, it may be of baffled attempts to derive sensual gratification from abused and now powerless organs — the self-loathing consequent upon self-inflicted pol- lution ; these set themselves instantly and violently in awiul array against the poor trembling weak votary of criminal indulgence. In a moment of desperation, he rushes unbidden upon the realities of eternity. — May madness shield him from the guilt of deliberate suicide ! A learned physician remarks — " I have met with many individuals who have had, they say, a pre- disposition to destroy themselves, and I find this es- pecially the case, when there is united with it dis- order of the stomach, liver, bowels, or head ,io) \ich leads to mad/ness" This is a valuable remark, and its prac- tical relation to sensualism, as inducing in many in- stances this precise state of things is too obvious to escape observation. It is a singular fact, that such patients only, after a course of self-indulgence which is evidently destroying their sexual powers, consider this habit as the fundamental cause of their ill health. Unprofitable and unpleasant is the task on which such a one now enters, for, instead of endeavoring to fortify his mind against the immoral attacks of a de- praved imagination, he fondly courts them, and, as prepossession always exceeds the circle of possibility, he thinks every, individual is acquainted with the na- ture, cause, and history of his complaint, every pim- ple, every flush of the face alarms him, and thus he fears the scorn of the world, which never gives itself the trouble to think about him or his disease. The constitution thus breaks, as it were before the ravage of the disorder, and thus exhibits a most hopeless state of exhaustion — all its powers become drained, its Consequences. 119 all its energies evaporated, and the disease eventually riots upon a hapless imbecility which no physical nor moral remedy can reach — an imbecility closely united to mania; but what the indescribable process is that precedes this madness, we have no actual theory to guide us; the immediate cause we cannot trace of this most afflicting, but "most obscure of all human ma- ladies ; as none but the miserable sufferer can de- scribe the tension and pain of those hallucinations, morosities, and burning sensibilities, that by a gradual but certain action, drive reason from her throne. Medical enquiry is alone confined to external symp- toms, and, of course, possesses no means of following the inward progress of the disease. The existence of it is generally indicated by great debility, listless- ness, want of resolution and activity, a great dispo- sition to sadness, an idea of future evil, and a long train of similar sensations, which powerfully contri- bute to debilitate the general system — this effect is manifested by the body becoming feeble and meagre, the appetite voracious, the organs of generation so flaccid and enfeebled, that the slightest titillation pro- duces erection, which is succeeded eitlier by an emis- sion of a portion of the natural mucous of the glands of the urethra,or a secretion of the prostate gland, and the vesiculce seminales, and a depression of spirits ; these symptoms, by constant repetition, become very unpleasant during the night. A constant discharge of thin, clear and slimy liquid, is at. last produced, attended by that nervous irritability which, in many constitutions, lays the foundation of more serious con- sequences, and if persisted in, will reduce the patient to the last stage of confirmed consumption. It may be deemed an exaggeration, when it is 120 Self-pollution and stated, that full three-fourths of the insane owe their malady to the effects of masturbation ; but the as- sertion is corroborated by one of the first writers on medical jurisprudence, and is fully borne out by the daily experience of proprietors of lunatic asylums. The practice of self-abuse usually has its origin in boarding-schools, and other places where young per- sons congregate in numbers — and there are few per- sons who may have observed the vice practised, (al- though it may be unpleasant to avow as much,) that could resist the contamination. " One sickly sheep infects the flock, And poisons all the rest." And thus it is, though ninety and nine be pure and spotless as the driven snow, if the hundreth be im- moral, the poison is soon disseminated, and the whole flock become initiated into a vice, which if indulged in, will blast their intellectual faculties, and probably consign them as outcasts of society — rendering them slavering idiots, or the inmates of a lunatic asylum. It is not only in private schools that this sin rages. Our public seminaries and colleges are not exempt from it. The heads of our universities are particu- larly scrupulous in driving from their neighborhood the frail fair, lest they should contaminate the votaries of learning, whilst a vice far more degrading in its practice, and infinitely more baneful in its effects, rages within the very sanctuaries of classic lore. — Many a brilliant genius has sunk into fatuity beneath its degrading influence. Loss of memory, idiocy, blindness, total impotence, nervous debility, paralysis, stranguary, &c, are among the unerring consequen- ces of an indulgence in this criminal passion. its Consequences. 121 It is fitting that I next allude in closer and more specific detail of some of those diseases of the lungs, which are undoubtedly called into active de- velopment by sensual excess, and as it is the most destructive, so it is the most certainly inevitable cause of consumption — namely, that form of viscious excess, to which I have made frequent allusion. How absurd the hope> that the treatment of pulmonary diseases should assume a rational character, in those instances where sensualism, the concealed cause of them, is entirely over-looked by the routine practi- tioner ; and where, spite of his remedies and learned prescriptions, the baneful habit is still indulged in. Every human being comes into the world ivith some weak point, a predisposition to disease of one locality or tissue of the frame, rather than another; but many persons, from accidental causes, (of which sensualism must undoubtedly be accounted for,) rouse the dormant elements of disease into destruc- tive activity. In common language, they play TRICKS WITH THEIR CONSTITUTIONS. As the consequences of this, the incipient indica- tions of true consumptive disease, develope them- selves. " Frequent and excessive debaucheries" are assigned by all systematic writers, as among the most prominent of the causes of this train of sufferings. From the first appearances of the hectic symptoms, the urine is high coloured, and deposits a copious sediments The appetite, however, is not greatly impaired, and the tongue appears clean, but as the disease advances the throat assumes an inflamed appearance, and the red vessels of the eye become of a pearly white. A florid circumscribed redness appears on each 11 122 Self -pollution and cheek, at other times the face is pale, and the coun- tenance somewhat dejected. Sensualism is justly to be enumerated as one of the most marked causes of gout and rheumatism. Eunuchs are known to be free from attacks of gout, indolence and inactivity ; the brcoding of the dis- eased fancy over polluted conceptions, all tend to engender these diseases, and it is obvious, that, rooted in a system, enfeebled by vicious and solitary indul- gences, there is little of constitutional energy left, either to parry their attacks, to resist their presence, or to bear the requisite treatment for their removal. Among the minor evils consequent upon depraved indulgences, I ought not to omit all notice of those eruptive diseases, chiefly of the face, frequently observable among young persons, and though not invariably, yet often assignable to improper habits. From time immemorial the popular belief has been, that sexual improprieties, or the undue loss of the seminal secretion from masturbation, had a direct tendency to destroy the growth of the hair, and pro- duce baldness ; nor is the vulgar opinion without foundation in truth. Its presence in profusion is a fair index of sexual power. When, from excess, that energy falters, Nature, as if for the purpose of economizing her scanty resources, casts off the com- paritively unimportant appendage ; the hair becomes white from defective nutrition, or in middle life the head assumes the baldness, though not the venerable dignity, of old age. The absence of hair upon the cheeks and chin is frequently associated with solitary practices. A beardless chin, and an effeminate voice are the aversion of the female sex, as well as the object of their ridicule ; and we may allow they are its Consequences? 123 generally pretty good judges that way, as believing the sentiments in Hudibras — 11 Want of virility is averred, To bs the cause of want of beard." There is a species of gleety discharge, distinct from the consequences of inflammatory clap, which is not an unusual concomitant among the sequels of self-pollution. In resent cases, the disease may in general admit of removal, not by the administration of irritating injections, not by remedies directed locally, but by reference to that diseased state of the whole generative system, induced by the unmanly habit operating as its cause. Lastly, the testicle itself may become the subject of chronic induration and enlargement, from causes which tend to disturb its agency as a secretory gland. And, independently of the direct and immediate diseases to which the testicle is unquestionably sub- jected from the habit of masturbation, 1 have fre- quently observed, that there arises an unpleasant perspiration from the vessels all around the genera- tive organ?, accompanied with much soreness, and inflammatory redness, producing no ordinary amount of suffering. This affection, though disgusting and easily detected, is comparatively trifling, and serving only to mark the practised sensualist in the notice of those possessed of the least discernment. I say it is trivial, in comparison with that permanent disor- ganization of the vessels of the cord, known as Varicocele, and consisting of dilitation and enlarge- ment of the returning veins of the testicle. If I were to observe, that this disease has been noticed as supervening, in nearly ninety cases out of every 124 Self-pollution and hundred of self-pollution, that have fallen under my treatment, I should be guilty of no undue statement. Some of my patients have described this disorganiza- tion as resembling a number of small twisted cords, running into the side of the body of the testicle ; others aptly compare il to the feeling which would be communicated to the finger from a bag of earth worms, sometimes loosely felt, but mostly with pain of a dull, aching, dragging character. This state of parts, by maintaining irritability of the vessels of the testicle, is an almost certain indication of commenc- ing impotence, and is not unfrequently found in con- nection with absolute sexual helplessness. It is a remarkable fact, that many men, with ap- proaching impotence, are ignorant of the existence of this state of the cord, until seminal weakness, or premature emission or intercourse, draw their atten- tion to the state of the genital organs. Dr. Robert Thomas, in his work on the practice of Physic, ob- serves, that " Schirrhosity of the prostate gland is a disease with which men advanced in life are apt to be afflicted, hut particularly those ioho imprudently 'produce an excitement oj the seminal vessels, by long toying toith ivomen, or by unnatural means, as Onanism^ He remarks, that, " the frequency of the disease may be attributed to the unusual degree of irritation, which in the present licentious state of society, is kept up in the organs of generation, by Cytherean excesses, and their attendants— strictures and the use of bougies. After a time, sharp lan- cinating pains are felt darting through the gland ; the flow of urine becomes considerably obstructed, and its painful discharge is one among many distressing symptom So" its Consequences. 125 What do I propose to the miserable sufferer, un- der any form of the multifarious evils arising from sensualism ? No less than the removal of his im- mediate sorrows ; the pain and weakness which infest his bodily organization ; but far higher and nobler aims than these lie concealed beyond the mitigation of present infirmity. I indulge the fond, the ambitious, yet rational wash, that my efforts may be instrumental in rescuing the unhappy slave of passion from the moral thraldom in w r hich he is in- volved ; my unceasing aim is to acquire that confi- dence, that happy mastery over the affections of the inner man, which wielded in the cause of virtue, purity, and truth, may enable me to drag the sensu- alist from the miry slough of his own vicious, impure and contaminating fancies, and replace him again on that proud elevation befitting a man ; befitting the rational lord of the universe, the defence of the weaker sex, and the glory of his own. The moral and mental management of my patients is, therefore, a matter with me of the gravest im- portance ; and though, in glowing language, it is mine occasionally to deprecate the criminality of self-indulgence ; while I extenuate not the sin, I can- not but sympathize with suffering — with that weak- ness — that deplorable imbecility of nature, which permits sensuality to lay the reins on the neck of passion— which flings away the rudder of reason, and relinquishes to the winds and the waves the frail bark of humanity. It is mine to point to cheerful activity, insensibly and imperceptibly to lead, the unconscious mind away from the morbid train of thought inseparably connected with vicious practi- ces. Inactivity is unquestionably a great cause of; 11* 120 Self-pollution and this, as well as of other vicious propensities. When the faculties are busied in some particular pursuit, and employed in an industrious calling, the tempta^ tions that lead to those practices lose half their force. There is less leisure for the perpetual recurrence to habits which require secrecy, when the mind is roused to duty, or to considerations more consonant with the true dignity of human nature. Votaries to these abominations feel their degradation, groan under the galling yoke of habit, the soul becomes subservient to the tyranny of its overwhelming in- fluence, and hence it is obvious, that mere medical prescription is insufficient. The spell must be broken, not so directly by an appeal to their fears, as those higher and better faculties, which, though beclouded and tremulously weak, require only the assurance of the pity and kindness of a confidential friend to regain their lost authority. With the majority it is vain to dwell on the enormity of the crime \ there is little practi- cal and immediate utility in pointing out to them,, that the habits of sensualism are contrary to the laws of God and man. Such moral sermons, experience tella us, have but little effect on young people, who, even more than men of advanced years, will be regulated in their conduct almost solely by their present interest. Let the young man be taught to feel, that the habits which are destroying his strength, render him unable to occupy his posi- tion amongst his fellow men, will inevitably become obvious, and draw down, from the beings around him, the expression of their merited and deep contempt. Let him ponder seriously upon the scorn of ivoman, and study the contemptuous address which Ovid has its Consequences. 127 left on relation, from the mouth of his disappointed, baffled mistress — V Go — for a silly, imperforating thing."* It is said, that the Roman soldiers preferred death to castration ; and, doubtlessly, the direct fear and shame of impotence has operated, and will operate, if clearly evident, in the majority of instances, as a surer safeguard against self-pollution, than the deepest and most awful appeals to a higher tribunal. It ought not to be so, but such is the constitution of our nature. Parents and tutors should have a strict eye to youth, recollecting that upon its purity depends all their future prospects. It is by the practice of temperance in all sensual and legitimate gratification, and by total avoidance, ignorance, and abstinence from the artificial pollu- tions of sensualism, that at the commencement of life the constitution is so settled and strengthened, as to bear up well against the storms of manhood, and the winter of old age. " Youth," says Linnaeus, " is the important period for framing a robust consti- tution. Nothing is so much to be dreaded as the premature or excessive indulgence of amorous plea- sures. A body that is enervated in youth seldom recovers itself; old age and infirmity speedily come on, and the thread of life is prematurely shortened." Sixteen hundred years before Linnaeus, that great naturalist, Plutarch, in his excellent work upon education of children, recommended the formation of their physical constitution as the first care of guardians and parents. " No care," said he, " should be neglected that may contribute to the elegance and strength of the body (the excesses of sensualism 128 Self-pollution and its Consequences. are destructive of both,) for," he adds, "the founda- tion of a happy old age is an uninjured constitution in youth. Temperance and moderation at that age are the inseparable passports to happy grey hairs." CHAPTER VII. Of Nocturnal Emissions, Seminal Weakness, Impotence* Nervous Debility, and the general treatment of the consequences of Self-pollution. The secretory glands of the human body form an apparatus, the action of which is unvarying and con- stant. The liver is perpetually employed in the formation of bile, the kidneys in the separation of urine from the blood ; in fact all the secretions are derivable from that living and vitalizing fluid. The gall-bladder is provided as the temporary receptacle for the bilious soapy fluid secreted by the liver, and as the wants of the system require, it is poured into the first intestine, to assist in the separation of the nutritive portion of the partially digested aliment. Precisely analogous is the action of the testicles, pouring their appropriate secretion into the recepta- cles described in the anatomical section of this work, and denominated the " Vesiculce Seminales or seed bladders" not to be absorbed again into the system, but rather to be excreted as indispensible to the reproductive act. Hence the stimulus arising from distension of these vessels, becomes a pleasurable impulse to the necessary multiplication of the spe- cies ; and if sexual desire were susceptible of gratis 1 30 Nocturnal Emissions. fication, only as the result of instinct, if depraved man, instead of lashing his genital organs by filthy conversation, lewd and impure imaginations, and the various causes which are entirely absent among the brute creation ; if, like them, he were content to fol- low the dictates of his unerring organization, diseases arising from excess would be unknown, equally amongst us as with them ; and their proverbial and almost certain fecundity be but the transcript of our own. As the seminal vessels (like the gall bladder) will not allow of extraordinary distention, the thinner portions of the semen become partially absorbed, and though, thereby, the bulk of that secretion be lessened, yet the residuum becoming more acrid and stimulating, the impulse to excretion is thus rendered unconquerable. And so, Nature (in the absence of the act to which the stimulating impulse tends) occasionally relieves herself of the superabundant secretion. Of this act men are mostly unconscious ; if, however, it arrests attention, its frequency and its consequences, are the circumstances that rouse the proper and natural fears of the sufferer. Occurring more frequently than at intervals of twenty-one days, Nocturnal Emissions are a decided proof of debility, and the certain harbingers of ap- proaching impotence. My ample experience warrants the conclusion, that the debility is more obviously confined, and absolute impotence more certainly follows in those instances, where emissions occur within the above- named period, or waking suddenly in the night at the moment of the discharge. In many instances the sleep is not broken, and it is comparatively diffi- cult to ascertain how often the evacuation occurs ; Nocturnal Emissions. 131 the consequences of the loss of the seminal fluid, are, however, sufficiently evident, occurring more frequently than can be fairly ascribable to the dis- tention of healthy vessels, the most energetic mea- sures are instantly requisite to avert the identical mischief which would arise, if the loss of the seminal secretion were solicited and voluntary. Profuse and frequent nocturnal emissions, may or may not, be connected with the habit of self-pollu- tion, and, as the term implies, may occur during the hours of darkness, when the powers of the body are prostrate in sleep. A person can never sleep soundly but when he is free from all causes of bodily irritation, the distention of the seminal vessels, if occunng naturally, exciting amorous dreams and evacuations, can only occur at such intervals as are consistent with healthy action, namely, beyond twenty-one days ; but exclusively of vicious practices, there are causes which certainly tend to the establishment of this discharge, and imprint upon it all the characters of habit. Nocturnal emissions are most frequently at- tributable to the practice of self -pollution, and in many cases to venereal excess ; but it may arise from disease of the testicle, or from an enlarged schirrhous state of the prostate gland. When aris- ing from the latter cause, the discharge of semen is mixed with the natural secretion of the prostate, and the mixed fluids stain the linen of a dirty yel- lowish hue, very closely resembling the stains pro- ducible from gonorrhoea or common clap, and the gleety discharge which accompanies its chronic stages. Lodgments of hardened feculent matter, in the large intestines, sometimes occur, as a mechani- cal irritant, and thus producing diurnal as well as 132 Nocturnal Emissions. nocturnal evacuations of the most important fluid of the human body. A popular author on this subject observed — " The causes of these nightly or c ivet dreams' as they are called are numerous. In the first place the testicles must have acquired, through the practice of Onan- ism, (for involuntary emissions rarely assume the formidable character here [depicted except induced by masturbation,) a morbid sensitiveness, that on the slightest local or neighbouring irritation, they put in action their secretive powers. In fact the in* firmity might not inaptly be termed a consumption of those glands; consequently, the causes may be, at this period, hoemorrhoids or piles, constipation, indigestion, irritibility of the bladder or kidneys, &c, &c, for they all, more or less, are present, and per- haps, severally aggravated by stimuli of one kind or other, taken during the day or previously to rest* Another occasion may be the loss of tone of the absorbents, and also loss of sensibility of the pas- sages through which the discharge escapes ; thereby acting as somnolent sentinels only on the brain, whereby even the little control the will might pos- sess is lost." So by this we perceive, that this in- firmity is not merely local debility of the generative apparatus, but that many other functions in life par- ticipate. The constant drain from the testicles impoverishes the whole system, and the same phe- nomena ensue as when Onanism is practised to the same extent. The semen of a person tormented with this infirmity is thin, watery, sickly odoured, and rarely prolific. Although I have already depicted the consequen- ces of unnatural indulgences in the previous pages, Nocturnal Einissions. 133 llie following passage, from a more able pen than my own, exhibits so well the desolating effects" alluded to, that its transcript is too useful to my pur- pose to neglect : — " The muscles of the youth become soft, he is idle, his body becomes bent, his gait is sluggish, and he is scarcely able to support himself; The digestion becomes enfeebled, the breath fceted, the intestines inactive, the excrements hardened in the rectum, and producing additional irritation of the seminal conduits in its vicinity. The circulation being no longer free, the youth sighs often, the com- plexion is livid, and the skin, and forehead especially, is studded with pimples ; the corners of the mouth are lengthened, the nose becomes sharp, the sunken eyes, deprived of brilliancy and enclosed in blue circles, are cast down ; no look of gaity remains — the very aspect is criminal. General sensibility be- comes excessive, producing tears without a cause ; perception is weakened, and memory almost des- troyed ; distraction or absence of mind, renders the judgment unfit for any operation. The imagination gives birth to fantasies and fears without grounds ; the slightest allusion to the dominating passion pro- duces motions of the muscles of the face, the flush of shame, or a stale of despair. The wretched being finishes by shunning the face of men and dreading the observation of women ; his character is entirely corrupted, or his mind is totally stnpified. Involun- tary loss of the reproductive liquid takes place dur-^ ing the night, and also during the daily motions ; and there ensues a total exhaustion, bringing on heavi- ness of the head, singing in the ears, and frequent faintings, together with pains, convulsive tremblings, and partial paralysis." 12 134 Nocturnal Emissions. In reference to the physiology of the seminal receptacles, it is carefully to be borne in mind, thai the stimulus of the sexual orgasm is the only irritant which, naturally, they are destined to obey; hence, whatever is foreign to this is sufficient to rouse the chain of action producing emission, and must, un- doubtedly, operate most detrimentally to the whole animal economy, in reference to the generative organs themselves, imposing upon them tendencies repugnant to their natural agency, which, at no dis- tant period, inevitably and completely abolish their living power. Seminal emissions, during, sleep, may be expected as the result of unnecessary stimulation. This emission is commonly produced towards day- break ; arising from a renewal of that general excita- bility which takes place during the first sleep, the interval rendering the system more susceptible of every new impression, and the debility of a sensitive mind, favouring this new state of things. Repeti- tion succeeds repetition, habit becomes established, the association is confirmed, the difficulty of des- troying the morbid animal propensity is rendered daily more tedious and doubtful, while the power of desire of performing the natural functions, are, of course, proportionably impaired. The mind encroaching upon the prerogatives of the natural stimuli ; the organs of generation, either from a morbid rapidity of action, or from being long accustomed to obey the dictates of imagination, on the slightest irritation, are no longer capable of the excitement produced on a healthy subject by the opposite sex. In accurate conformity with this view of the subject, Rousseau recommends to the period t)f youth, the active sports of the field, as days of Nocturnal E??iissions. 136 fatigue will be followed by nights of repose ; and thus the superabundant imtabilitij of the system trill be relieved. The reproductive power may not be entirely des« troyed by that state of generative debility which is engendered by nocturnal emissions ; and yet, very painful consequences, of another character, may un- questionably arise. A healthy female may become pregnant, from the feeble, yet exhausting, effort of a man whose constitutional power is seriously broken; yet it would be unfair, unphilosophical, unsupported by any analogy drawn from the history of the lower animals, to expect that this circumstance would not tell most powerfully and detrimentally upon the off- spring. The opinions of the learned in all ages have not varied widely on this subject. Lucretius, and a great number of ancient physiologists, admit- ted this doctrine. That great man considered that there was a mixture of fluids, and that these united in the sexual organs of the female, were animated, developed, and changed into a being resembling those who furnished them. Further, that the most vigorous of the two determined the sex ; and if this principle be admitted, it is easy to trace every puny ordiseased peculiarity the father or mother may trans- mit. It appears to be the general opinion, that whichever parent furnishes the most elaborate, the most abundant seminal fluid, would impress the lineaments and form the offspring ; that the most vigorous parent, who would possess most genital power, would determine the sex and physical cha- racter of the infant; and consequently, that the offspring would most certainly resemble this parent, Uoth in mind and body. If g.eni;al power be equal, J36 Seminal Weakness. the child may be expected to resemble both. But this can scarcely be expected where there is debility of the generative organs in either parent, and the elaboration of imperfect fluids, from their too fre- quent escape. SEMINAL WEAKNESS. The prominent character of seminal weakness is general not partial debility. The seminal vessels are fitted to perform certain functions with progres- sive regularity, which, if undisturbed by disease, or unimpaired by vicious perversion of the natural sexual habit, they will continue to execute, through the whole range of the years of active manhood. Sexual ability in man, is a mysteriously com- pound power, requiring a perfect association in the action of the secretory organ of the seminal secretion, and the instrument of its ejaculation and discharge. Any functional irregularity, or want of correspondency between the action of the testicles and penis, is, therefore, an unquestionable state of disease ; for, since both are so closely and intimately dependant on each other, the least want of exactness in their adaptation might be the cause of impotence. Whatever be the mode in which the deviation from the healthy and natural action of the parts is first induced, it is not difficult to trace its inevitable effect in the production of seminal debility, and the ulti- mate destruction of sexual power. Irritation, how- ever engendered, rapidly propagates itself along the urethra, and chronic inflammation of the prostatic and most sensitive portion of that canal is rapidly .established, and the muscles surrounding the mem- Seminal Weakness. 137 bra nous division of the urinary passage are sympa- thetically affected with irregular spasm. The irrita- tion extends itself by continuity of surface to the seminal vessels, and even lo the testicles, producing in the former unnaiural evacuations, and in the laitex an exaggerated, ihin secretion, too rapidly elaborated, and therefore, for the puipose of generation, worth- less. Among individuals so affected, the emission (even on attempting intercourse with the sex) is too quickly, discharged. Nocturnal pollutions are frequent, (indeed these are often the immediate precursors of seminal weakness,) or the semen is expelled during the evacuation of the bladder and bowels. With some there is more or less complete extinction of venereal desire, the erections become few and fee- ble, incomplete or absolutely impossible. This con-? dition of the sexual organs has its appropriate general character, analogous to those which are attributable to the wilful and determined pollutions of earlier youth; the sufferer, now, perhaps too late, sensibly alive to the origin of his weakness, becomes timid, fearful, careless of the world around him, his mind absorbed in the consideration of his malady, until the continual presence and recurrence of the same train of painful thought involves him in the worst form of monomania, or rather the premature child- ishness of old age. All the functions of the body languish and are deranged, until a complete and general degradation sweep, with uncontrolled domi- nion, over every power and faculty both of body and soul. The seminal fluid may dribble away without I pleasure, without erection, without the natural ejacu- lation ; and its loss, when occurring in this manner,, 12* 140 Seminal Weakness. ■ something: in his Ireast- Lurks the dirk secret, not to be expressed ; fhtre must it lurk, theie gall h s wretched life, Not be imparted to his b^som w.fe." The nuptial bed, instead of teeming with a hal- lowed, extatic, and indefinable delight, is converted into a scene of blended mortification, disappoint- ment, and suppressed anger ; and it is now that the mistaken bride is first penetrated wilh these suspi- cions, which are too soon corroborated by subse- quent experience ; and if, under such circumstances, the unfortunate female fall a prey to some artful seducer, her offence is not altogether without a justi- fication, and the injured husband may accuse himself as the cause of her unhappy deviation. The various effects that the urethral discharges have upon the animal frame, depend greatly on the influence they have on the mind ; in some, nocturnal emissions lay the foundation of seminal weakness and gleet, and cases occur, where the system, hav- ing lonn; laboured under the influence of nocturnal emissions, feels more powerfully than others, all lhat nervous irritation which usually accompanies a profuse discharge, of die semen; proving Leyond doubt, the existence of chronic debility; for, what has little effect in one constitution, produces symp- toms in another extremely harrassing both to the body and mind ; and thus a complex derangement arises, the combined result of a concatenation of events, that may be traced even to mathematical precision, to this debilitating ; for we are led to infer, that seminal weakness precedes this nervous de- rangement ; and to me it is evident, that when ner- vous debility exists, the nocturnal emissions are Seminal Weakness. 141 increased ; and the repetition of them unquestiona- bly weakens the vital energy, and after an indefinite period, predisposes the sensibility of the cerebral organ to morbid irritation. Thus, from intercourse with the nerves, the general system is disturbed, and body and mind rendered susceptible to the caprice of that vicissitude of irritation, whose universality of influence can only be described by those who have felt its agency. Nor is the effect of this influence the offspring of a fervid or depressed imagination, on the contrary, a class of painful and distressing diseases are originated, which, in lheir progress have a great effect on organization ; and this morbid irri- tability more frequently attends on constitutions pre- viously debilitated by venereal excesses, or more frequently still, by the baneful habit of Onanism, by which the parts are not only so weakened, but are also rendered so irritable, and so easily, by habit, excited by mental influences, that the slightest sti- mulus is sufficient to call them into action, and thereby produce a discharge of semen. In some instances, the power of the male genitals- is not altogether destroyed ; nay, impregnation may occur in a healthy female, from the laborious em- braces of one whose constitutional vigour is almost entirely destroyed. But the offspring — can it be rationally expected, that the child of such a father should be otherwise than puny, feeble, and predispos- ed to those diseases, which, under the most favoura- ble circumstances, destroy so large a proportion of children under five years of age ? We know that there are diseases peculiar to childhood. The pro- cess of dentition is accompanied by much irritation, and sweeps, annually, its thousands into the grave* 142 Seminal Weakness. Measles, hooping cough, croup, and most especially inflammatory affections of the lungs and mucous membranes of the bronchical cavities, form the sad catalogue of evils, through which, as through an armed troop, the poor little sufferers are doomed to run, and only the minority pass the ordeal.* Is consti- tutional vigour of no importance in enabling children to resist harmlessly the certain attacks of those dis- eases to which they are undoubtedly obnoxious? The seminal secretion, which in a certain sense com- municates life, or is at least the agent, without which the embryotic rudiments of a being cannot assume active and progressive vitality, is itself alive; and if, from excessive evacuation of this fluid, seminal weakness ensued, it is not unreasonable, but highly philosophical, to suppose, that in the event of pro- creation occurring from actual sexual congress, the offspring will bear enstamped upon it the physical characters derivable from parentaldebility. As illustrative of the truth of this position, I may observe, from the days of Aristotle, it has been re- marked, that illegitimate children are frequently endowed with great genius and valour, and both ancient and modern history certainly affords many such examples. The circumstance has been com- monly ascribed to the impetuosity of both parents, during their embraces. Hercules, Romulus, Alex- ander, Themistocles, Jugurtha, King Arthur, Wil- liam the Conqueror, Homer, Demosthenes, and many others, were illegitimate ; the most ancient families have sprung from the left-handed offspring * lam indebted to Dr D. M. Hogan, of this City* for very vabmble inLrniation relative to the treatment of diseases of children. Seminal Weakness, 143 of princes. The worthiest captains, best wits, bravest spirits in English annals, have been base- born. Cardan, in his Subtleties, gives a reason — " These are more noble and powerful of body and mind, chiefly from the vehemence of the sexual act that begat them." Probably their superior energy may be attributed to the strength of parental con- stitution, which is alt for which I contend ; the weak and delicate not being so likely to become the prey of unlawful and forbidden love. If these positions be correct, and who is so hardy as to impugn their accuracy, founded most evidently on ihe common sense observation of mankind, it fol- lows, that there are, and may be, varieties of seminal weakness, (originating most commonly, if not exclu- sively, in sensual excess and especially in self-pollu- tion,) which though not absolutely precluding the performance of the sexual act, may render that act unfruitful, or terminating in the production of pro- geny, to whom a sickly, short-lived existence, is rather a curse than a blessing — born only to rouse the sensibilities of maternal fondness. " For us they sicken, and for us they die." Forgotten indiscretions, the sins of early youth flit in bitter recollection athwart the keenly sensitive conscience ; the poor unconscious babe, upon whose innocent smile love had rivilted its tender fetters, in the mean time sleeps well ; the flowers that deck its coffin are only flowers, but there is one to whose awakened heart those simple memorials are keen as the blade of the polished dagger. 144 Impotence and Sterility. IMPOTENCE AND STERILITY. The term " Impotence" is applied as relative to that inability or incapacity to the performance of the sexual act, which may arise from a variety of causes, but from none so frequently as the excesses of sensualism, more especially the secret, vicious and solitary indulgence of self-pollution. It is im- portant, in a practical point of view, that we do not confound this condition of the generative system with sterility; inasmuch as a male who is sterile, or a barren female, may possess a perfect aptitude for coition, though, for all the purposes of procrea- tion, absolutely incapable. In Impotence there is a temporary or permanent destruction of those powers which are absolutely essential for generative pur- poses. Sterility may, therefore, be defined as in- ability to propagate the species, though not to effect the sexual congress ; while Impotency in either sex, whether natural or acquired, whether as the result of disease or malformation, entirely precludes its performance. Impotence resulting from physical imperfection of the sexual organs is mostly incura- ble, but when originating in such disorders of the urinary or genital apparatus, as are traceable to irri- tation or inflammation of those structures, or to con- ditions however produced, thence resulting, such as thickening of the bladder, enlargement of the pros- tate gland or testicles, wasting of the penis, espe- cially long continued gleets and stricture. Our first efforts are naturally directed to the removal of these proximate causes of Impotence ; and if the habit be still indulged, the baneful, ultimate, or primary cause Impotence and Sterility, 145 of so severe a deprivation. If, under these circum- stances) Nature does not readily reassume her wonted functions. If there be remaining debility, it is necessary to invigorate the frame, by the employ- ment, not merely of those diffusible stimuli which act generally upon the whole system, but by the administration of remedies which are known to act immediately upon ihe generative organs. If there be present, excessive irritability, it is necessary to employ such remedies as tend to diminish irritation in the morbidly sensitive organs. The causes of Impotence in man arise from two sources — from vicious mal-formation of the genitals,or from want of power ; but among women, Impotence can only depend on mal-formation, either natural or acquired. These causes are more commonly ob- served in man than in the other sex ; and this is easily accounted for by the greater part the male has to perform in the nuptial congress. This is evident from the phenomena which gives the virile member the form and disposition proper for erection, the introduction of the organ, and the ejaculation of the semen, which are effected by a violent and compli- cated action, requiring a concurrence of many indis- pensable conditions ; the organs not only contracting spasmodically to effect the expulsion of the male fluid, but all the body participating at this moment in a strange convulsion, as though nature at the in- stant forgot every other function. It will be obvious that the treatment must admit of wide modification, as Impotence may be absolute or relative, constitu- tional or local, direct or indirect, transient or appa- rently permanent. Many defects of conformation are sufficient, more or less, completely to interfere 13 146 Impotence and Sterility. with the sexual act. Among men, preternatural length, closure, or adhesion of the foreskin, consti* tuting phymosis, (which may be either congenital or the result of disease ;) cancerous or schirrous en- largement of the prostate is frequent in advanced life, and forms another obvious physical bar to copu- lation. Among females, adhesion of the sides of the vagina is not so common as an imperforate state of the hymen, which occasionally closes so completely the entrance to the internal organs, that the menstrual secretion has been known lo accumu- late behind that membrane, and for want of the na- tural outlet, the cavity of the womb has gradually assumed a distension closely similating that of pregnancy. Some from constitutional frigidity are impotent. Thus we read, that Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, only admitted her husband's embraces once a month, and then solely in relation to posterity. It is doubtful whether, under such circumstances, her sense of duty would atone for the absence of inclination. Exces- sive venery and the profuse discharges olfluor albus, or the whites, are susceptible of completely destroy- ing all power of excitement in women. Hence prostitutes, from over stimulation of the generative organs, seldo?n conceive. Transient Impotence is often the result of mere apprehension. Too eager desires, too ardent an imagination ; the extatic effect produced by the sight of a beloved object, ex- treme nervous susceptibility, are often sufficient to produce temporary Impotence. It is not unusual to meet with instances of married people becoming quite indifferent to each other's embraces. Some patients of mine confessed to me their inability to Impotence and Sterility, 147 complete the sexual act with their wives, unless by an effort of the fancy — imagination conjured up the form of some more voluptuous female. Physical defect may constitute the cause of Impotence, but more frequently there is neither organic defect nor local disease, the affection is a mere nervous suspension of power, which is soon removed under proper management. Even this has its wise ordination. Any individual, however nervous in his physical capacity, if he anticipates with too intense eagerness, intercourse wilh a beloved object, will seldom per- form the act well; even among the most ardent and powerful it occurs, as many have confessed, that after waiting, time after time, for opportunity, when that has arrived, they have not had the power to take advantage of it. A nervous anxiety, a tremulous delight, absolutely indefinable, has completely thrown prostrate all power, and the object of passion has been saved from perdilion by its paralysing all the fire and ardency of animal desire. If the imagina- tion wanders from the task, temporary Impotence is the result ; and many writers are firmly of opinion, that impregnation is often impeded from the pre- sence of ideas which interfere with the due perform- ance of the generative act. Sterne has happily commented on this point, in one of his most popular works, introducing his maternal parent, as asking, at a most untimely moment, whe- ther his " father had not forgotten to wind up the clock." His views are strictly physiological. Such is the power of the moral over the physical state of man. Many impotent persons are cured by quieting the imagination, and strengthening the constitution, by invigorating the general health, and the genital 148 Impotence and Sterility. organs. We are acquainted with no function of the animal mechanism so specially dependant upon the mind as this ; for, though sexual intercourse is a com- pound act of the body and the mind, its essential en- ergy, its peculiar stimuli proceeds from the mind, and according to the exciting energy of the mind is the act performed. Thus from a compound act of indescriba- ble pleasure and languor, organic beings are endowed with power to produce other similar to themselves, or rather let me add, an essential part of themselves is separated in the act; the power of that separation being concentrated in the generative organs. The mo- ment the semen has passed, from the greater exertion used by the male, languor and depression succeed, and at this period his office is complete, and a new and complicated arrangement takes place in the female; but what is the character of that arrangement which actually takes place within the female uterus, when after experiencing the most delightful and ex- quisite of all sensual pleasure — being properly im- pregnated, and on the eve of giving form and exist- ence to her offspring, we yet know not. Impotence in the male, may arise then from a wide diversity of conditions. Incapacity of erection is generally referable to self-pollution. Impotence arising from a want of power of reteniion in the seminal vessels, induced by a morbid susceptibility of those vessels, and brought about in like manner by a persistence in the same vicious practice ; Im- potence from inability of retention resulting from repletion of these vessels, all demand a variety of treatment peculiar to the precise condition of the parts. Impotence from mental influences has also ;ts appropriate management. Exclusive of this, the Impotence and Sterility. 149 generative infirmity under consideration, though occasionally aiising from simple disease, is asciiba- ble, in by far the greater majority of instances, to the excesses of sensualism, either with women, or more commonly still, from that vile excess, to which such frequent allusion has been made in these pages. Long protracted chastity, or continence, is not to be overlooked as a cause of Impotence, the very reverse of the degrading habit of self-pollulion, it is not only comparatively rare, but offers in ils very nature the indications of cure. But that long continued de- bauchery, whether with women or by masturbation, is to be assigned as the most common and prominent of the causes of Impotence, is a fact admitted by all systematic writers, and amply and painfully con- firmed by my own experience. Mons.Pinel, observes, " T/te impotence caused by the latter excess, reduces youth to the nullity of old age, and is too often incurable? Fortunately the records of a numerous list of cases prove, that recovery of the powers of manhood is not (under judicious management) so altogether hopeless as might seem to be the fact, trusting only to the observations of those medical men who have made these subjects their peculiar, and exclusive study. Impotence is often caused by debility of the genital organs, induced by precocious venereal en- joyments, or by the unrestrained abuse of the deli- cate structures in any method, that tends to produce repeated and severe evacuations of the seminal fluid. If Impotence result from self-pollution, there is a want of erection; and should a seminal emission take place, the semen does not possess its prolific 13* 150 Impotence and Sterility, power, and ihus the man is at once impotent and sterile. This formof Impotence is truly deplorable ; and un- fortunately, it is ihe most prevalent variety ; never- theless the author has cured many persons labouiing under this distressing complication, although several involuntary diurnal as well as nocturnal emissions have regularly or cured without amorous impulse, next to self 'pollution. Excessive venery is a frequent cause of Impotence as well as of Sterility among the male sex. This is a frequent cause of want of offspring in young married persons. In these cases the semen may escape without the aid of the ejacu- latory muscles, is imperfect in quality, and devoid of power, until the health is improved; or, if impreg- nation ensue, the child undoubtedly partakes of the debility of the parent, soon to be consigned to a premature grave, the victim of that nameless atro- phy, or wasting decay, which hurries thousands of infants, annually, to the tomb. In these cases, the male parent generally suffers from inflammation of the seminal vesicles, or there is a seminal weakness, with more or less involuntary discharge. The surest means, by which sound and vigorous children may be engendered, is a good constitution, unenfeebled by excessive waste of those powers, which, in their assemblage, constitute the manifesta- tion of the living principle. It is admitted, not merely by philosophic writers, who have speculated deeply upon the subject, but by all who have paid the least attention to the facts connected with such a statement, that not merely the physical but the moral dispositions of the parents, are transmitted by generation ; hence, if a sound mind, in a sound body, Impotence and Sterility. 151 be the first, greatest and most lasting blessing, and its deprivation or absence the greatest possible curse r how imperatively necessary is the obligation to cal- culate closely the tendency of vicious indulgences, to avoid the contamination of depraved habits, or to correct and elude the consequences of that debility already imposed upon the generative organs by sen- sual excess. Impotence and Sterility are usually the results of wilful imprudence. Mal-formation is a direct interposition of creative wisdom ; its occur- rence is comparatively rare; but failing power is not only exceedingly common, but generally constitutes a self-inflicted evil. Diseased and delicate parents procreate diseased and weakly offspring. The same results are observed in plants and animals. Can it be supposed that the physical powers and the sym- pathies of a beautiful woman, of an excellent con- stitution, are in unison with those of a man whose best energies were long ago expended in the prema- ture and illicit excesses of lawless excitement, whose youth has been a hurried history of wild enjoyment, whose passions have been lashed past the natural powers of his bodily organization, and who now brings his decrepid efforts as a worthless offering at the shrine of matrimonial sanctity ? Or, worse still — is there a mockery more deep, more bitter, than that desolation of spirit which an affectionate woman must feel, on rinding she clasps entwined within her circling embrace, the mere wreck of sensualism ! the horrible victim of self-pollution ! the creature, who, having trained his imagination and bodily powers to mere fancied enjoyments, is now deprived almost, if not entirely, of the capability of resuming the actions for which his generative organs were 152 Impotence and Sterility. destined. Woman's scorn must be the more intense, because, from the very nature of her own position, she is precluded from giving vent to her feelings of anger and vexation. Love cannot be reciprocal in such cases. Animal or organic impulse will prefer that which is more accordant with itself; even brutes prefer males which are possessed of vigour, power and beauty ; and this instinct is implanted by nature in all animals. Whatever perversion civilization may affect in our feelings or manners, it cannot ex- tinguish this instinct. And this is an eminently wise ordination, as tending to the perpetuity of a healthy race of human beings. If sensualism have impaired the powers, not of both parents, but of one only, the punishment of the offence is either sterility or debility, or pain, disease and death, transmitted to the children, and reflected back with sorrow upon the parents. Impotence, then, is the last crowning scourge of sexual imperfection, and demands for its removal the most cautious application of the resour- ces of the healing art. The treatment of the chronic diseases of the generative system, has been greatly neglected, and signally misunderstood. The efficacy of well directed efforts has been much mistrusted in this matter ; and it is remarkable, that both the pa- tient and the practitioner contribute to these impedi- ments ; for, as the latter has been accustomed to see his remedies speedy in their effects, he is himself discouraged if they do not immediately produce the desired benefit. Nor is it any wonder that the pa- tient becomes incredulous of the promised relief, neither of them recollecting, that the morbid states Impotence and Sterility. 153 have been slowly produced, and cannot, therefore, be speedily changed.* Self-pollution, the frequent cause of sexual Im- potence and Sterility, is generally the habit of the best years of youthful life; and ils deadening im- press often tells, with deplorable certainty, long after the baneful habit lias been relinquished. Time must, therefore, be afforded for the rectification of that artificial state, into which the powers of the- system have been wantonly plunged. It is evidently the absence of fixed principles in our pathology of the slow diseases of the generative system, that has given such unbridled license to quackery. There has always existed a vagueness of opinion respect- ing their nature, and an unsettled doctrine as to the most rational methods to be adopted for their mitiga- tion and cure. The communication of disordered action is an inevitable result of indulgence in any mode of sensualism, either excessive or contrary to the of divergency, where cautious science leaves blundering quackery to pur- sue her blind injurious course. It is a law of ani- mal organization, that when motion is increased, the increase is most considerable in those parts which are most susceptible, and these, among sensualists, are the parts of generation ; therefore, the effects of irritating remedies are most sensibly and instantly felt in those parts, enforcing the utmost circumspec- 154 Impotence and Sterility. flaccidity of the penis, testicles and scrotum. Can it be expected these organs should be capable, under such circumstances, of fulfilling their appropriate offices in the task of procreation? — most assuredly not. Where Impotence is consequent upr,n that banejul propensity, which cannot be sufficiently stigmatized, its extent of severity is far greater than when produced by excessive indulgence with women ; because the vital fluid that could have im- proved the stamina of tl.e system has been lost without satisfaction; consequently, no gratification of the mind has been had to counterpoise, to com- pensate, and in some measure to repair the expendi- ture of power. The man, who from his anxiety to indulge to the utmost his libidinous propensities, seeks for variety among women, may certainly find in such variety a new stimulus sufficient for the occasion, and may be able to accomplish more frequent repetitions of the sexual act than the sober married man who is Faithful to one ; but we cannot over-look the fact, that this, undoubtedly, is accomplished at the expense of a corresponding amount of unnaturally excited energy, and the ultimate results of such efforts tell with fearful and tremendous horrors, upon the helpless and debilitated votary of greedy pleasure. The nightly partner of a husband's bed, silently offers only that gratification which is demanded by the sexual organs, when fully charged with the seminal fluid, and impatient for relief. To such a man the stimulus of variety is unsought; contemned, for- bidden, as contrary not merely to all laws, human and divine, but as directly opposed to his well-being, %o the maintenance of his animal organization in Impotence and Sterility. 155 health, strength and usefulness. Here then, the natural laws of the physical constitution harmonize most admirably with the higher sanctions of morality. The actual amount of enjoyment realized by the temperate, is, in the long run, far greater ; power is maintained until old age, and a vigorous offspring is engendered, while the hasty, violent and forced gra- tification of the sensualist, though/ vivid for a mo- ment, are succeeded by that worst form of helpless- ness, insatiable desire appended to diseased and powerless organs. The draining of the seminal fluid, which occurs either from excessive indulgence in venereal gratifications, or from solitary vice, is not equally great in every instance. There are some individuals who are not rendered absolutely, but only partially impotent. They can accomplish the sexual act occasionally and with severe effort, to the dis- gust, doubtlessly, of the female, or ihey are tolera- bly able, yet unprolific. Their powers are weakened, not altogether destroyed. These patients have re* sources left in surgical skill, which if expended in contending against improper or unskilful treatment, are lost for ever. The debility produced by mastur- bation starts a difficulty in the choice of remedies which does not occur in other cases, to excite, yet not irritate ; this is the point of divergency, where cautious science leaves blundering quackery to pur* sue her blind injurious course. It is a law of ani- mal organization, that when motion is increased, the increase is most considerable in those parts which are most susceptible, and these, among sensualists, are the parts of generation ; therefore, the effects of irritating remedies are most sensibly and instantly felt in those parts, enforcing the utmost circumspec- 156 Impotence and Sterility. tion, not merely in the selection, but in the adminis- tration and employment of medicinal agents. Thus Sterility may, in some cases, be only apparent, although it be perfectly true, that in a few instances, the uterine system of the female may be insensible to the seminal stimulus of a particular individual, yet capable of being acted upon by another ; the lapse of a little time is often sufficient (if there have been no debilitating causes in operation before mar- riage,) to dissipate groundless fear, and such being the truth, it becomes doubly important, not only that proper treatment be adopted, where absolutely de- manded, but that science should determine whether any or what kind of interference be really necessary. Offspring is frequently denied to newly-married per- sons from eagerness in its pursuit. The consequent ces of excessive venery in those whom warm pas- sion has united in its indissoluble tie, amount only to the defeat of their wishes. Celsus, remarked, upon this subject, more than eighteen centuries ago, " Rarus concubitus corpus exciiat frequeus solvit? Which may be freely translated— " The bodily powers are excited by occasional coition, by frequent repetition they become relaxed ;" and, consequently, unprolific; or, as the poet has expressed the same sentiment — " While temperate pleasure spurs the lazy Vood, Excess unstrmgs the nerves and d.ies the flood." And so truly it is within the experience of many, that when the first warm anxiety for offspring, and its corresponding efforts, have passed away and sub- sided, the blessing is granted ta less passionate, exciting, and frequent embraces. Impotence and Sterility. 157 The ancient Physicians were right in their gene- ral rule : the longer parties abstain the more quickly they generate. Almost all physiologists now agree, that the retention of semen for some few days, or temporary abstinence from coition, is necessary for generation. During my own practice, many persons have con- sulted me on account of want of family, ivhich en- tirely arose from this cause. Such cases require great delicacy in their investigation to learn their nature, when science, caution, and sympathy are duly ex- erted. Conjugal, domestic, and social inconvenien- ces must always be avoided ; and it is scarcely to be observed, because of the obvious truth, that ex- cessive sexual enjoyment relaxes both parties, and may, even in the married state, defeat its own end, be unfruitful from too frequent repetition, and bring on atony, weakness, and debility of the generative organs, which may end in sterility in the female, and impotence in the male. If these things be so (and who will dare to contravene their truth, founded as it is on the ordinary every day observation of man- kind ?) it follows that there are, and may be, varieties of seminal weakness, originating most commonly in nocturnal emissions, and these dependant in many instances (but not invariably so) in the unnatural practice of self-pollution, to which such ample reference has been made in the foregoing pages. That these emissions lead to the most deplorable consequences, independently of the injury done to the generative functions is indisputable. The most studious people, and those of a splenetic cast, are subject to this infirmity, and the discharge of semen is commonly so considerable, that they fall into a slow 14 158 Impotence and Sterility. wasting consumption. A Roman physician, (whose opinion is supported by John of Acharus, author of a work composed for the Emperor,) observes — "If nocturnal emissions continue any time, the necessary consequences are consumption and death, for the most balsamic part of the humour and animal spirits are dissipated ; the whole body falls away, and par- ticularly the back ; the patients become feeble, dry and pale, they languish in slow melancholy agony." Let this antiquated, yet terrifically correct portraiture, deter the thoughtless, from practices which lead to such a state ; and those in whom it is commencing, let not incipient evil be deemed unworthy of their most serious consideration. Sterility, however, is frequently the vice of the female organs, under circumstances which preclude its possibility on the part of the male. It may de- pend, in women, either upon mal-formation, which in reference to the internal and hidden structure, is more common than is generally supposed ; or it may be dependent upon some imperfect action of the generative organs. In some instances, the ovaria are wanting, or too small; the fallopian tubes may be impervious, or the uterus itself unnaturally small. With this state of parts there are associated, a want of due development of the breasts, and the sexual desire inconsiderable. But, in by far the greater majority of barren women, the organs of generation seem to be well formed, nevertheless the action is imperfect or disordered. The menstrual secretion is either obstructed or sparing, or the reverse defect is predominant. They are troubled with profuse discharges, either occurring at the natural period or at irregular intervals, perhaps alternating with copious Impotence and Sterility. 159 mucal secretion, of an acrimonious and whitish glairy fluid. It is extremely rare for conception to occur unless a woman menstruate regularly ; and, on the contrary, correct menstruation generally indi- cates a capability of impregnation on the part of the female. Women who are very corpulent are often barren ; for their corpulence either depends upon want of activity in the ovaria (castrated animals generally becoming fat,) or it exists as a mark of weakness of the general system, and of the uterine organs in particular. This state of weakness and exhaustion of the generative system (however in- duced) is unquestionably a frequent cause of female sterility ; and among the causes which entail loss of vital and reproductive energy, excessive indulgence is one of the most prominent. Hence, as before observed, prostitutes seldom conceive, not alone because the frequent repetition of the act blunts sensibility to enjoyment, but also because of the atony of the generative power. Must it be added, that vicious indulgences and solitary practices find their way to the chamber of unmarried girls. The fact is unfortunately too well attested. I have known an instance where this horrible practice was com- municated, by a depraved domestic, to a family of girls ; and in another case, that fell under my cog- nizance, the inmates of a lady's school were all, without exception, devoted to this depraved and des- tructive propensity. Now, it is impossible to con- ceive that any single cause of sterility, in after life, can operate with more deadly certainty than this, to say nothing of the horribly wasting forms of consump- tive and other diseases which are thereby produced^ and which indeed often hurry young women to the- 160 Impotence and Sterility. grave before the cause becomes developed ; and previously to their entrance into the state, and upon the duties of married life, women of adult age and more especially the young, whose constitution is as yet unformed and expanded, in pursuing the guilty career of vicious stimulation of the genital organs? entail upon themselves the most horrible diseases, of which sterility is the least formidable. None but those who have devoted themselves to the treatment of sexual infirmities, have the slightest conception of the extent and prevalency of these flagrant enormities. Besides the consequences com- mon to both sexes, females, devoted to libidinous and solitary pollutions, are more particularly exposed to hysterical paroxisms, to incurable jaundice, cramp in the side of the stomach, acute pains in the head, to fluor albus, that acrid wasting discharge, scarcely compatible with the healthy functions of the uterus ; to descent and protrusion of the womb, and to all the infirmities of body and mind inseparable from these combined conditions. As the result of this, the organs themselves become irritable and inflamed, engendering a train of filthy thought, that is con- cealed with difficulty, or that expends itself in the betrayal of so much the weakness of the sex, as to draw down our pity and indifference, rather than love, passion and respect. A common symptom in both sexes, and which is to be noticed here, as it is more frequent among women, is the indifference which this infamous practice leaves for the lawful gratifications of marriage ; and hence, the disinclina- tion of some women to enter that state, is not always insincere or ascribable to affectation. Not only does this indifference induce some to maintain a life of Impotence and Sterility. 161 celebacy, but even accompanies them to the nuptial bed. In the collection of Dr. Beckker's, a female ac* knowledges, that the practice of self-pollution had gained so complete an ascendancy over her senses, that she absolutely felt repugnance to the natural and lawful means afforded by the Author of Nature for the relief of natural desire. My own practice has rendered me familiar with similar examples. How intensely important that Parents and Guar- dians should reflect upon the source whence the vilest habits may be introduced, with secret impu- nity, among their infant charge of either sex; if they may be deceived in the choice of those to whom they entrust the important task of forming the minds and dispositions of their pupils, what is their not to fear from their proximity to domestics, w 7 ho are ex- amined chiefly for the display of their corporeal talents, and are frequently hired without its being' known whether their morals are irreproachable, or their minds not grossly polluted and vicious ? In the majority of these deplorable cases, a servant maid, gross, luxurious, and previously unaccustomed to abundance of good food, has been the guilty insti- gator of a propensity, which, however her coarse organization might bear with apparent impunity, has produced effects of the most deplorable character, on the sensitive frame of a creature whose habits, modes of thought, reading, and powers of fancy, render her the easy prey of a facinating and over- whelming delusion. What are the indications which justify parental fear in reference to either sex ? We have passed Htider review the forms of disease resulting so 14* 162 Impotence and Sterility. frequently, solely from sensualism. The tact with which the victims of self-pollution elude detection, and evade inquiry, is inconceivable. Why does the moody youth court unreasonable solitude ? Let your vigilence be unceasing in reference to the dis- posal of those moments preceding sleep and rising, for it is then that the youthful criminal may most probably be surprised in the fact. The marked ex- aggeration of feigned and immediate sleep is one indication ; on approaching the bed, its inmate covered with perspiration, or with reddened features, quickened pulse and breathing, and heated skin ; is manifestly in a predicament which the temperature of the room, or the warmth of the bed-clothes, will not naturally and speedily produce , if on their re- moval their be marks of recent evacuation, the fact is made out, if otherwise, silence will not pain the mind of the virtuous. If these stains be frequent, we may assure ourselves they are the indirect results of masturbation, and closely identified with a weak and irritable condition of the seminal vessels. Dis- colouration, a faded dry condition of the skin, lan- guor, the look of unrefreshed fatigue on rising from bed, disposition to indulgence in bed in the morning, are among the suspicious signs, which alone, or in combination with other circumstances, point to this deplorable habit. If a marked consumptive diathesis be not attributable to clearly defined, obvious and natural causes ; if no hereditary predisposition be traceable, nor the results of neglected inflammation, in- sufficient nutriment, prolonged study, violent and long continued mental emotions of a depressing kind, if the subject of our anxieties become weak, emaciated and diseased, spite of healthy and sufficient food, moderate Impotence and Sterility* 163 exercise, and the absence of the known and com- monly received provocatives of disease; if, more particularly, there be that marked and special aspect of the countenance, attributable to masturbation ; that "peculiar walk" which, as we have seen, is sufficient to indicate the sensualist, even in the street — taking all these things into consideration, we may almost certainly conclude, we have before us the victim of this solitary and baneful indulgence. But of proofs avowal is the most difficult of acquisition. To demand that admission is not the surest way to obtain it. As to some, an obscure, ambiguous or enigmatical mode of inquiry is successful ; who if addicted to the vice in question, consciousness ena- bles them fully to comprehend its exact drift, if otherwise, a harmless sence is attached to the words. The direct blunt question is sure to be parried ; the fact, however, is most easy of elicitation, by those whose attention to these matters has endued them with the requisite tact, address and management. Such acquire the confidence of the suspected ; with him they feel perfectly at ease. Not to frow r ns, severity, and stern lessons on morality, is the secret confided. The fact being established, there are three indications closely connected with its abolition as a habit. First, to destroy, not the natural sexual, but unnaturally morbid, desire ; secondly, to place the will in a position of a permanent control over mere animal impulse ; and thirdly, to place such impediments in the way of repetition, as to render it physically as well as morally impossible. No combination of human ailments can be so pe- culiarly and painfully distressing to a sensitive mind as that one hidden and restlessly knawing anxiety, 164 Impotence and Sterility. arising from the deferred hope of offspring. The* possession of wealth cannot atone for the absence of that which riches cannot purchase, and in vain doe& the heart turn in lonely anguish, as- the spring-time of existence is rapidly flitting away r to its miserable expedients, for the alleviation of this hopeless cor- roding sorrow. I remember well, having seen an accomplished and beautiful creature, already mar- ried a few years, blest with all the world could be- stow, yet bursting into tears at the sight of a chubby boy borne by a begger woman ; and who does not know of the rejoicings that oft occur when some wealthy dame has presented her anxious husband with the long expected heir to his vast possessions- As though the reproproductive act w T ere an almost impossible rarity among the more refined and civi- lized of the sex ; as though while " peasants bring forth in safety," and rear in poverty a numerous hardy brood, any valid reason should be assigned why this process should be interrupted among the higher and more educated classes. If the immuta- ble laws of organized nature were more closely ob- served and followed, making due allowance for con- genital imperfections, there is no reason why any one class of women should be found to be more prolific than another ; and I doubt not of the cer- tainty of repeating my frequent and happy expe- rience, in the inculcation of such directions as may ensure to many of my anxious correspondents, the long-cherished realization of their fondest expecta- tions. I have analysed the many peculiarities of sexual disappointments ; I have furnished correspondences to and fro, descending even to minuti.cs> as far as. Impotence and Sterility. 165 .permissible, and I am in possession of others, from whicjk in my practice, I derive great assistance with regard to sterility on the part of the female, and incapacity to impregnate on the side of the male. An ampler field is open for " aiding and abetting" such ends, than can be expressed in ink, or perhaps suspected or believed by the world at large to exist. As I am candid to confess, in sending this publica- tion forth, desirous as I have been of rendering it worthy .of purchase, I never intended it to supersede my own usefulness, either to my neighbours or my- self; and should I be in existence when these pages meet the inspection of a reader solicitous to know more than is here set dow T n, the application, either viva voce, or otherwise, may not prove a fruitless speculation. Men in advanced years, and others of younger growth there are, who are sceptical as to the usefulness of art in completing the joys of mar- ried life ; but if any should be credulous enough to believe, that with such assistance effects have fol- lowed, on which rested happiness, health, and not the least essential desideratum, the maintenance of family property ; I fearlessly -am ready to declare, that their faith need not in every instance be mis- placed. I have been personally and alone engaged in the investigation of this subject for a period of many years, and 1 have had the satisfaction of effect- ing, even with parties tojiom I have never beheld, the purposes for winch 1 haye been consulted. During the act of copulation, the external and in- ternal genital organs of both sexes, which; : are sup- plied by nerves from the same source, are excited and stimulated ..; the vagina closes tightly on the penis, the uterine orifice is in close contact with ths 166 Impotence and Sterility, orifice of the male urethra, the tube or oviduct be- comes straightened and erected, and its loose or floating extremity {corpus fimbriatum) seizes oh the ovary, and allows the male fluid, after its injection into the cavity of the womb, to advance through the tube to the ovary, by a species of vital attraction or suction. The moment the spermatic fluid arrives at the ovary which is seized by the extremity of the uterine tube, it acts on and vivifies one or more ova or ovules and forms the new being, or beings. Such is the natural history of the act which originates a new being, and it is obvious, that in the detection of such deviations from nature as occasionally occur, is to be found, the secret which baffles and denies to wedded love its legitimate consequences. Those deviations are more numerous and complicated than at first sight the inexperienced in such researches would imagine, and the imperfection once rectified, by the judicious interference of art, impregnation is almost certain to follow, more especially when the female has, seeming of a sudden, relinquished her usual capacity for procreation. Such deficiencies, though occasionally traceable to the weaker sex, are most frequently ascribable to the male, who, though in every other respect strong, healthy and robust, is yet the subject of such morbid dilitation of the seminal vessels as results in premature emissions, and though able to perform the mere act of copula- tion properly, yet from the exudation of a thin, wa- tery, effete semen, possessing no adequate vitality, and from its ejaculation at a hasty and inefficient moment — the ordinary and mutual excitement of the act being wanting — impregnation is denied. To such, where this is the case, my remedies having a Impotence and Sterility. 167 direct action on the seminal vessels, are well calcu- lated to restore tone and impart energy ; and, by inducing a healthy secretion of semen, supply the female with the indispensable requisites for a fu- ture progeny. Of course these remarks exclude absolute congenital deformity or ma.l-formation, in the absence of which, those cases are comparatively very rare, which admit of no relief from medical art. We go out of the world by the same changes almost as those by which we entered it. We begin as children, as children we leave off. We return at least to the same weak and helpless condition as our first. We must have people to lift us, to carry us to provide for us nourishment, and even to feed us* We again have need of parents — and how wise the establishment — we find them again in our children, who now take delight in repaying a part of that kindness which we showed to them. Children now step, as it were, into the place of parents, w T hile our weakness transposes us into the place of children. The venerable oak, on the other hand, does not en- joy the benefit of such a wise regulation. The old decayed trunk stands alone and forgotten, and in vain endeavours to procure from foreign aid, that support and assistance which can be the work only of a natural affection, and the bonds of nature. 168 Medical Treatment. MEDICAL TREATMENT. In reference to the Medical Treatment of Sensu- alism, I wish to urge the perfect unity of character, though diversity of individual type, among the va- rious forms of disease, resulting from the habit of self-pollution. It is not to be expected that the same benefit, either in amount or precise description, should occur indiscriminately : age, sex, predisposi- tion to disease in weaker organs, and a host of modi- fying circumstances, tend each, by a different, yet downward road, to consign the sufferer to the grave. But as to medicinal agents, the uniformity of cause is a sufficient argument for no farther deviation in the application of a specific, than is rendered neces- sary by collateral considerations. The topical em- ployment of cold is an ancient remedy ; and direc- tion of remedial agents solely to the cerebellum, is useful in certain morbidly excited conditions of the natural power ; but in that deplorable condition resulting from Onanism, these are insufficient or inapplicable. The generality of Medical Practi- tioners prescribe the following articles, viz : — Peru- vian bark, astringents, and tonics of various names; narcotics, as opium, henbane, and hemlock ; the mineral acids, lime water, certain preparations of iron, mercury and lead ; cubebs, copaiba, the blis- tering fly, or cantharides. These have been pre- scribed alone, or in succession, with various results, but affording no permanent benefit to the unfortunate sufferer. But the Balm of Zura, combined with the tincture of Kilsellii, and tincture of Esconii, Medical Treatment. 169 together with an infusion of the uv a ursi, and Bu- chu leaves, will, if judiciously combined and pre- scribed, according to the age, constitution and idio- syncracy of the patient, restore the parts to their formal health and vigor, and remove any impedi- ments that may exist by former bad habits. These preparations, with others, which are known to the author, are calculated to calm unnatural sensibility and rouse the lost power of the sexual organs. One important secret in the treatment of these diseases, is to ell illustrated by the habits of Medical Practitioners ; who, when called upon to visit their sick friends of the same profession, mostly conceal from them the names of the remedies they employ. If in any class of diseases concealment is essential to success, most assuredly it will be found to be in those cases, where the mental and moral manage- ment is equally important with the medical treat- ment, and confided almost exclusively to the same person. Ignorance of the nature and operation of a remedy is not (generally speaking) essential to its success ; but, if in certain cases, moral influence be necessary, and if concealment tend to the establish- ment and perpetuation of that influence, it is not only justifiable but indispensable. For this reason it is not my intention, in a public work, to give pre- scriptions of remedies, the doses and combinations of which can only depend on the peculiarities of the case ; nor do I deem one uniform remedy applicable to all the results of sensualism, and I have no faith in those advertised and specific nosirwn,s > which may be useful or injurious, precisely as unfit, or ac- cordant with the peculiar modifications of individual constitution, 15 170 Medical Treatment The peculiarity of my treatment consists in the selection, adaptation and application of remedies, which, from my own practical experience, have been of signal benefit. They act upon the seminal ves- sels, and they impart tone without the production of irritation ; they strengthen without inflaming or temporarily exciting the generative power ; they cure by the removal of the proximate cause of de- bility and disease, and so, permanently restore the lost energies of the system. There are individuals who indulge the fond, yet irrational hope, that nature is capable of resuming, without assistance, her lost powers ; to such, I can only say, that the time which is wasted in this delay is precious and irreclaimable, and can only tend to perpetuate the habits of hope- less imbecility, and render impotence permanent. Many of these are prevented from applying for medical advice and assistance, through fear, or dread of accidental exposure ; in reference to this, it is proper to remark, that my general rule is, to bum all correspondence, or to return it to the wri- ters, on the termination of their case; and only under peculiar circumstances is a personal interview or application absolutely necessary. It would have been a matter of no difficulty to me, to detail the histories of hundreds of cases, which have been treated most successfully ; in which the most de- plorable forms of nervous or generative debility, impotence, sterility, nocturnal emissions, seminal weakness, indigestion, approaching insanity and con- sumption, as well as syphilitic and constitutional diseases, have been exchanged for health, vigour and happiness ; but this would have augmented the size of the work most inconveniently, and there are Medical Treatment. 171 many whose delicacy would resent the transcript of their cases, even under anonymous initials. In conclusion, I beg to suggest a practical exten- sion of the benefits I have endeavoured to inculcate. It will be an acceptable service to society, if the reader, who has attentively, and I hope usefully, perused these pages, will forward, with as much privacy as may be, under envelope, anonymously or otherwise, this little work, to such of his friends or ■acquaintances, who, as he may have good reason, either to know or suspect, have been the secret vic- tims of the baneful habit I have described. In this way a parent may secretly, yet effectually warn that child, to whom, on such a subject, he would feel it repulsive to speak. I need only point out this mode of performing a humane and charitable action, to render obvious its very useful application. I have thus endeavoured, candidly, to explain tJie purpose of the present effort ; to offer an intelligible portraiture of the interruptions to the enjoyment of sexual health, and by explaining the causes in a sim- ple, forcible, and perspicuous manner, to enable the reader to disentangle the apparently inextricable and confused maze of his own wandering and diseased fancies; to point to the concealed, and it may be unsus- pected cause of human suffering ; to the restoration -of health, pristine vigour, usefulness, activity and joy- ous hilarity. Why do I suffer? — why, when all around me invites to enjoyment — why is it, that while every face wears a smile, existence to me is a dreary blank ? — the world, its pleasures, cares and duties, an irksome weariness. Are not these ques- tions, which even a cursory glance at the previous pages will enable the misguided to solve ; long ex- 172 Medical Treatment. perience of human nature, extensive acquaintance with some of its most painful infirmities, enable me to say it will be so. I am bound to confess that it is not only by the relief I have afforded that my practice has become so extensive. Many of my correspondents have informed me, that they were first emboldened to apply by the convic- tion that their secret must remain for ever undivulged, requiring no name, (if my patient be desirous to conceal it,) and not on all occasions an interview. I am enabled to afford relief without even knowing the residence of the parties who receive it at my hands, and this certainty of concealment is to many a great satisfaction, nevertheless it is unnecessary, for on no occasion has the slightest suspicion ever been excited. Inviolable secrecy and certain relief, are the boons then I offer to suffering humanity. 'That I have these in my power to bestow, number- less cases sufficiently attest. I make no pretensions but such as are borne out by the fullest testimonies, and of the authenticity of my testimonies I am pre- pared to give every proof short of a disclosure of the confidence intrusted to me, that which I know of private individuals shall, for life, be locked in my breast, in all else I am open as .day to the eye of scrutiny.* But I have verified in my practice the sincere pleasure which results to the philanthropic practitioner, from the conscious feeling that disease has been removed, the pangs of suffering relieved, and the withering child of affliction snatched from the bed of torment and decay, to be restored to health, to comfort, and to society. - - ■ . — I 1 — ' ——- 7" ■- * See the 46th page of the Bachelor's Guide. TESTIMONIALS. THE ANNEXED TESTIMONIALS ARE SELECTED FROM A VO LUMNIOUS LIST IN THE AUTHORS POSSESSION, WHICH, IF THEY WERE ALL PUBLISHED, WOULD EXTEND TO AN INCONVENIENT LENGTH. The necessity for their insertion loill be found in the Note to pages 41 and 42. BY THE COURT OF EXAMINERS OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS IN IRELAND. These are to Certify, that Mr. Henry Fawcett came before us, and having been solemnly and pub- licly examined, on two several days, we found him duly qualified to practice Surgery and to be elected a Member of this College. In testimony whereof, We, the Examiners, have subscribed our hands, and caused the Seal of the College to be hereunto appended, at Dublin, this 20th day of May, 1824. JAMES RESIN, President. > Censors. S. WILMOT, FRANCTS WHITE, AR. JACOB, WM. HEN. PORTER, MAURICE COLLIS, ROBT. ADAMS, By Order of the Court, ROBT. HARRISON, Assistant Secfy. 15* 174 Testimonials. We, the Presidents and Council, being authorised by the Members of the London Hospital Medical Society, to confer the distinction of Honorary Member on Mr. Henry Fawcett, as a testimony of the ability which he has evinced, in attending to the duties prescribed by the laws of the Society, do hereby, to this DIPLOMA, affix our signatures. PRESIDENTS. COUNCIL. F. RAMSBOTHAM, M. D. W. COOKE, R. R. ROBINSON, JOHN ADAMS, THOS. BLIZARD CURLING. GEORGE DALE, and ochers. Given at London, 8th February, 1S27. W. J. LITTLE, Secretary. " OPIFERQUE PER ORBEM DICOR." We, the Court of Examiners,, chosen and ap- pointed by the Master, Wardens and Assistants, of \he Society of the Art and Mystery of Physicians, of the City of London, in pursuance of a certain Act of Parliament, passed in the 59th year of the reign of his Majesty King George the Third, enti- tled " An Act for the better regulating the Practice of Physicians, throughout Great Britain and Ireland,' 5 do hereby, by virtue of the power and authority in us vested, by the said act, certify, that Henry Fawcett has been, by us, carefully and deliberately examined, as to his skill and abilities in the Science and Practice of Medicine, and as to his fitness and qualification to practice ; and we do hereby, for and on behalf of the Master, Wardens and Society, fur- Testimonials. 175 iher certify, the said Henry Fawcett is duly quali- fied to practice as a Physician and Surgeon, in any part of Great Britain and Ireland. Dated this 11th day of April, at London, 1828. JOHN BACOT, Chairman. ALLEN WILLIAMS, JOHN RIDEOUT, H. ROBINSON, H. C FIELD, HENRY BLATCH, E.L.WHEELER, SAMUEL MERRIMAN, EDWARD TEGART. THOMAS HARDY, JOHN WATSON, Secretary. In preseniia Collegii Regii Chirurgorum Edinensium. Hisce Uteris testatum volumus virum ingeniosum Henricum Fawcett examini sese subjecisse, et quaestionibus de rebus Anatomieis, Chirurgicis, et Pharmaceuticis, ei propositis responsa satis apta et docta publice reddidisse, ita ut nobis judicio pollere studia diligenter coluisse, et ad Artem Chirurgicam exercendam quam maxime paratus esse videatur. I Edinburgi, die sexto mensis Angusti, anno 1825. J. H. WISTARD, Preses. HENERTCUS JOHNSTON, ADAMUS PIE, J. KEITH, DAVID McLOGAN, ADAMUS HUNTER, JOANNES LAIRD, GEORGIUS BELLINGAN, JOSEPHUS BELL, DAVID HAY, 176 Testimonials. Nosocomium Parturientium Coombense. His Uteris testor Henricum Fawcett per sex menses praxi et prcetectionibus de arte obstetrica, in hoc nosocomio diligenter animum intendisse. In- super ipsum de sua hujusce artis peritia necnon de principus et curatione morborum foeminis et infan- tibus, incidentium examinationem apte sustinuisse atque apprime scienter respondisse. Apud nosocomium Coombense, die primo Junis, 1829. Ricardus Reed Gregory, Profectus. Rest. C. I. O'Hara. Omnibus has [Lit eras Visuris Salutem. Quandoquidem Gradus Academici eum in finem ihstituti Suerint, lit viri ingenio et doctrina praditi titutis prseter casteros insignirentor, eo ut ipsis prosit nee non aliorum provocetur industria et inter homines studium Virtutis et Bonarum Literarum augeatur, Quando etiam hue potissimum spectant amplissima ilia jura nostro Collegio publico Diplomate collata. Idcirco, notum sit, quod nos, Prseses et Professores Collegii Jeffersoniensis, in Republica Pennsylva- niensi, Henricum Faivcett, virum probum, nobis devinctissimum propter mores benevolos et omnes eas artes qua optimum quemque ornant, qui etiam scientia eximia in Arte Medica, aque ac Chirurgica, nostro Collegio sibi acquisita, nobisque examinatione publice habita plenius manifesta, se dignum Ampli- simis Honoribus Academicis ostendit, Doctorum in Arte Medendi, creavimus et constituimus. Eique Testimonials. 177 prafato, Henrico Fawcett, hujus Diplomatis virtute, singula jura, Honores et Privilegia ad Gradum Doc- toris in arte Medendi, inter nos et ubique gentium pertinentia libentissime et plenissime concessimus et rata fecimus. Incujus rei fidem, Heec Membrana, Chirographis nostris subscripta, et Sigillo Collegii nostri munita, testimonio sit. Datum in Aula Medicinati nostra, in Urbe Phili- delphia, mensis Martu die xir, anno humana salutus mdcccxxxiv, Annoque Rerum Publicarum America Foederatarum Summa Potestatis lviii. ASHBEL GREEN, D. D., L. L. D., Prases. GRANVILLE S. PATTISON,M.D., Prof. Anatomy. GEORG1US M'CLELLAN, M.D., Chirur. Prof. J. REVERE, M.D., Theory Prax., Med. Prof. S. M'CLELLAN, M.D., Obstet. Prof. JACOB GREEN, M.D., Chemical Prof. S. CALHOUN, M.D., Materia Medica Prof. STATE OF LOUISIANA. Medical Board of Examiners. Know all Men, by these presents, that We, the President and Members of the Medical Board of Examiners, do hereby authorize Henry Fawcett, M. D., to exercise the Profession of Physic and Surgery throughout the State of Louisiana, and enjoy all the benefits and privileges to the same. Given at the City of New Orleans, the 25th day of June, anno domini 1839. T. LABATAT, M.D., President. JNCX RICARDIS, M. D., ) JAS. JONES, M. D., V Members. EWD. PORTY, M. D., ) M. MARTIN, Secretary. NOTICE TO PATIENTS, Doctor Fawcett having, for many years, exclu- sively directed his attention to the successful treat- ment of the Generative and Nervous System described in the preceding pages, may be consulted daily, either personally or by letter, at his Office, 196 Fulton- Street, New-York. COUNTRY PATIENTS are informed, that by forwarding their communica- tion, per post or otherwise, they can have the neces- sary remedies sent to any address, in a portable compass, carefully packed and free from observation, and they may be taken without confinement or hindrance from business. Patients are requested to be as minute as possible in the detail of their cases 2 their symptoms, age, general habits of living and occupation in life. The communication must be accompanied with the usual Consultation Fee of Five Dollars, without which no notiie zuhatever can be taken of their application ; and in all cases the most inviolable secrecy may be relied on, as all letters are either returned to the writers, or des- troyed at the termination of each case, m lRBAg?8 LIBRARY