634 PLAIN FACTS FOE OLD AND YOUNG 



passing dream may be sufficient to produce the invol- 

 untary actions by which the emission is occasioned. In 

 many cases in which the disease has not reached this 

 advanced stage, the emission does not occur during 

 sleep except when conditions especially favoring it ex- 

 ist, such as the presence of undigested food in the 

 stomach, loaded bowels, a full bladder, supine positfon, 

 excessive heat from too much covering, or some similar 

 cause of abnormal sexual excitement. After the dis- 

 ease has made further advancement, however, causing 

 an additional loss of tone on the part of the sexual cen- 

 ters, the circumstances mentioned, while still favoring 

 the occurrence of the emissions, are not essential to 

 provoke it, as it will often occur with most distressing 

 frequency, even when all unfavorable conditions are 

 carefully avoided. 



After the malady has made still further progress, 

 the nerve centers become weakened to such a degree 

 that the same involuntary discharge may occur through 

 the excitement of impure thoughts, even while the pa- 

 tient is wide-awake. Another step lower, and that 

 most deplorable condition is reached in which seminal 

 losses occur without erotic thoughts, and even without 

 the slightest degree of sexual excitement of any sort, 

 a condition known as spermatorrhea, or spermator- 

 rhagia, which is considered under another head. 



Symptoms.— The leading symptoms of this disorder 

 are pain in the lower portion of the back, various forms 

 of headache, debility, pressure at the back of the head, 

 fulness in the forehead with a general sense of oppres- 

 sion in the head, confusion of thought, dulness of mind, 

 want of mental or physical energy, mental abstraction, 

 irritability of temper, nervousness, fickleness, morbid 

 fears, melancholy, roaring and various sounds in the 



