636 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOUNG 



A question of importance must not be overlooked 

 in this connection: How frequently may emissions 

 occur without occasioning injury? As has been pre- 

 viously said, an emission is an indication of an abnor- 

 mal condition. However, the abnormality does not 

 amount to what might properly be called a disease, 

 when the occurrence is only occasional, and is not fol- 

 lowed by any chronic general or local disturbance. 

 ^\nien, however, an emission occurs with only a few 

 days ' interval, or when the occasional occurrence is fol- 

 lowed by general discomfort and physical and mental 

 depression or irritability, or such local symptoms as 

 smarting after urination, dribbling after passing urine, 

 etc., serious injury is being done, and the individual 

 should consider it necessary to place himself under 

 treatment. It may be said, in general, that the occur- 

 rence of an emission more often than once in three or 

 four weeks is evidence that the morbid condition pres- 

 ent is sufficiently serious to require medical attention. 

 This statement will be met by the claim that plenty of 

 cases may be cited in which losses have occurred with 

 much greater frequency than this, for long periods, 

 without apparent injury ; but sooner or later other evi- 

 dences of disease make their appearance. In all these 

 cases, injurious results make their appearance sooner 

 or later, if not in any other way, in the loss of sexual 

 vigor and the occurrence of prostatic and other trou- 

 bles which either do not occur at all in a healthy person, 

 or are postponed to a late period of advanced life. 



In the treatment of many of these cases, we have 

 invariably noticed as one of the first symptoms of 

 improvement that though the seminal losses still con- 

 tinued without great diminution in frequency, the pa- 

 tient no longer suffered the great depression of mind 



