102 DISEASES OF THE MALE SEXUAL ORGANS. 



this collection of symptoms as hysteria. It is difficult to understand 

 why pollutions should have so injurious an effect on the organism in a 

 few persons, while by most they are borne without observable harm. 

 We cannot consider the loss of semen as the cause of the exhaustion and 

 nervous disturbance. The sexual excesses to which young husbands! 

 generally give way very rarely have any injurious effect on their 

 health ; even if they have daily intercourse, most of them remain just 

 as strong as they were previously while perfectly continent. In such 

 persons the loss of seminal fluid is so very much greater than in those 

 who suffer from occasional pollutions, that injurious results would 

 occur much more frequently in them if the loss of the fluid were the 

 cause of the injury. From the favorable results that I have had of 

 late years in treating this affection, and patients with spermatorrhoea 

 by repeated cauterizations of the caput galinaginis, I believe that the 

 hysterical symptoms occurring in it are exactly analogous to those 

 occurring in women who have erosions of the os uteri ; or in other 

 words, that they do not depend on loss of semen, but that morbid irri- 

 tability of the sexual organs may excite extensive disturbances of 

 innervation in men just as it does in women. When speaking of hys- 

 teria I shall explain more in detail that erosions of the os uteri do not 

 necessarily induce hysteria, but that this is only apt to occur where 

 there is a decided predisposition for it. The case is just the same in 

 men who masturbate or who have pollutions or spermatorrhoea from 

 irritation of the genital organs. I must, however, warn my readers 

 against taking it for granted that all men who have hysterical symp- 

 toms masturbate or suffer from pollutions or spermatorrhoea. Hys- 

 teria does not depend exclusively on affections of the sexual organs, 

 either in men or women. 



By spermatorrhoea, in the strict sense, is understood a condition 

 where the semen is not regularly ejected during a complete or incom- 

 plete erection, but where it is washed out by the urine, or flows out 

 slowly while the bowels are being evacuated. The statements of 

 Lallemand and several other authors, concerning the frequency of 

 spermatorrhoea, are exaggerated. Increased excretion of prostatic 

 fluid is often mistaken for spermatorrhoea. In the white, frothy, or 

 transparent viscous fluid which sometimes collects in considerable 

 quantity at the mouth of the urethra after sexual excitement without 

 coitus, there are usually no spermatozoa or they are very few in 

 number. Frequently also the frothy fluid secreted from the urethral 

 mucous membrane during a gleet, or the mucous filaments in the 

 urine when there is catarrh of the bladder, are mistaken for semen 

 The microscope alone can render the diagnosis positive. 



The causes of true spermatorrhoea are obscure. Relaxation 01 



