IMPOTENCE. 107 



nappy results in similar cases that we have treated, and to assure him 

 that, according to all experience, his disease is unimportant and only 

 temporary. Others are cured by having coitus forbidden. The non- 

 chalance that they thus acquire during sexual excitement and the in- 

 attention to the strength and duration of the erections render co- 

 habitation possible, and they have the first successful coitus during 

 the time it was forbidden, while previously it had always failed. For 

 ignorant persons we may order some harmless substance, and promise 

 the best results from it, but, at the same time, forbid coitus for a sea- 

 son. In such cases the patients will often come back in a few days 

 and confess deploringly that they could not abide by the restriction. 

 We should particularly warn all persons, suffering from impotence, 

 against artificial excitement, especially against fingering and rub- 

 bing the genitals, and thus attempting to excite erections ; we 

 should represent to them most earnestly and continuously both the 

 injurious effects and the indecency of such a procedure. All the so- 

 called aphrodisiacs are useless and injurious. Washing the genitals 

 with cold water, cold hip-baths, and cold douches, occasionally appear 

 beneficial, and we should employ these remedies in the second form 

 of the affection also. In some cases of impotence, and particularly in 

 cases of irritability with weakness, cauterization of the prostatic por- 

 tion of the urethra, by means of Lallemand^s porte-caustic, has been 

 remarkably beneficial. Probably in these cases the disease depended 

 on spermatorrhoea due to relaxation and dilatation of the ducts of the 

 vesiculse seminales ; occasionally, also, the operation may have had a 

 favorable psychical influence. In the latter cases, reading LattemancFs 

 book would greatly aid the cure, for there the result of the cauteriza- 

 tion is pictured in such glowing colors that the description must re- 

 store courage to the most faint-hearted. Recently some electro-thera- 

 peutists have strongly recommended electricity for impotence; and 

 this treatment (besides which these men, according to their own ac- 

 counts, advise the impotent husbands to refrain from seeing their 

 wives, and to try coitus with lewd women [!]) is said to be very 

 beneficial. In men of full virile power I have often induced erections 

 by faradisation of the inner surface of the thigh, but, where there was 

 impotence even after using electricity for weeks, I have seen no re- 

 sults worth mentioning. But, as my own observations have not been 

 very numerous, I will not pronounce decidedly on the subject, and 

 shall simply give a short account of the plan of treatment advised by 

 Benedict and Schultz. According to Benedict we should place the 

 copper pole of a constant battery over the lumbar vertebrae, and pass 

 the zinc pole forty or fifty times in the direction of the spermatic cord, 

 then transversely over the different zones of the upper and lower sur- 



