On spermatorrhoea : its pathology, results, and complications / by J.L. Milton.

  • Milton, J. L. (John Laws), 1820-1898.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On spermatorrhoea : its pathology, results, and complications / by J.L. Milton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    no way impotent, only twenty-six years old, who had suffered in this way for a considerable time past; and Dicenta observed cold feeling of the genitals in five, and loss of internal warmth in nine, out of a hundred and fifty-five cases of spermatorrhoea. I give it as a fact, which I have had no chance of verifying, but which has been communicated to me by men on whose truth- fulness I believe I might implicitly rely, that many of these patients, even while labouring under progressive impotence and only partially cured spermatorrhoea, have remarkably fine children. Thus one young clergyman, so situated, reported that the surgeon, who attended his wife in her first confinement, said the child was the biggest he had ever brought into the world. A gentleman, in whom erectile power seemed to have ceased at quite an early age, stated that his four children were reputed to be four of the finest in the county, and so on. Mode in which Impotence takes place.—There are I presume only two modes in which this result ensues, viz., by the agency of injuries or excessive action. The former may act by destroying, dividing, or compressing the nerves leading to the generative organs; the other apparently by causing such amount of reflex action as to set up changes, molecular degeneration in fact, in the structure of the nerves, which, though not perceptible to the microscope, are yet quite sufficient to prevent the exercise of their natural function. We cannot certainly demonstrate such a hypothesis as accu- rately as we do the binomial theorem, or prove the weight of Jupiter against the earth, but we have some pretty strong proofs. We know the nervous structures are implicated to a great extent in this function; we know that hyper-action has been set up pre- viously, and that excessive action will produce alteration of tissue, as in inflammation ; and it appears to me a legitimate conclusion that this is what happens here. Prognosis of Itnpotence.—Impotence consequent upon wasting of the testicles, severe injuries, and disease or softening of the spinal cord, is necessarily incurable. Long-continued, steadily increasing impotence from excess, especially when the patient has passed his thirty-fifth year, must be regarded in a very unfavour- able light. All other cases may, I think, be cured.