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{Transcriber's Note:
Misspellings in the original have been preserved. The text uses a mixture of italics, boldface, enlarged type, and underlining. They are represented here by lines for ordinary emphasis (generally italics), marks for added emphasis (generally bold).
Material added by the transcriber is in braces { }. All brackets [ ] are in the original text.}
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
{Illustrated Cover:
Only Sent When Requested, and then Only When Sealed.
GLAD TIDINGS OF GOOD THINGS.
THE CIVIALE REMEDIES
174 Fulton St., New York }
{Illustration: CHEMICAL LABORATORY, CIVIALE REMEDIAL AGENCY.}
Manhood Perfectly Restored.
Prof. JEAN CIVIALE'S
SOLUBLE URETHRAL CRAYONS,
as a
QUICK, PAINLESS and CERTAIN CURE
for
IMPOTENCE, LOST MANHOOD, SPERMATORRHOEA, LOSSES, WEAKNESS AND NERVOUS DEBILITY.
Also for PROSTATITIS and VARICOCELE.
[The only standard and officially recognized treatment for these diseases of the Sexual and Urinary Organs, endorsed by and adopted in all the Hospitals of Paris, France.—See Gazette des Hopitaux, Dec. 8, 1869; also Dictionnaire des Sciences, vol. xxiv., p. 565.]
FACTS FOR MEN OF ALL AGES.
SIXTH EDITION,
Enlarged, Revised and Illustrated.
ISSUED BY
THE CIVIALE REMEDIAL AGENCY, 174 FULTON ST., NEW YORK. [Opposite St. Paul's Church.] 1885.
{Transcriber's Note:
The text pages cycle through a series of eight headers:
(1) All our Doctors are Regular Graduates, and their Diplomas are Registered in the Office of the County Clerk, City Hall, New York, as required by Law. (2) Our Crayons are Inserted without Pain. (3) We Cure where a Cure is Possible. (4) We hold out no False Hopes. (5) Our Treatment is Pleasant, Quick and Lasting. (6) When you are Tired of being Humbugged or Experimented on, send to us. (7) We Offer Special Help to Impotent Men. (8) Strictest Privacy—Perfect Confidence—Certain Cure.
The first set of eight pages has the headers in this order: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 3, 7, 8 On one later page, headnote 8 begins Strict Privacy.}
TO THE READER.
It is with great pleasure that we send you a copy of this, the sixth edition of our brochure on Sexual and Urinary Diseases. The success of the Civiale Urethral Method, since its first introduction into America, has been almost unparalleled in Medical History, and we feel that the time has come for replacing the brief pamphlet containing a mere outline of the method, with a work somewhat more full and exhaustive.
Aware of the number of worthless and oftentimes actually injurious remedies that are being advertised and recommended for the cure of these affections, and the bogus doctors and worthless firms that infest every large city, we have endeavored to give inquiring patients every proof and assurance of the efficacy of the Civiale Remedies, every facility for investigating our methods, and proving, to their entire satisfaction, both the medical ability of our Consulting Staff, and the honor, honesty and fair dealing of the Agency. We court the fullest and freest investigation, either by patients themselves or any friends of theirs in this city, either of whom we shall be happy to see and satisfy at any time, at our Consulting Rooms, Business Offices or Manufactory.
Repeated trials in some of the most severe cases of Spermatorrhoea and Impotency, in both France and America, have proven the Civiale Remedies to be safe, speedy and most satisfactory in all their results, and we feel justly proud of having in our hands so excellent and efficient a means for the radical cure of so obstinate, serious and often dangerous a disease. We take pride in having saved many a young and promising life, in having often stayed the hand bent upon self-destruction, and in having many times cheated the grave or the insane asylum of its expected prey. Nor do we feel less proud in having been able, in cases of not so serious, though often of a more embarrassing nature, to restore to full Sexual Power and Vigor middle-aged and older men whose desire had out-lived their power, or who, through early abuse, had become so weakened as to be totally Impotent, incapable of perpetuating their species—ashamed, discomfited, and disappointed at being somewhat less than a man.
As every case cured is the very best advertisement that we can have, it is hardly necessary for us to say that we endeavor to exercise the utmost care, skill and discretion in both diagnosing and treating these cases, and assiduity and scientific accuracy in preparing and compounding those remedies of which we are the fortunate possessors. Indeed, we do everything in our power to make success an absolute certainty.
A word in closing. Our STAFF OF CONSULTING PHYSICIANS is composed of men selected with great care for their special skill and attainments in this special branch of Medical Science. These gentlemen are handsomely remunerated for their services, and take a pride and interest in every case they treat.
Our physicians hold no pecuniary interest in the Agency, and hence prescribe for each case solely on its merits, having nothing to gain by selling less or more to any one under their care. They see and treat each case solely and wholly from a medical standpoint, and hence are never influenced by any pecuniary considerations whatsoever. However great the reputation of our physicians may be, we have, from the first organization of this institution, taken and held the ground that the best interest of the patient is best served by resolutely divorcing the Medical from the Business Department.
CIVIALE REMEDIAL AGENCY. Mailing and Shipping Departments, Business Offices, Consulting Rooms, 174 FULTON ST., NEW YORK. Opposite St. Paul's Church.
Office and Consulting Hours: { 8-12 A.M. { 1-6 P.M. Sundays: 9 A.M. to 12 A.M.
{Illustration: OFFICES, &c., CIVIALE REMEDIAL AGENCY.}
The Civiale Urethral Treatment
CHAPTER I.
SPERMATORRHOEA—IMPOTENCY—STERILITY.
The Baneful Effects and Consequences of Masturbation, Marriage Excesses, Venereal and Urinary Diseases on Boys and Men.
Could we read the heart of every man and boy we pass upon the street, how few—how very few—there are that would not reveal sickening pictures of lust, disease, melancholy and insanity. Charnel-houses of sin and lust—sloughs of despond and regret—excess of passion offset by lack of power—dread, despair, hopelessness, shame and desperation, making a picture of misery scarcely to be conceived by any but those unfortunate beings who in the thoughtless, careless heyday of youth, or the reckless reliance on more mature vigor, have weakened, emasculated and enslaved themselves by indulgences and excesses that have borne fruit of misery, disease and desperation in after years.
How little the youth who, in his ignorance of the terrible consequences of his vice, steals away to the secrecy of his chamber or his bed, leaving his happy, healthy and playful companions, in order that he may let the hot waves of lust and passion run riot in his mind, and dry up every spring of healthy thought and action—how little does he think of the after-time of misery and exhaustion that he is bringing upon himself—how little does he think that the vile demon that he is raising up will, like the vampire, suck his very life-blood, steal away his strength and life and vivacity, besmirch and weaken his mind, take the strength from his muscles, the courage from his heart, sap the very foundation of his existence, unsex and unnerve him, render him feeble, wavering and imbecile, dog his footsteps to the very steps of the altar, to curse and blacken and disappoint those joys of parentage and marital right that should be his. The shadow deepens with him as life advances, and follows him, bringing shame and misery and despair at every step, until the poor victim, driven too far, sinks into an early grave by disease or suicide, or is lost to the world and to all joys and friends behind the doors of an insane asylum.
He died of no disease known to medical science. He simply faded away—weaker, more nerveless and hopeless day by day; he faded away until, almost before any one knew it, the grave yawned to receive him. Poor, miserable, hopeless wreck—poor suicide, for his own sin and crime were the real causes of his death.
How many such there are at the present day. We meet them on the street, in business and at church. Our insane asylums are full of them. We find their wives unfaithful or unhappy; and their offspring—when they are cursed with any—poor, miserable, weak fledgelings, with aged, wasted faces, water on the brain, with rickets and softening of the bones—idiots or imbeciles—dying early and scarcely regretted even by the parent whose progeny they are, for every wail of the little suffering voice pierced his heart and reminded him of his lustful sin, and passionate, inexcusable indulgence that caused all this misery.
"And the sins of the father shall be visited upon the children, even to the third and fourth generations."
Alas, how true! how indisputable! The imperative Laws of Nature once broken, the consequences are inevitable.
Of late years it has become the fashion amongst certain men to scoff at this terrible vice of secret indulgence, and to claim that its evil effects are overrated, are portrayed too vividly. Ask some poor unfortunate whose confidence you may succeed in gaining, and listen to the pitiful tale of lost health and vitality he will tell you. Mark well the wasted hand, the putty-like skin, the black-ringed, lack-lustre eyes, the heavy lip, the labored breath—read the consequences of his sin and crime in his shame-faced way, his shambling gait, his nerveless hands, his fluttering heart, his weakened muscles, and his tottering memory and mind.
Must he needs lie dead at our feet before these skeptics can be convinced? Is not such a state a living death? Must these men visit him in the cell of the asylum, watch him as a raving maniac, gaze upon him as a hopeless idiot or a driveling imbecile, before they will be convinced? Such proof is at hand. Not an asylum in any country but has its score of such; not an asylum record-book but chronicles the sad histories of thousands of these poor, lost creatures—male and female; not an asylum nurse or doctor but will sadly point out these creatures to you, bereft of every trace of reason, all sense of shame, still practicing the horrible vice that has driven every semblance of humanity from their faces and the very light of reason from their eyes.
True, every boy or man who practices this vice does not come to this end. But who shall discriminate? There are thousands such, and who shall say which it shall be, or at what moment it shall occur? Ah! happy, rosy-cheeked boy, so gay and thoughtless now, so free from misery, disease and care, beware! It may be your turn next. A little thoughtless indulgence, the imitation of friend or companion, though apparently harmless now, may blanch your rosy cheek, destroy your peace and happiness of mind, and make a life-long, hopeless, suffering invalid of you—may shut the door of all earthly enjoyment in your face, blast your hopes, disease or destroy your offspring, alienate you from friends and family, and cut off from all communion with your race, make you an object of shame and disgust to your fellow-men, sink you into an early grave or entomb you for life in the cold stony walls of a lunatic asylum.
The day will come, erstwhile, when you will curse the parents who reared you, the friends who surrounded you and the teachers and ministers who taught you, for not warning you of the terrible nature of this indulgence, so secretly common amongst boys and young men.
The day will come, when in the midst of your mental, moral and physical agony, with weakened mind and exhausted body, physicians will tell you that masturbation is practically harmless, that its consequences are exaggerated, and that your sufferings are mostly imaginary. Then will you pity their ignorance and bemoan the fact that to such men must sufferers in your terrible extremity apply without any feeling of being understood, appreciated or sympathized with, and, far less, relieved or cured.
Happy will you be then, if you can (with your vice and misery staring you in the face and threatening you with some or all of its dire consequences) direct your steps to those who not only can and will sympathize with you, but who are able to aid you with proper remedies and restoratives and set you safely on the way to health and happiness again. For there are proper aids and remedies; there are hope and happiness to be obtained if the affections growing out of this vice be skillfully taken in hand in time. None but the hopeless sufferers who have been lifted from the misery, shame and weakness of their self-inflicted suffering know how much this world owes to the high medical skill, exhaustive study, and persistent search for truth and proper remedies of those two great Frenchmen, Professors Claude Lallemand and Jean Civiale. The medical as well as civil honors conferred upon them by their country and their medical brethren, great as they were, could never half repay them for the good they rendered thoughtless youth and suffering manhood by their special discoveries. There can be no question but that the Civiale Urethral Crayons, named thus after this great specialist, and endorsed by the most eminent medical men of France (that country in which lust and passion are peculiarly prevalent), are the most far-reaching and reliable specifics for Generative, Sexual and Nervous diseases known.
CAUSES OF SPERMATORRHOEA AND IMPOTENCY. SELF-ABUSE NOT THE ONLY CAUSE.
Many years' experience in the treatment of these debilitating diseases has proven very surely that there are many causes besides Self-Abuse (Self-Pollution, Secret Vice or Masturbation) for Spermatorrhoea, Impotency and Debility or Lost Manhood. Self-Abuse is the most common cause, and we therefore give it the most prominence. The others we will name briefly in about the order of their frequency.
1. MARRIAGE EXCESSES.—A very common cause, more often producing Impotency (loss of Sexual Desire or Power) and Sterility (inability to beget offspring), than Spermatorrhoea (loss of vital fluid, daily and nightly losses, losses in the urine, nervous prostration, debility, insanity, paralysis, &c. For full description of symptoms, see pages 12-16). Sexual desire was given to mankind, like any other power or appetite—to be enjoyed in reasonable moderation and for the purpose of insuring a continuance of our species by the birth of offspring. Many men abuse this power—abuse it inordinately, shamefully—and suffer the consequences. This is especially true of the newly married, and men advanced in years, who push their failing powers too far. As a just retribution for the abuse of so important a function, the Almighty deprives some of desire, some of power, some of both.
2. ONANISM.—By many this is confused with Masturbation or Self-Abuse. While like it in some respects and in many of its consequences, it is still different. It is as hurtful to an adult as abuse is to a young person. God punished Onan for this sin, hence its name. Yet, despite this terrible example so plainly set forth in the Old Testament, probably one-half of the married men of the present day are pursuing it, and hence so many Impotent and Powerless persons, seeking vainly amongst the many cheap, quack remedies for something to re-invigorate and re-vitalize them.
This is a terrible vice, terrible in its consequences, and however hardy and robust the man, sooner or later his sexual powers must and will succumb to the strain. Many men write us, saying that they never masturbated, and yet are totally impotent and cannot understand why it is. And yet they have been thus injuring themselves for years!
Sexual power and desire were given us for one purpose—the perpetuation of our species, and whoso endeavors to avoid this, must suffer. Many married couples do not want more children, from care, poverty or other causes, and hence the extent to which this terrible practice is indulged. It must be from ignorance, for were it commonly known how injurious this practice is, but few would dare take the terrible risk.
And yet the resulting weakness can be speedily cured if properly treated. In no class of cases have the Civiale Remedies achieved greater success than in these.
3. ANYTHING DEBILITATING—such as Overwork, Confinement, Sedentary Occupations, Worry, Care, Excitement, &c., &c.—These are much more common causes of Sexual and Generative Diseases than is generally supposed, and usually very obstinate and difficult to treat, because the system is so run down that there is very little stamina or vitality to rely upon. Clerks, business men, lawyers, bankers, ministers and students are very subject to this form of impaired vital and sexual power. Theological students are very prone to it. Many do not have any idea as to what their real trouble is, and lose much valuable time in doctoring for Dyspepsia, Consumption, Neurasthenia and the like, when really their very life and vitality are oozing away from them in their urine or otherwise.
4. WOMEN'S (OR VENEREAL) DISEASES.—Gonorrhoea (clap), Gleet, Stricture, Injury to the Urine Canal from the rough use of sounds, bougies, catheters, &c., &c. Any one or all of these, by extending the inflammation backward to the seminal ducts and neck of the bladder, may cause either Spermatorrhoea or Impotency. Indeed, Stricture (often caused by Self-Abuse) is one of the most common causes of these complaints. It was here that Lallemand and Civiale found the key-note of the true treatment of these diseases.
5. VARICOCELE, or a wormy, swollen or twisted state of the veins in the bag, and of those that run down to the testicles, is a very common cause of both Spermatorrhoea, Impotency and Debility. (For full description of this very common and often unexpected disease, send for our illustrated pamphlet on the subject, or see Chapter XI, page 44 of this book.) No man or boy with Varicocele, no matter how it was produced, can be perfectly sound and strong in his Sexual Organs.
6. UNDEVELOPED, WASTED OR MISSHAPEN PARTS.—A failure to have perfectly developed organs sometimes dates from birth, but in most cases it is caused by self-abuse at a time when the person is growing. In any case, Seminal weakness and Wasted or Misshapen Parts go together as both cause and effect, and the one, when found, will usually very soon lead to the other. Twisting or Curving is one of the most positive signs of previous inflammation, stricture and twisting or distortion of the seminal ducts, and hence sterility or barrenness. In such especially are the remarkable effects of the Civiale Treatment the most noticeable. We can say with positiveness, and prove it by case after case, that by no other method can such rapid and perfect restoration of the organs to a natural and healthy state be obtained as by this. Some of the very worst and apparently most hopeless cases that we have had—cases that have gone from one physician to another without the slightest improvement—have yielded effectually to the Civiale Remedies. In some of them the persons thus afflicted would have been totally unfitted for marriage had they failed to find relief. Their children—healthy, happy and finely developed—speak volumes for what our treatment has done for them. (For Treatment refer to page 42 of this book.)
IMPOTENT OLD MEN— THE SEXUAL DECAY OF ADVANCING AGE.
We have thus far given briefly the most common causes of Seminal Disease. There are a few that we have not mentioned: Blows on the Head, Loins (Small of the Back), Testicles, &c.; Weakness caused by prolonged illness, fevers, &c.; Malaria, Consumption, &c.; the abuse of Tobacco, Opium, Alcohol and Chloral, &c., &c.; but these are less common and less important. There is one condition, however, that we have only referred to incidentally, and that is the failure of Sexual Power in men past middle age. No man (if he is reasonably careful and does not abuse himself) should find his powers decaying before he is seventy or eighty years of age. Mind, we do not say "no man does," but no man "should," provided he is reasonably careful.
But here comes the fact. Most men are not careful, and most men have abused themselves at some period. Many believe and stoutly maintain that they "never had emissions or seminal disease, and it didn't hurt them." But it did, and it is just now that they begin to feel it. It is true they escaped the more acute and direful effects, but it told on them in after years. There are many thousands to-day who are just now feeling the effects of early vices, now almost forgotten. They can be restored to natural power by proper treatment, but they rarely are, because but few of them believe that early self-abuse or later Onanism has anything to do with it. So they spend a fortune almost—and uselessly too—on Stimulants, Nervines, Tonic and the like, but still remain partly or wholly Impotent. Foolish men!
CHAPTER II.
THE VITAL FLUID
What it Is, What it Does, and How it is allowed to Drain Away, Weakening, Emasculating and Dementing the Vicious and the Careless. Diurnal (daily) Emissions. Nocturnal (nightly) Emissions. Impalpable Oozings. Losses in the Urine. Losses while at Stool. Mistaken Gleet.
There are thousands of weak, nerveless men, who do not know what ails them; thousands of invalids whose physicians are puzzled and perplexed by their symptoms, and cannot account for the rapid waste of strength, energy and vitality, much less check it; and thousands of others, on the street, in the pulpit, on the bench, in the counting room, whose troubles, illness and misery are due to losses of vital fluid. Some know it, many more do not. Some are being properly or improperly treated for it; many are being dosed and drugged for Malaria, Neurasthenia, Consumption, Overwork, Brain Troubles, Paralysis and many equally as foolish and irrational complaints. They sicken, die, destroy themselves in hopeless despair of ever getting well and strong again, verge into hopeless idiocy or go raving mad, simply because their trouble is not understood; because day by day and hour by hour there is draining from them in their urine, at stool and otherwise, that precious vital fluid that represents life, health and energy to them.
{Illustration: Fig. 1. A HUMAN TESTICLE. Perfectly Healthy. [From Gray's Anatomy.] Each lobule may be seen (carefully guarded from pressure or injury) in its cell, with a strong fibrous partition on each side. All these lobules empty into small ducts which converging form the Globus Major, Epididymis and Globus Minor, which finally end in the Vas Deferens, Cord, Duct, or Tube that conveys the fluid to the Seminal Vesicles at the back of the bladder. (See Figs. 5, 6.) As the veins of a Varicocele surround these delicate lobules as well as fine tubing, it can readily be seen how easily such pressure, weight and crowding may do very serious injury and make the flow of semen irregular, or shut it off altogether.}
{Illustration: Fig. 2. HUMAN SPERMATAZOA. [From Gray's Anatomy.] A. Healthy, well developed and active zoa-sperms from the Vital Fluid of a strong, robust man. B. Showing cells and bunches, in which form they are secreted or made by the testicles.}
And is it surprising that the continual losses do drain away strength and vitality? This fluid is the only one charged with life—actual life; capable of producing life—of creating offspring—of impregnating and developing into perfect being, with thinking and reasoning brain and mind, pulsating heart, expanding lungs, sentient nerves, motive muscle, and all that beautiful, minute and co-ordinate mechanism that forms a perfect human being—the only secretion in the body capable of propagating species—carrying life within life.
Surely this was not meant for waste. Surely the influence of its loss upon the system, especially of a boy or young man (growing and not fully developed), must be great, and it is. Many and many a young man thus wastes away before the eyes of his friends from no other cause. Many a one loses health and strength from this cause alone, yet does not know it. How much better if all this false modesty, social hypocrisy, and blundering medical dosing and drugging, without thorough examination and full understanding, were wholly done away with, and the young men, and old men too, were brought to understand two cardinal facts:
(a) The immense devitalizing effects of even small continued losses of vital fluid, and,
(b) The fact that many apparently strong and healthy, as well as weak and nerveless, men who find their sexual powers gradually or suddenly failing them, can, in nine cases out of ten, trace it directly to losses of vital fluid in the urine or otherwise, that have been going on—perhaps wholly unknown to them—for months or years past.
(See also chapter on "Hidden Spermatorrhoea")
ANALYSIS OF URINE.
At the first symptom of Sexual Decay or Nervous Exhaustion, the person thus affected should have his urine carefully and thoroughly analyzed by some competent person. In saying "competent person," we speak advisedly, for but few chemists and fewer physicians are competent to make such an examination and draw correct deductions from what is to be found there. Any person can, with the proper reagents, test his urine for the presence or absence of semen, but he cannot make the thorough, scientific, chemical and microscopical analysis that is sometimes needed in order to arrive at a full and perfect diagnosis and successful treatment.
{Illustration: Fig. 3. URINE OF A YOUNG MAN SUFFERING WITH SPERMATORRHOEA. 1. Epithelial Scales from the Prostate Gland. 2. Scales from the Kidney Tubes. 3, 4. Scales from the Kidney Tubes swollen and degenerated. 5. Spermatazoa, wasted, shriveled, imperfect and dead. (In this case the Varicocele had extended up the cord.)}
If losses of semen are taking place in the urine, it would be well to forward a sample of it at once, for a full and extended analysis, which will be made for the nominal fee of $2, merely to cover the cost of chemicals.
Our Chemical Laboratory is under the supervision of Mr. G. H. E. Du Bell, Ph.D., a thoroughly competent quantitative and qualitative analytical chemist, a graduate of the French and German Universities and also a licentiate in this country, who, with his able corps of assistants, makes all examinations and reports in full upon them to the Medical Chief of Staff, who in turn submits them with the histories of each to the full Consulting Board or Staff.
CHAPTER III.
THE FORMS, SYMPTOMS AND CONSEQUENCES Of Masturbation, Spermatorrhoea, Nervous Exhaustion and Spinal Irritability.
In no disease known to us are the symptoms precisely the same in every case. They vary with the constitutional peculiarities of the individual. Yet in nearly every case there are certain prominent or leading symptoms (signs) that are rarely absent at some stage of the disease. We give here the more noticeable ones at first laid down by Lallemand, the great French physician, who first gave us the name "Spermatorrhoea," who first wrote upon this disease, who was the first to discover the connection between the losses of semen and certain symptoms here given, and who, too, was the great originator of that treatment so successfully perfected by his successor, Prof. Civiale, and which is now the standard treatment, recognized and adopted in all the French hospitals.
OBJECTIVE SYMPTOMS DUE TO MASTURBATION.
First, as to the appearance and actions of the Masturbator—he who is constantly and recklessly drawing drafts of exhaustion and decay on the nervous energy and strength of his coming manhood, and which are sure to bankrupt the most robust health.
If there is a man to be pitied on this earth, it is he who is walking about from day to day conscious of being guilty of ever having practiced this vice. Mark the man who is addicted to it in no matter how light a form; his face tells the story of his sin. See his haggard looks, his deep, sunken eyes, which he throws only half-way into the countenance of his friend. Note the blue or black discolorations under the eye; the nervousness to get away from a crowd, and the extreme girlishness or backwardness when introduced into the company of ladies.
The victim of the most dangerous of all vices soon reaches a state which, if not promptly relieved by the proper remedy, will end in life-long misery or an early death.
Objectively considered, the masturbator is recognized by a marked facial expression, by a characteristic mannerism, and by a peculiar mental state.
THE FACE.—The facial expression consists of a pale and sallow tint of the skin, unusual development of acne,—red pimples,— especially on the forehead; a dark circle around the orbits; dilated and sluggish pupils; lustreless eyes, and an oblique line extending from the inner angle of the lids transversely across the cheek to the lower margin of the malar (cheek) bone. The face has a haggard, troubled, furtive expression.
THE MANNER.—The manner of the masturbator is peculiar. He is listless, shy, retiring, and easily confused; he avoids society, preferring solitude; there is a want of steadiness and decision in his locomotion; his inferior extremities seem deficient in power, and all his movements betray a mind ill at ease.
THE MIND.—His mental operations are confused; his speech is embarrassed, awkward, and without directness; his memory is defective, and he is absent-minded and given to reverie. If the habit has long existed, and been excessively frequent in repetition, epilepsy may be produced; or serious mental disorder, as delusional insanity, dementia, etc., may occur.
THE SEXUAL ORGANS.—The state of the genital organs varies with the length of time the habit has been indulged. In some young subjects, there will be observed an extraordinary development of the organ, owing to premature excitement; but the disproportion is not maintained. Prof. Barthalow says: "With the progress of the habit the organ becomes small and relaxed, the erections feeble, the corpora cavernosa either waste away or their vessels lose their tonicity, whereby an apparent shrinkage takes place; the corpus spongiosum and the glands also shrink, so that the prepuce (fore-skin) appears unnaturally elongated. The testes may increase in size, become tender and irritable, or they may waste away to nothing but little strings; the latter is the more usual result.
"Pains in the small of the back, a sense of weight and aching in the loins, around the anus, and in the testes is experienced. The appetite is capricious, the digestion feeble, and the bowels are constipated, or constipation alternates with diarrhoea.
"The+ mind+ is deficient in power of attention, the imagination is constantly pervaded with vague erotic dreams, the moral sense is blunted, and the perceptions are dull and confused. Pains in the head, in the occipital and frontal regions (front and back of head), and a sense of fullness, and in serious cases alarming Vertigo (dizziness and falling); pains in the course of the principal nerves, and an extreme nervous susceptibility, are experienced. The organic nervous system manifests a functional disturbance in harmony with the disorder of the nervous system of animal life. Gastralgia and abdominal pain (pain in stomach and bowels) and uneasiness are in some cases very distressing symptoms.
"The distinctiveness of the foregoing symptoms will be determined by the extent and duration of the habit, and by the constitutional peculiarities of the patient. The more highly developed the nervous system, and the more it preponderates in activity over the muscular and digestive systems, the more serious the effects.
EFFECTS OF MASTURBATION ON THE MIND
"The most serious mental effects are produced by masturbation. This vice, commenced at or before the period of puberty, interferes seriously with the development of the brain and the evolution of the mental faculties.
"That spermatorrhoea will produce in one class of cases mental disorders, and not in another, indicates either that some predisposition to these disorders existed, or that the habit of self-pollution was merely an expression of mental alienation (insanity). The images which pervade the minds of boys possessed of the highly-developed nervous organization of masturbators are those of delusional insanity.
"There is, however, a cerebral (brain) phase of spermatorrhoea which may be separated from the two preceding classes. It is characterized by indistinctness of vision, dilatation of the pupil, amblyopia (near-sightedness), diplopia (double sight); diminution in the sensitiveness of the auditory apparatus (deafness); feebleness of voice; mental preoccupation, hebetude of mind, confusion of ideas, and a profound melancholy.
"The termination of such cases is in suicidal monomania, delusional insanity, etc. In that variety of the cerebral form in which a decided predisposition must be admitted to exist, to disorder of the intellectual faculties, there are found various forms of mental alienation. The chronic form is the most common, which corresponds to the melancholia of Pinel, or the lypemania of Esquirol, terminating in dementia. Several of the most characteristic cases which have happened under my observation correspond to the delusional insanity of Bucknill and Tuke."—[Manual of Psychological Medicine, Phila. ed., p. 103.]
INSANITY FROM SPERMATORRHOEA.
Many writers are disposed to underrate the importance of this tendency in spermatorrhoea. The statistics of any of our large insane asylums will illustrate the influence of masturbation in the production of insanity. Mr. Holmes Coote, in a discussion which followed Dr. Drysdale's paper on the "Medical Aspects of Prostitution," read before the Harveian Society of London, remarked that "he still entertained the opinion that there were no worse evils appertaining to human weakness than this. He had opportunities of witnessing the fact that among the young there was no cause of insanity more common than indulging in habits which he would not further particularize, but which were known to result in the most complete bodily and mental prostration."—[British Medical Journal, Feb. 17, 1866.]
Dr. John P. Gray, the distinguished Superintendent of the State Asylum at Utica, New York (Twenty-Fourth Annual Report, 1867), thus speaks of the influence of masturbation in the production of insanity: "The records of this institution show five hundred and twenty-one cases admitted directly attributable to this vice, and I am well convinced that the number is greatly understated."
We might add confirmatory testimony from a variety of sources, but the foregoing is sufficient for our purpose.
IMPORTANT.—Peculiar, numb, dead, aching, or tingling sensations in the hands, arms, legs or feet, and headache and specks before the eyes on stooping or reading; also sleeplessness, too sound sleep, and apprehensive dreams should be watched for, and the moment they appear danger from Paralysis or Insanity is to be apprehended and proper treatment at once taken. These symptoms may mean nothing in some cases, but they are terrible harbingers of ill in others.
A CASE OF INSANITY FROM SELF-ABUSE.—(Fig. 4.)
The following case, taken verbatim from the Care Book of the Insane Asylum at Blackwell's Island, will serve as a type of the many to be found in every hospital for the insane in this country. (And a terrible and noteworthy fact is, that according to the recent annual reports of these institutions, both in this country and Europe, insanity, idiocy and dementia from Seminal Losses and Sexual Abuses, are increasing from year to year.)
{Illustration: Fig. 4. Appearance of James McC——, a few weeks before he died. (See below.)}
"James McC——, admitted to the Asylum ten days ago. Single, clerk, born in N.Y. State. Was found on 6th Avenue surrounded by a crowd who were attracted by his violent and frantic efforts to destroy everything within his reach. On being arrested and taken to the 29th Precinct Station House, he was recognized by the Sergeant on duty at the desk as having been arrested twice before within a week—once for violent shouting and disturbance in the street, and once for an attempt at suicide by drowning. As he had attempted his life by hanging the last time he was locked up, and had afterwards seriously injured himself by trying to dash his brains out, he was adjudged insane, and a watch set on him all night. In the morning, when taken before the magistrate, he was violent and abusive, using the most frightfully obscene and profane language. There he was held for examination and sent to Bellevue in a "straight-jacket," which was found to be necessary in order to control him. From the padded cell there he was sent here.
"Upon examination he is found to be suffering from acute mania, alternating with periods of intense melancholia in which he invariably attempts to take his own life. His language when excited exceeds in obscenity anything ever heard. During the intervals of quiet he is constantly practicing the vile habit which has undoubtedly been the cause of his insanity. He has lost all sense of shame and continues to practice before visitors, attendants and physicians. He makes no effort to go to the water-closet, and his clothes and cell are in a filthy and disgusting state. Ever since admission he has refused all food, and it has been necessary to feed him with a stomach pump. He is losing flesh and strength every day, and is fast wasting away.
"From his relatives who have twice called to see him it was learned that his mental trouble came on very suddenly, although his memory and faculties have been failing for some time past. They say that he complained of sleeplessness, numbness and tingling sensations in the arms and legs, headache, and a peculiar itching of the skin, for months before any distinct symptoms of insanity appeared. They attribute it all to self-abuse, which he has admitted practicing from an early age.
"AUGUST 28th.—Is now paralyzed in both lower limbs. Still violent.
"SEPT. 3d.—Died this morning about 1 A.M. Is so emaciated that he is little more than skin and bones. Rigor mortis entirely absent. Shortly after death the skin of the whole body changed to a dark chocolate hue."
Truth is often stranger than fiction. What end more terrible than this!
CHAPTER IV.
SPERMATORRHOEA, OR LOST MANHOOD.
SYMPTOMS.
Spermatorrhoea may be conveniently divided into three stages.
FIRST STAGE—IRRITATION, CONGESTION.
In this stage the sexual organs of the brain and nervous system first begin to feel the strain of early abuse, overwork, confinement, sexual excess, or whatever the cause may be in this particular case.
The Prostate Gland (j, b, Fig. 5) the Seminal Vesicles (l, Fig. 5), Cowper's Duct (n, Fig. 5), the Testicles and Spermatic Cord (h, f, k, Fig. 5), indeed all the sexual apparatus, including the bulbous sympathetic nerves lying just inside the spine, from the small of the back down to the end of the organ, become filled with dark, thick and stagnated blood. The Prostate Gland swells and becomes enlarged, the Seminal Vesicles become weak, baggy and filled with a thin, glairy fluid that oozes out into the urine and urine canal on any little strain, exertion or excitement; especially when, after being in the presence of the opposite sex, weak, feeble erections follow. The testicles become flabby and stringy and no longer make strong, healthy, fecund vital fluid. The constant calls upon them has exhausted them as also the nerves that gave them life, strength and vitality. A heavy dragging weight is often felt in the groin, especially after walking or long standing. There is a feeling of weakness and exhaustion in the parts. Often strange sensations shoot through the parts, and they are cold and clammy at one time, while weak and sweating profusely at another.
{Illustration: Fig. 5. MALE ORGANS OF GENERATION. [From Acton's Celebrated Work on "The Reproductive Organs."] Side view of Body cut in half lengthways showing the course taken by the vital fluid from the Testicle (where it is made) to the Seminal Vesicles (where it is stored). The penis is shown cut off at dotted line g.
As shown here the vital fluid secreted in the minute tubules of the healthy testicle is gathered into the vas deferens or conveying tube k, which passing through the groin dips behind the bladder a and empties into the Seminal Vesicles or Storehouse b. From here it is thrown forcibly into the urethra (urine canal) e, when needed, and expelled anteriorly by the ejaculatory muscles of the urethra. To reach the urethra the Seminal Duct m passes directly through the body of the Prostate Gland j-b. Upon the outside of the testicle, the tube or duct is found twisted and forming a slight bunch, known as the epididymis, f, g, h.
It is here that the pressure of a Varicocele is first felt—here that it succeeds in cutting off the free upward flow of vital fluid by pressure on these soft branches of the duct, causing emissions by varying and irregular pressure and Impotence by constant pressure. When the Varicocele becomes very large, it then destroys the delicate tubing or the testicle itself.}
The general nervous system also feels the strain and drain. Memory and application, good judgment, decision of character, and clear-sightedness are not what they were. Headaches are not uncommon. Bashfulness and trepidation, especially in the presence of females, is the rule. The person feels clumsy, embarrassed and ill at ease. Sleep is sometimes poor, there are occasionally terrible dreams, sometimes lascivious ones accompanied by emissions, drowsiness and a tired, languid feeling in the morning, and a disinclination to rise and go to work are certain signs of impending nervous exhaustion. The eyes are dull and heavy, often black-ringed underneath. The pupils of the eyes are unequal—often very large—sometimes one small and one large. The hands tremble and perspire easily. The person is absent-minded, melancholy, prone to brood, and fears the jests or ridicule of his companions. The skin, especially of the face, sometimes becomes coarse and red, sometimes is pale and pasty and covered with blotches or pimples. There is sometimes spasm at the neck of the bladder, causing some delay before the urine will flow freely. Often it is passed in a forked or twisted stream, plainly showing the presence of either organic or spasmodic stricture. Twitching of the muscles of the eyelid, face and limbs is often present, accompanied sometimes by creeping sensations up the spine, flushings of the face, chills (slight), dizziness and black spots before the eyes on stooping over and occasionally by neuralgic pains in the head and about the heart. If unchecked, or if the baneful habit is still persisted in, the symptoms of the First Stage merge rapidly into those of the
SECOND STAGE.—CONGESTION AND INFLAMMATION.
Here all the symptoms of the foregoing stage are usually present, only somewhat more intensified. The congestion and irritation are more decided, the weakness more marked, the nervous prostration more decided. Any, many, or all of the following symptoms may be present, according to the degree of severity or the rapidity of the disease:
Emissions (day or night), Oozing of a glairy fluid under excitement and imaginings, presence of the opposite sex, etc., Partial and Imperfect Erections, Desire to Masturbate, Formation of Evil Pictures in the Mind, Flushing and Chilliness, Stupidity and Tendency to Doze or Sleep, Mental Hebetude, Failing Memory, Lack of Power of Application, Energy or Concentration, Restlessness, Pain and Smarting in passing urine, Wetting the Bed, Pain in the Kidneys, Headache, Pimples on the face or body, Itching or peculiar sensations about the scrotum (bag), thighs, legs, anus, etc., Wasting of the Organs, Stringiness and Softening of the Testicles, Dyspepsia, Sluggish Bowels, Torpid Liver, Failing Sight, Pains in the Head (front, top and back), Chest, Limbs, etc., Sensation of the Bowels Falling Out, Dizziness on stooping over or kneeling, Specks before the Eyes, Erotic Dreams, Melancholy (developing sometimes into Insanity), Numbness of arms, hands, feet or legs (precursors of Paralysis), Twitchings of the muscles of the eyelids and elsewhere (sometimes ending in Epileptic Fits or St. Vitus' Dance), Timidity, Diabetes and Deposits in the Urine, Troubled Breathing, Indecision, Loss of Will Power, Bashfulness, Burning of the face, Coldness and Clamminess of the feet and hands, also of the Scrotum (or bag), Palpitation of the heart, Early Loss of fluid during connection, Feelings of Gloom, Despondency, Hopelessness of a cure, or fear of impending danger or misfortune, Tenderness of the Scalp and Spine, Dryness and Itching of the skin, Sudden Sweating, Sudden Nervous Trembling, Noises and Reports in the ears and brain, Weight on the brain, Weak and Flabby Muscles, easily tired after slight exertion, Desire to Sleep late in the mornings and failure to be rested by sleep, Weakness and Torpor the day after a nightly emission has occurred, the Oozing of thick white fluid from the urethra when constipated or straining at stool, Varicocele, etc., etc.
WEAKNESS AND WASTING OF THE ORGANS.
As a rule the organs waste away rapidly or become curved, twisted, or misshapen. Oftentimes the testicles dwindle away to almost nothing. Settled gloom and melancholy pervade the mind, and hallucinations, morbid fear, unnatural lust, groundless jealousy and a morbid desire for solitude show themselves. Undoubtedly the list of promotive causes is considerably augmented by maltreatment and the employment of injudicious remedies. We should therefore suggest to all prudent persons the wisdom and importance of consulting competent authority only. Self-enervation in the first instance brings about that irritability which evinces itself in nocturnal discharges, afterwards in inappreciable but exhaustive diurnal discharges, and subsequently in complete debility of the whole generative system. This seminal fluid, such indeed as it is—weak, effete and devoid of all generative power—is undoubtedly the fluid which the organs suffer to escape; and to prevent further its flow, as well as to give a healthy tone to the secretory and retentive vessels ought to form our first care.
COUGH, CONSUMPTION AND GENERAL DEBILITY AND PROSTRATION.
It is a curious pathological fact, that during the progress of Spermatorrhoea, difficulty of breathing, cough, and tightness of the chest, arising in many constitutions from the seminal disorder, have sometimes been actually mistaken for pulmonary consumption. The cough is often distressing, occasionally attended by an expectoration of an offensive kind. There is no doubt that many have been maltreated for consumption when Spermatorrhoea was the real malady. That the latter leads to the former is certain enough, but the stages and connections of the respective diseases have been grossly misunderstood by practitioners who have not had sufficient personal acquaintance with the indications of Spermatorrhoea.
Remember that these continued seminal discharges of an involuntary character disorder every function of the animal economy, and it may be added that while Spermatorrhoea produces so many ruinous effects peculiar to itself, it aggravates and excites any other disease which may co-exist with it.
The features become pale, emaciated and haggard. The eyes are dead, sunken and lustreless, and in many cases hold in their depths a look of wild, unsettled fear that denotes rapidly approaching insanity. The bowels become sluggish, the appetite capricious, the muscles weak, the urine pale and with a heavy sediment of semen that drains away in it almost constantly. Emissions at night becoming more frequent and copious—sometimes bloody—although the fluid secreted by the wasted testicles is scarcely stronger than water. Sexual incapacity shows itself. Ejaculation is either too quick or else very long delayed. The skin becomes dry and sallow, the liver congested and sluggish. The heart beats irregularly, and any sudden sound, movement or fright sets it to beating violently. Shortness of breath is complained of. The brain becomes weaker and more sluggish day by day.
{Illustration: Fig. 6. DIAGRAMMATIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE TESTICLES, DUCTS, &c. Showing where the vital fluid is made and stored and how, and by what means it passes from the Testes (where it is made) to the Vesicles (where it is stored). The heavy black marks on either side of the urine channel, show the relative position of the ejaculatory muscles.}
He generally loses flesh, and feels uneasiness in his stomach which suffers from many of the symptoms accompanying dyspepsia. He is easily startled; the slamming of a door, the firing of a cracker, the falling of a book, a sudden touch, or even speaking to him unexpectedly, will cause him to start. Cowardice is a sure consequence of Self-Abuse and involuntary emissions. The appetite is irregular, often poor, sometimes voracious; the bowels are also variable in their action. The prostatic portion of the urethra is frequently irritable and sometimes is very much inflamed; oftentimes there is a thickening, a sponginess or puffiness of the parts immediately involving the ejaculatory ducts. The mucous membrane of the vesiculae seminales becomes inflamed and thickened. The testicles and the spermatic cord are oftentimes very tender and the seminal fluid is much thinner than natural. Such a Patient has generally dark spots under his eyes, a sharp nose, and often flushes of hectic color in his cheeks, particularly when in the presence of company, and there is more or less palpitation of the heart. In the second stage, as in the first, the pollutions are diurnal and nocturnal; the latter are copious and recur frequently. So insensible is the passage of semen that the patient is usually astonished and horrified on waking to find himself and bedclothes saturated with this fluid, which is easily absorbed by the clothes, and rapidly dries up, because it has become thin, watery and effete. In addition to this loss he is subject to one equally great on almost every occasion of urinating and defecating. This also takes place without any consciousness on his part, and his only knowledge of the fact is from the alarming weakness he experiences after passing water or going to stool. Distraction or absence of mind renders the judgment unfit for any extensive enterprise.
The sexual powers are greatly weakened; the overtaxed organs refuse to fulfill their legitimate task; their susceptibility and irritability are so great that the power of retention is lost, and the seminal fluid is discharged prematurely.
The generative organs are wasted and inactive, or so weakened as to secrete but a ropy, thin and glairy fluid, having few or none of the characteristics of Vital Fluid. Should the individual suffering this way—and either careless or unfortunate enough to go uncured—have offspring, they will assuredly be puny in body and weakly in mind, and will lead a miserable existence through the neglect and indiscretion of their parent.
THIRD STAGE.—STAGNATION AND WASTING.
This stage is an aggravation of the two preceding stages combined.
The emissions are accompanied and followed by a disagreeable and disgusting sensation of shame and misery. The mind is absorbed as much as can be by the one idea of its wretched situation, and the sufferer is haunted by the thought that his condition and its cause are known to the whole world, and that he is pitied or scorned by every person he meets. He is hypochondriacal, and fearful suggestions of self-destruction ever and anon present themselves.
The power of mental concentration is entirely gone and the memory is so feeble that the patient continually forgets what he begins to say. The dimness of vision is continual and so great as to be a material annoyance; the eyes are wandering or fixed upon the ground, seldom venturing to meet the gaze of another. The ringing in the ears, pains in the head and over the eyes are almost perpetual and frequently accompanied by partial deafness. The heart is the seat of pain, fluttering and throbbing with violent and long-continued palpitation, his hands shake, his limbs tremble, his knees are weak, so much so that at times it is almost impossible for him to walk erect. He experiences an insatiable desire for sleep, and yet upon retiring he lies awake for hours, tormented by his troubled reflections, and at last falls into an uneasy slumber, of short duration, disturbed by wretched dreams.
Hard, red pimples frequently appear on the face, forehead and body, scaly patches round the ears, eyes, nose and lips, a black or bluish semi-circle shows itself under the eyes, and there is a hollow mark from the corner of the eye in a slanting direction under the cheekbone to the angle of the mouth, which tells its tale. The skin is livid and clammy and the digestion is bad. The patient is tormented with flatulency, which he cannot always control and which he justly dreads, as it renders him an object of disgust to all in his presence. The bowels are generally constipated, obliging him to strain much at stool, thus aggravating the irritation of the prostate gland vesiculae seminales and increasing the seminal losses.
The bladder is irritable and will retain the urine but a short time; the ureters and kidneys are also inflamed and in post-mortem examinations are sometimes found to contain abscesses; they are the seat of much pain when pressure is made over the intervertebral spaces of the dorsal and lumbar vertebrae or backbone. The vesiculae seminales have been indurated and can be felt to be knotty and hard. The spinal marrow is very sensitive throughout its whole extent; the cerebellum is the seat of a dull and heavy pain, and there is a feeling of pressure upon the brain. Cerebral congestion now and then occurs. This stage of the disease is frequently accompanied by Bronchitis or a continued Catarrh, also by disease of the rectum and all the tissues near the generative organs.
It is hardly necessary to say that the functions of the nervous system are completely deranged, indeed, nervous twitchings of the eyelids, head and limbs are the consequences of Spermatorrhoea. He is finally either hurried to a premature grave by consumption, epilepsy or apoplexy; or insanity, taking the hopeless form of dementia, has removed him from his home to the madhouse.
It is safe to say that of all the cases of incurable insanity, a large majority are caused by Spermatorrhoea.
Many, owing to sheer neglect or to false notions of delicacy, delay seeking for proper medical relief until they are almost destroyed, and body and mind are nearly in ruins.
Pitiable the picture of one who has reached this stage of the disease. The organs are still congested but irritability has given away to torpor and sluggishness. Semen drains away by day and night without provocation, these constant losses dragging the person to the very brink of the grave, or standing him within that melancholy shade where suicide, insanity or idiocy almost certainly stares him in the face. The organs are wasted almost totally away. All strength, vitality, erectile and procreative power have left them, and the victim is at last totally impotent. Of no use to themselves, a curse to their freinds, a disgrace to society, they sink from sight into an early grave or are lost to the world behind asylum doors. It is a sad and terrible picture, but true—too true—to life.
The tendency of Nature in most disorders is towards cure, but here it is towards deterioration. There is no chance here of the evil "wearing itself out" save in madness and death on the one hand, and on the other by the salutary intervention of the most vigorous, cautious and enlightened treatment, a treatment pursued in the full light of the aids afforded by the great discoveries in physiological science for which the present age is happily distinguished. Fortunately for humanity, by the aid of Chemistry, as well as Medical Science, it has been reserved for us to present to the public the Civiale Remedies, which have proved themselves undeniable blessings to thousands, restoring with unerring power those suffering from this hitherto baffling complaint.
LESS SEVERE CASES.
There are cases where the effects of early abuse are neither so rapid nor so severe. In many instances the persons, to all outward appearances, are strong and robust. They only complain of certain sexual symptoms that trouble them. But let them beware. Appearances are very deceitful. Let a sudden fit of illness supervene and see how quickly these apparently healthy men succumb and are swept away by it. Then, too, in many of these cases, he who to-day may seem strong and healthy, with the exception of his sexual weakness, may suddenly develop most grave nervous symptoms, and in less than a month be beneath the sod or hopelessly insane. Such cases have occurred, and one particular instance even as we write presents itself to our mind. Poor fellow, he died a raving maniac the very night he was to have been married to one of the most charming young ladies in New Haven. And yet he thought he was perfectly healthy. He only learned his true condition too late for human aid.
HIDDEN SPERMATORRHOEA.
In many cases the seminal ducts have become so weak and relaxed that the fluid passes off involuntarily with the water and is not perceived; also when straining at stool and when you have an erection. To test its escape in the urine, pass off your water in a clear glass pint bottle and let it stand twenty-four hours in a warm place; then hold up the bottle between yourself and the light, and if you discover a sediment of a white, fleecy nature, resembling cotton, in the bottom, you are suffering from hidden spermatorrhoea, from which all your present ailments come. Where this fluid passes off with the urine, it is just as injurious to the system as full emissions, as it is a continual drain day after day, as well as taking that part of the vitality which goes to supply the brain and nerves. Many patients afflicted in this way will notice, shortly after urinating, a dull pain in the forehead, sometimes extending to the eye-balls, causing, as well, a feeling of general debility, as if they had no strength or will to do anything. If this weakness is allowed to go on unchecked, the mind will become diseased, the eye-sight will be impaired, and the vital forces consumed—thereby causing partial and complete impotency. Should you desire greater certainty in testing, either send on a sample of your urine, or test it with our powder.
The characteristic symptoms of partial impotency are: an imperfect erection, or, if the erection is sufficiently vigorous, it is of too short a duration, and the vital fluid is discharged prematurely.
The erector muscles become paralyzed, and the organ remains inactive at the call of the will.
The person thus afflicted is greatly embarrassed and mortified at his paralytic condition. That buoyancy of spirit is gone; the snap, vim and vigor that once held sway has departed—and why? Because that great motive power (amativeness) that gives the push and go-aheaditiveness is checked, or rather, ceases to act.
THE CURABILITY OF SPERMATORRHOEA AND IMPOTENCY.
Having before us the records of some three thousand cases, grave, simple and severe, that have come under our treatment in this country, as well as the printed copies of the French Hospital Reports, and Civiale's Works, in which he minutely reviews all phases of this complaint, illustrating them with cases from his own practice, we feel justified in assuring our readers that almost any case can be cured, provided thoroughness is the maxim of treatment.
The method of Profs. Jean Civiale and Lallemand, as now perfected and extended by us, and so justly named after Civiale, stands unrivaled in its success as well as its simplicity and reasonableness. To all such as suffer from this harassing complaint we commend, first, a careful reading of the history of this discovery and the eminent medical men and hospitals that endorse it; and, second, a fair trial of these remedies, no matter how hopeless, despondent and despairing you may be. (See page 55.)
Although the advertising and spreading, and the ringing to full perfection of this treatment is really due to us and our physicians, still we feel in duty bound to always keep in view the two great French surgeons who first discovered the method of intra-urethral medication.
CHAPTER V.
IMPOTENCY OR LOST POWER.
Scarcely a day passes that we do not have some patient inquiring "What is Impotence?"—"Are Impotence and Spermatorrhoea the same Disease?"
Impotency (from the Latin words im [not] and potens [to be able] means a condition of the Sexual Organs in which a man is not able to beget his species. It may be because he has lost his erectile power (and this is how it is most commonly understood), or because he has lost all desire, or lastly, because the vital fluid has become so weakened and degenerated as to have lost its procreative power.
Impotence is most common in men past middle age. It may come on as the second or third stage of Spermatorrhoea, or it may develop slowly or suddenly without any symptoms of Spermatorrhoea. It may be accompanied by various nervous and exhausting symptoms, or these may be wholly absent. If vital fluid is being lost, and the Impotence is due to the weakness thus caused, nervous exhaustion is sure to come sooner or later.
Impotence and Spermatorrhoea may exist together in the same person.
Many impotent men have no other bad symptoms than simply this failure of the sexual organs to respond when called upon. The trouble in these cases usually lies in the erectile muscles, which are weakened or paralysed, and in the nervous bulbs or ganglia, that are blunted or exhausted.
A perfectly healthy man should be able to beget his species until he is at least 80 years of age. Instances of such power at the age of 97 are on record. In these days of exhaustion, early decay, excesses and abuse, most men begin to lose their power at or before 40. This is not right, and can certainly be remedied by proper treatment.
IMPOTENCY, COMPLICATED WITH BLADDER OR PROSTATE DISEASE.
In such cases the Prostate Gland is usually congested, enlarged and irritated, and needs prompt and thorough treatment. (See page 26.) The tone of the nervous system is also lowered, even though it may not be apparent to the individual himself. Hence, some good, strong, special, general and sexual tonic, such as Civiale's Tonic Regulator (see page 30) is needed, as is shown by the rapid improvement that follows its use, especially when combined with effective measures for strengthening the erectile muscles, invigorating the Sexual Nerve Ganglia, and reducing the Prostatic congestion. Some of the most remarkable cases of the thorough cure of Impotence and restoration to full sexual vigor that appear in the 53d Volume of the French Hospital Reports, were in men past 60 years of age.
IMPOTENCY AND WASTING OF THE ORGANS.
In many of these cases of impotence (as well as of Spermatorrhoea) the organs were either small and puny from birth or had wasted away as the disease progressed—just as a paralyzed arm or leg will waste away from want of use and exercise. Such cases, as also those where there is twisting or curving of the organ, need thorough developmental treatment. Such organs can be readily developed under proper treatment, just as the breast or a limb may be developed and increased in size, strength and power by the use of the proper treatment. Those who have not kept pace with the advances of medical science abroad can scarcely realize how great her strides have been. To-day it is easy (especially in Sexual, Seminal and Urinary diseases) to do what ten years ago the majority of physicians deemed impossible, and to Lallemand and Civiale belong the highest meed of praise for their unremitting labors in bringing this branch of medical science to its present state of comparative perfection. As an illustration we can cite case after case that has been sent us by physicians in good standing as utterly beyond their skill, and we have returned their patients to them in a few months' time fully and perfectly restored to sexual strength and vigor as they, themselves, were obliged to admit.
IMPOTENCY AT ANY AGE IS CURABLE.
Do not despair then, reader, if you are thus afflicted and have made several trials and failed to find health and vigor. The Civiale Remedies, while not infallible, have certainly done wonders for many so-called "hopeless cases," and we doubt not that you, too, can be perfectly restored. Submit your conditions and symptoms to our Board of Consulting Physicians, and at least get their opinion upon it. Certain it is that these remedies, brought to light by the eminent French savant, Professor in the greatest medical college in France, and adopted and endorsed by all the large Parisian hospitals and most eminent French physicians, cannot possibly hurt you, and more than likely will cure you.
CHAPTER VI.
BLADDER, KIDNEY, PROSTATIC AND URINARY DISEASES.
Congestions, irritation and even inflammation of the Urinary Organs often occur in men, either alone or as a complication of Seminal Disease and Weakness. The Seminal Vesicles lie just behind the bladder, while the Seminal Ducts pass through the body of the Prostate Gland, and open into the urethra (or urine channel) upon its surface (see Fig. 5). Hence, any inflammation or congestion of this large gland that lies at the root of the organ and neck of the bladder, is almost certain to produce Seminal Weakness, Losses and Impotence.
It will be noticed that men past 50 years of age are often forced to rise in the night once or oftener to make water. This, and the delay that sometimes occurs before the stream will start, are usually due to enlarged Prostate Gland—a common condition in men past 50. Many and many a man at this age finds his sexual power declining and cannot understand it—Enlarged Prostate Gland.
As the gland enlarges and becomes stiff and its tissues hardened and brawny, it presses upon and deprives the Sexual Nerves of power and sometimes paralyzes them, causing total Impotency. How useless—worse than useless, even hurtful—are the usual remedies. The Prostate Gland must be softened, cooled and robbed of its inflammation before Anti-Impotency remedies can be of the slightest service. And here it is where the great success of the Civiale Crayons is best shown: The Prostatic Crayons melt, run down upon, soothe, quiet and allay the inflammatory and hardened gland, while the Impotence Crayons are re-toning, strengthening and re-vitalizing the Sexual Nerves, and strengthening the erectile and ejaculatory muscles. Perfect cure and perfect restoration are possible if proper means are properly applied.
Spermatorrhoea likewise is both caused and complicated by Prostatic and Urinary inflammation. The Sexual Nerves are involved and weakened in the same manner as in Impotency, while, in addition the hardened substance of the Prostate Gland keeps the mouths of the Seminal Ducts open, and the vital fluid runs away into the urethra to be swept out with the urine, without let or hindrance. Soon this loss tells, not only upon the brain and nerves and general health, but upon the testicles where this fluid is made. So much is wasted that these two glands, work as they may, cannot supply a sufficiency of good, healthy fluid, and meet the difficulty by making a thin, watery infertile fluid that would flow away even if the mouths of the ducts were healthy. They do this at the cost of a terrible strain upon the whole system—they strain and injure themselves and grow weak and flabby and finally wasted—often rupture small vessels in their substance, thus yielding bloody or black seminal fluid.
The CAUSES of Prostatitis or Prostatorrhoea are many and diverse. The most prominent are:
Gonorrhoea or Gleet, running backward and settling in the gland or neck of the bladder;
Stricture, deep in the canal, causing congestion and inflammation;
Masturbation, by keeping the gland excited, congested and irritated, often causes it;
Exposure to cold and wet, especially sitting on a cold door-step or damp seat;
Blows and Injuries of any kind;
Strong Injections, and rough jabbing with steel sounds or rough bougies;
Eating Hot Condiments, or too free indulgence in alcoholic beverages.
VARIOUS COMPLICATIONS.
If the inflammation extends to the neck of the bladder, he has an attack of cystitis. If it goes down along the seminal ducts, it produces swelled testicle, clogged duct, chronic enlargement, cancer, cysts and hopeless wasting of the testicles. If it extends up the ureters, it causes Bright's Disease, abscess of the kidneys, or lumbar fistula. If it runs forward along the urine canal, it produces so-called gleet. If it settles in the prostate gland and becomes chronic, it may cause abscess of the gland, retention of the urine, and certainly either or both Spermatorrhoea or Impotency.
It may thus be seen how exceedingly dangerous a disease this Prostatitis is, and how very important it becomes to check it at the earliest possible moment.
SYMPTOMS.—We have space for but the most prominent and frequent ones: a dull, aching, dragging or throbbing pain between the legs, made worse by standing, walking, jolting, &c., and sometimes relieved by hard pressure, or lying down with one's feet higher than their head; pain, burning or smarting on passing urine; twisting of the stream; the oozing of a thin, glairy fluid; sticking together of the lips of the mouth of the urinal canal; soreness, aching or tenderness of one or both testicles; dull pain or ache in the small of the back or buttocks; dizziness, sudden fits of exhaustion, convulsions, coma and death. A microscopical examination of the urine will reveal the nature of the difficulty in a moment. There also will be found evidences of great nervous wear and tear, and seminal losses, more or less constant.
{Illustration: L'ECOLE DE MEDICINE, PARIS. The most celebrated Medical College in France, in which both Civiale and Lallemand were Professors.}
GLEET AND STRICTURE AS A CAUSE OF SPERMATORRHOEA AND IMPOTENCY.
These two diseases are probably less understood than almost any other equally common. It is safe to say that at least one man out of every ten has, has had, or will have one or both. Neglected gleet often causes stricture; neglected or improperly treated stricture often causes and keeps up a gleet.
Another set of statements, equally sweeping and based upon the best of medical evidence, may be made, i.e., more cases of gleet and stricture are caused by Self-Abuse (masturbation, Onanism), and sexual excesses than by gonorrhoea—formerly and ignorantly supposed to be about the only cause.
Furthermore, the main cause of both Spermatorrhoea and Impotence is Stricture (whether caused by self-abuse, gonorrhoea [clap], or any other excess). It was this very important point that Lallemand guessed at, and that Civiale definitely ascertained to be a fact—proved it by examinations of both living and dead subjects, and demonstrated it before the eyes of every member of the French Academy of Medicine, the most learned body of medical men in the world. Upon this discovery is based the now world-famed Urethral Crayon Treatment. It cures—absolutely, thoroughly and Permanently cures—because it is based on truth; because the proper remedies are placed upon the very seat and fountain-head of the disease; where quickly and thoroughly it stamps out the fire (inflammation, from the Latin in, and flamma, to burn, to be a-fire) and eradicates the cause, at the same time healing the abrasions, releasing and invigorating the nerves, cleansing and unclogging the ducts, strengthening the erectile muscles—in a word restoring the whole Sexual Apparatus to its natural tone and strength; not harshly or violently, but gently, kindly, soothingly. Indeed it is a heavy debt of gratitude the sufferers from Sexual Disease and Weakness owe to Professor Jean Civiale—greatest of all French savants!!
Were any further proofs necessary, the following facts, the results of recent experimental investigations by such men as ACTON,{1} BLACK,{2} GROSS,{3} HAMMOND,{4} BARTHOLOW,{5} DUPUYTREN,{6} ECKHARD,{7} LOVEN,{8} GALTZ,{9} OLLIVIER,{10} TROUSSEAU,{11} ERB,{12} OTIS,{13} WADE,{14} SIR EVERARD HOME,{15} LIEGEOIS,{16} TERRILLON,{17} FLEISCHMANN,{18} BEARD,{19} GRUNFELD,{20} GUYON,{21} ROSENTHAL,{22} LANDON CARTER GRAY,{23} and many others, could be cited in its favor.
{Footnote 1: Diseases of the Reproductive Organs, Phila., 1876.}
{Footnote 2: Renal, Urinary and Reproductive Organs, Phila., 1872.}
{Footnote 3: Disorders of the Male Sexual Organs, Phila., 1883.}
{Footnote 4: Impotence in the Male, New York, 1833.}
{Footnote 5: Spermatorrhoea, Phila., 1880.}
{Footnote 6: Dictionaire des Sciences, tom. viii, Paris, 1856.}
{Footnote 7: Beltrage zur anat-uns Phys., Bd. iv. and Bd. vii.}
{Footnote 8: Arbeiten aus der Phys. Austatt, zu Leipsig, 1866.}
{Footnote 9: Pflueger's Archlv, Bd. viii.}
{Footnote 10: Traite des Maladies de la Moelle Epiniere.}
{Footnote 11: Chu. Med. de l'Hotel-Dieu de Paris.}
{Footnote 12: Ziemssen's Cycloped., Amer. Edit., 1876.}
{Footnote 13: Stricture of the Male Urethra.}
{Footnote 14: Stricture of the Urethra; its Complications and Effects.}
{Footnote 15: Practical Observations, &c., &c.}
{Footnote 16: Medical Circular and Gazette, 1869, page 381.}
{Footnote 17: Annal. de Dermatol, et Syphiligraph.}
{Footnote 18: Wiener Med. Presse, 1878.}
{Footnote 19: Medical Record, 1879, page 184.}
{Footnote 20: Endoskopische Befunde bei Erkrankungen des Samenhugels Wein, 1880.}
{Footnote 21: Bulletin Generales de Therapie, 1867, page 501.}
{Footnote 22: Wiener Klinik, May, 1880.}
{Footnote 23: Archives of Medicine, October, 1880, page 191.}
STRICTURE THE RESULT OF MASTURBATION, AND THE CAUSE OF WEAKNESS AND IMPOTENCE.
In brief it may be stated that Masturbation in early life, and sexual excesses at a later period, may, and do produce congestion, inflammation, spasm, ulceration, granulations, ulcers, and both spasmodic and organic strictures of the urethra; that Spermatorrhoea and Impotence are due to this condition, and that the only really rational treatment is that which directly medicates and heals these parts. This, Civiale's Soluble Urethral Crayons do, better and quicker than anything else. Prof. GROSS,{24} for instance, says: "Exclusive of these cases, my notes show that 13 out of every 100 cases of stricture are due to Onanism;" and OTIS{25} says: "9 per cent. of all cases are traceable to that practice." REEVES, HENRY SMITH, GOULET, PHYSIC and LEROY give masturbation as a cause of stricture. BLACK states a like case leading to sexual incapacity, as a result of the stricture. WADE says: "In several instances of the kind, where there had been no sexual intercourse, the strictures, which were at the bulb, proved more than usually refractory from the extreme morbid sensitiveness of the whole urethral canal."
Gross goes on to say, that in at least eight out of every ten cases of Spermatorrhoea or Impotence, stricture of the urethra is the cause of the trouble, whether the stricture is due to gonorrhoea, gleet, etc., or to masturbation or excesses.
{Footnote 24 Op cit., page 25.}
{Footnote 25: Op cit.}
THE CIVIALE PERFECTED AND COMBINED TREATMENT.
How senseless, then, to endeavor to cure such conditions with stomach medicines. Still, the CIVIALE method does not wholly discard them. They have their place and their purpose, and served it well. It was his practice in many cases to use Nervines and Tonics, as well as Digestives and Laxatives, by the stomach, and with excellent results, for in many of these cases the digestion was poor, the liver torpid, the bowels sluggish and constipated, and filled with wind, the appetite capricious and uneven. Crayons in the urethra could not wholly cure these symptoms, although they stopped the drain that originally caused them. Combined with the Tonic-Regulator, the results were prompt and satisfactory.
Many patients began to recuperate the moment the inflammation, stricture, ulceration and accompanying losses of vital fluid were stopped, and were soon in robust health again. In others, however, he found it best, at the same time that he was healing the diseased urethra, to clear and invigorate the debilitated nerves and weary minds, to tone up the stomach and bowels, set the liver gently working, start the kidneys (nearly always congested), and infuse new life, strength and vigorous impulses into the whole system by means of his Tonic-Regulator, which is a pleasant and most efficacious combination of tonics, laxatives (not purgatives), and deobstruents. Skin, kidneys, lungs, heart, mind, nerves, stomach, liver and bowels, were all set to working right. And, as a consequence, aided by the urethral remedies, the losses ceased, erectile power and sexual vigor returned, the step became buoyant and elastic, the mind clear, the memory retentive, the eyes clear and bright, the lips and cheeks ruddy with healthful color; the whole system, indeed, renovated, refreshed and re-invigorated.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DUTIES, RESPONSIBILITIES AND FAILURES IN AND OF MARRIED LIFE.
What more perfect or pleasing picture than that of happy married life. Yet how little of it we see! How the newspapers dish up to us in strong words the misery, despair, wretchedness, infidelity and deceit of the divorce court. How it stares at us from the desolate fireside of friend and acquaintance; is hinted at or suppressed by the records of the Coroner's office; leers at us from the sumptuous mansion of the affluent; lurks in the humble cottage of the mechanic. How sad the contrast between the home where nestle happiness, love, contentment, offspring; and the abode of suspicion, deceit, infidelity or barrenness.
And yet men and women are being married every day, every hour—ay, every minute. Men and women incompatible physically, mentally, morally—urged on by lust, cupidity, love; to escape unhappy homes; to hide sad sins—for a thousand reasons, some good, many bad—are constantly marrying.
A man selects a wife less carefully than he would a horse; a woman yields herself, her life, her happiness, blindly, unreasoningly, to a man of whom she knows nothing. A man better fitted for the hospital, the infirmary, or the insane asylum, enters the bonds of wedlock with never a thought of the consequences; with never a care as to whether he will wreck his own life and happiness or that of the innocent girl he is deceiving; with never a heed of the ill-starred, diseased, puny or idiotic progeny his act may bring into being, a burden to the community, a curse to himself and a constant reminder of the parent's foolhardiness—ay, even crime!
No man who is affected with any form of Sexual or Venereal Disease should for a single instant even think of marriage until every trace of his weakness or disease has disappeared. In these days of medical advance in this special field, there is no excuse for such action. There are few—very few—cases of Seminal Weakness and Impotency that cannot now be cured. Of course, here as elsewhere, there are traps and humbugs, quacks and charlatans, false theories and empty moralizing; but there is also truth and knowledge, hope and certainty for such as are sufficiently in earnest to search for them. Prof. Civiale, by his indomitable perseverance, thorough study and experiment, and final conclusions and discoveries, has placed the means of a perfect restoration to full mental, bodily and sexual vigor within the reach of all, and no man has any right now to enter either blindly or wilfully into so sacred and important a relationship as marriage, and to lower and stultify its ends by blighting the happiness of a fair young wife, exhausting his own vitality in the vain attempt to have offspring, or in having such as shall be a curse to him through life.
There are those (let it be hoped they are really honest in their ignorance) who look upon marriage as the only real cure for Seminal Weaknesses. Even if it were a fact that the marital relations did accomplish such a result (and they never do, as bear witness the thousands who are to-day weak, exhausted, ex-sanguinated, unhappy, nerveless, hopeless wrecks, who are cursing the ignorant pretenders who gave this false—this fatal advice); even if such a result was a certainty, what right has any man to besmirch and soil the purity of a happy and innocent maiden for such a purpose? By what law of humanity are woman's hopes and happiness to be hazarded on so fragile a basis, her bark of life to be launched into a pool of such sickening bestiality? Such marriages bear and are bearing deadly fruit before our eyes day by day, in infidelity, abandonment, suicide, insanity, crime and prostitution—in disease and misery, even to the third and fourth generation.
A SPECIAL SET OF PRE-MARITAL (Before Marriage) REMEDIES.
No more delicate or wonderful piece of mechanism, no more grandly conceived and wonderfully perfected bit of God's handicraft is to be found than the Male and Female Sexual Organs. It is a wonder to those who have made these parts (with their elastic vessels, cavernous sinuses, network of nervous ganglia and fibrillae, chain of lymphatics, periodical ovulation, timed pubescence, and perfected, co-ordinate functions) a study, that they stand abuse and excess so well; that the fierce blasts of lust and passion that sear and scorch them and well-nigh dry up their fountain springs of vitality and fecundity, do not wholly destroy or hopelessly disarrange their delicate tissues and functions.
The first few years of married life, even to a healthy man, are fraught with dangers he knows nothing of. How much more then is the sufferer from a present or even a former Seminal Weakness in danger.
No man, be he ever so healthy, ever so conscious of purity and freedom from abuse, should enter the marital state without preparing for the strain naturally to be expected. As the voice, skin, hair, manner and morals of the youth change at the period of puberty (when the sexual power is first developed—when he first becomes a man), so does the system, mental and moral, change when he enters the bonds of matrimony. If at puberty new diseases are prone to show themselves and old ones to be outgrown, so at marriage a like change must be at least expected, and he who blindly or thoughtlessly hazards a leap in the dark is foolish, or rather foolhardy.
A SPECIAL COURSE OF NERVE AND SEXUAL TONICS.
Especially for the use of young men who have endangered or injured their sexual power by abuse in early years, and for older men who have exhausted themselves by later excesses. Prof. Civiale was wont (very wisely, we know from actual experience) to prescribe, for a few months before marriage, a Special Tonic and Strengthening Marital Course of Remedies, having three distinct ends in view, viz.:
(a) The strengthening, toning up and fortifying of the general system, nerves and brain, against the unusual call soon to be made upon them;
(b) The strengthening, toning up and fortifying of the Sexual Nerves, Ducts, Ganglia, Vesicles and Testes, against the strain soon to be applied to them, and by this and the preceding means putting the individual in the very best and most favorable condition for the production of strong, healthy, robust and creditable offspring; and
(c) The steady and perfect eradication from the system, by every pore and viaduct, of all poisonous, contagious, venereal or other material that might in any way endanger the perfectly normal (healthy and strong) condition of parent or offspring above spoken of. Through early abuse, excesses, exposure, neglect, carelessness, imperfect sanitary conditions, wrong methods of living, immoral practices, etc., the blood and liver are liable, even though the skin be clear and the cheeks rosy, to harbor some poisonous humors that might be transmitted to the wife or offspring—poor innocents, too often made to suffer pitiably for the vices or thoughtlessness of the father.
Every man about to marry owes this cleansing, purification and strengthening of the system general and the system sexual, to his wife, his fellow men and to himself.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CIVIALE URETHRAL TREATMENT.
For the Radical and Lasting Cure of all Diseases of the Sexual and Urinary Organs. Its Mode of Operation, Application and Advantages.
The Civiale Treatment, by means of quickly melting medicated Crayons that are easily and painlessly inserted into the urethra (or urine channel), and thus melt and run down over the irritated, inflamed or strictured parts, the congested Prostate Gland, and into the orifices of the Seminal Ducts, is the most successful treatment ever brought forward for these diseases, and it has met with just appreciation, for it has performed radical cures in some of the most serious and distressing cases. Some of the advantages may be briefly summed up as follows:
1. It combines local and direct medication of the diseased parts of the urethra, seminal ducts and vesicles, as well as of the Generative Nerves, by means of Urethral Crayons, with judicious invigoration of the general Digestive, Nervous, Mental and Circulatory Systems, by means of Stomach Remedies, thus attacking the complaint from all sides.
2. The Civiale Urethral Crayons are easily introduced, melt rapidly, medicate the entire canal, never give the slightest pain, never stain the clothing, are rapid, pleasant and cleanly in their action, could be used by a child without danger of injury, are perfectly soft and flexible, and give uniform satisfaction.
3. They need be used but once, or, at the most, twice daily.
4. The good results of the treatment are apparent within the first five or ten days.
5. Their price is so reasonable as to place them within the reach of all.
6. They may be used to cure gleet, stricture and prostatitis, when complicating Spermatorrhoea or Impotence. |
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