A practical treatise on the causes, symptoms, and treatment of spermatorrhoea / by M. Lallemand ; translated and edited by Henry J. McDougall.

  • Claude François Lallemand
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the causes, symptoms, and treatment of spermatorrhoea / by M. Lallemand ; translated and edited by Henry J. McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    sense of weight, -which the patient always feels in that region. The following case shows that nitre may act in the same manner on the urethra. A merchant of Genes wishing to take a purgative, sent to a drug- gist for an ounce of sulphate of magnesia. By mistake an ounce of nitrate of potass was returned by the messenger and taken. Vio- lent inflammation of the urinary passages, accompanied with a dis- charge resembling blennorrhagia resulted, swelling took place in about the centre of the urethra, and when the acute stage of inflam- mation had passed off, a circumscribed induration, which obstructed the discharge of urine, remained. Twenty years afterwards the patient still suffered from this obstruction, for the formation of which there had been no other cause than the inflammation produced by the nitrate of potass. The patient had never had blennorrhagia, either before or after, and had never suffered any injury of the part. It appears then that the nitrate of potass acts as a stimulant of the whole urinary apparatus, and it is at least probable that it pro- duces the same effect on the spermatic organs. I am led to this opinion partly by analogy, but chiefly, because more than forty of the patients whom I have treated for involuntary seminal discharges had taken nitrate of potass in some form or other, and all, without exception, found themselves worse afterwards. Many of them also observed the same effects from preparations of squill, and, in fact, all other diuretics. Ergot of Rye. This singular production seems to act with as much energy on the genital organs of man as on the female uterus. In the districts where spurred rye is common, and the peasantry are not careful to separate the diseased grain from the healthy, the men show a consi- derable disposition to commit venereal excesses, and the women fre- quently abort. The population, generally, also present signs of premature decrepitude, which we can easily imagine may arise from involuntary seminal discharges brought on by the excesses they commit.1 Coffee. The effects of coffee on the cerebro-spinal system are well known; but sufficient attention has not been paid to its action on other organs. Taken in moderate quantities, coffee excites the bladder and kidneys, increases the secretion of urine, and renders its discharge more fre- quent. It acts in the same manner on the spermatic organs, augments 1 M. Robert, in the Annales de Th6rapeutique, relates a case in -which the ergot of rye is said to have cured spermatorrhoea, after cauterization and other means had failed. The medicine was given in pills in two grain doses, combined with one grain of camphor. One of these pills was taken twice a day. The details of the case, however, are by no means clearly given. [H. J. McD.]