A practical treatise on impotence, sterility and allied disorders of the male sexual organs / by Samuel W. Gross.

  • Gross, Samuel W. (Samuel Weissell), 1837-1889.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on impotence, sterility and allied disorders of the male sexual organs / by Samuel W. Gross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    IMPOTENCE, STERILITY, AND ALLIED DISORDERS OF THE MALE SEXUAL ORGANS. CHAPTER I. IMPOTENCE. Sect. I. General Observations. Impotence, or inability to copulate or perform the sexual act, is one of the most common of the derangements of the generative functions, and is due either to deficiency or absence of erection, or to congenital or acquired abnormal conditions of the gfenital organs, which render intromission of the penis impracticable. [The statement sometimes made that men who are impotent are usually sterile is misleading, because although it is true that the power of procreating children is dependent upon that of having connection, still many a man who is impotent is perfectly capable of begetting children, and the term sterile would imply that the semen was no longer capable of procreation, inasmuch as it is deprived ol its spermatozoa.] For a clear comprehension of the pathology ot the most frequent forms of impotence, a knowledge ot the mechan- ism of normal erection and of the nervous centres which preside over it is essential. Erection consists in auomentation of the volume, in stiff- ness, and in rigidity of the penis, and is due to an increased