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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    chapter to Strictures brought on by Onanism, but he classified them as spasmodic. In thus recognizing spasm of the urethra as an effect of masturbation, he described the condition which is the forerunner of permanent stricture, since, as is well known, spasmodic contraction is a very common cause of organic coarctation, and is, indeed, not infrequently found in connection with it. [In my opinion spasmodic contraction is not a very com- mon cause of organic coarctation. The spasmodic contrac- tion simply comes on as the result of muscular irritability, due to an irritation somewhere along the canal, and that may exist for a long time without sufficient inflammation being present to produce the fibrous effusion necessary to cause an organic stricture. An organic stricture is, I admit, not unfrequently associated with a spasmodic contraction, which is detected before the bougie is eno-a^ed in the real stricture itself, and it is readily overcome by exercising a little time and patience in making the examination.] In addition to the foregoing lesions, masturbation may be followed by other local affections, which are due mainly to the extension of the morbid action from the inflamed prostatic urethra. Among the more common of these are irritability of the neck of the bladder, prostatorrhcea, noc- turnal seminal discharges, and spermorrhagia. It may also occasion spermatocystitis, funiculitis, epididymitis.1 asper- matism2 through obstruction of the epididymes or vasa deferentia, wasting of the testes,3 and, as will be pointed out in the next chapter, it is a fruitful source of azoospermism. While in persons with an inherited predisposition to ner- vous diseases, as insanity and epilepsy, there is no reason 1 See Case XV., p. 35. Lilgeois, Medical Times and Gazette, 1869, vol. ii. p. 381 ; and Terrillon, Annales de Dermatologie et de Syphiligraphie, ser. 2, t. i. p. 439. 8 Curling, Diseases of the Testes, 4th ed., p. 78; and Brodie, Lond. Med. and Plus. Journ., vol. hi. p. •