Notwithstanding the eminent authority, it must appear quite impossible for any of the above conditions to cause spermatorrhœa as a disease. The few seminal emissions that may occur from such causes are in isolated cases, and of short duration. Even when spermal losses have seemed to arise from such causes, I should think grave reasons present for the suspicion of self-pollution or sexual excess. The simple denial would not be reason to attribute so permanent a disease to such trivial causes.
It cannot be disputed with tangible evidence, that Lallemand’s causes may develop a morbid sexual instinct, by reflex excitation, and act as a predisposition by exciting sexual desire and self-pollution, and thereby spermatorrhœa; but the innate condition must be present also in every case.
While it is well known that various morbid anatomical changes are found in the genital organs, on careful dissection, yet scarce any can be said to act as a cause, but rather as a result of long debauch by pollution and venereal diseases; and as commonly, such changes have been found in the genito-urinary organs, when spermatorrhœa never had been suspected.
Roberts Bartholow, in opposition to the views of Lallemand as to causes, says:
“To place this question beyond controversy, I have lately made a most careful dissection of the sexual apparatus of a young man, dead of double pneumonia, who was known to have practiced masturbation in an extreme degree for many years. Besides a catarrhal condition of the mucous membrane of the seminal and prostatic ducts and of the _vesiculæ seminales_, there were literally no lesions of these organs. I therefore reject this position of Lallemand as untenable, and as leading to improper methods of treatment.”
I can but conclude the cause of spermatorrhœa with one definite remark: That the frequently repeated sexual orgasm, continued for a long time, causing to be evolved so rapidly the great amount of nerve-force which must each time be lost forever, must be the only direct cause of that obscure neurosis upon which spermatorrhœa invariably depends.
_Moral Effect._――There is a moral effect wrought upon the mind of every person suffering from an inflamed imagination. The constant dwelling of the mind upon the sexual organs, or the imagination of a future cohabitation, must stimulate the free flow of seminal fluid to the overflowing of the _vesiculæ seminales_. Old debauchés frequently feast upon the virgin countenances that pass street corners, and constantly stand in wait for an expected girl, to be secured by a procuress, that they may feast upon her ruin. The cultivation of such morbid imaginations is an effect, rather than a cause, of long-practiced sexual debauch, and grows out of a cultivated or congenital grossness of the sexual instinct.