_Case._――Chas. B., a rather gentlemanly fellow, consulted me for spermatorrhœa, with the following history: When he was a small boy, some twelve years of age, a servant girl was his room-mate, with other small children; his parents thinking him too small to interfere with the servant girl, and did not change his room until a year or more after she taught him the significance of his erect genital organ, by coaxing him to an attitude favorable to her own gratification. Thus she cultivated her new-found pleasure, as he grew up and developed. After his room was changed, he found no impediment to nightly visits to the servant’s bed. He was soon able to comply with all demands, and nightly they indulged in sexual congress to satiety, and grew up together. She, being much older than he and knowing all the probabilities, exercised her vigilance and precaution, and all went well until he was twenty-two years of age; when he found that, upon leaving home and undergoing a few weeks’ deprivation from sexual contact, an involuntary discharge of semen occurred two or three times per week, in his sleep, accompanied by a lascivious dream. The constant and profuse discharge of semen and prostatic fluid had passed from his glans penis, for which he had often sought advice in vain. These cases are not very uncommon, although many a young man has passed through similar experiences with unimpaired virile powers. I opine that, if a young man passes to the age of twenty without much sexual excitement, he will not be likely to suffer with any form of sexual weakness; but if he has the predisposition spoken of elsewhere, he will not be likely to pass to the age of eighteen without being fully aware of his sexual instinct, and the pleasure that may be derived from sexual indulgence or masturbation.
The great author, Lallemand, has given as causes a list of organic troubles, a great portion of which are, instead of causes, produced by the genital irritation and spermatorrhœa. He overlooks the general phenomena which point directly to neurine pathology. As causes, Lallemand gives, among various organic troubles, prolonged erections, excited by erotic ideas or lascivious publications; the use of diuretics, of ergot, of cantharides, etc.; the abuse of alcoholic drinks, coffee and tea; constipation; ascarides in the rectum; hemorrhoids, fissures of the anus; heating and irritation of the anal and perineal regions by habitual sitting, or prolonged horseback riding.