Impotence.
Impotence, as mentioned above, is an inability to perform a normal sexual intercourse. The indispensable physical condition for a normal sexual intercourse is an erect position (erection of the penis) and a normal period of time before a seminal ejaculation takes place; hence Impotentia can be manifested either by partial or total power of erection, or premature ejaculation, or both. According to various causes leading to loss of erective power, three various kinds of Impotence should be considered—psychic, irritable, and paralytic.
Psychic impotence is a very peculiar condition strikingly illustrating a powerful influence of the mind over bodily functions. It usually attacks young men in perfect health who are of a worrying and brooding disposition, particularly so over sexual matters. They may have on their conscience the guilt of having indulged in masturbation years ago, or they may have had a gonorrheal infection some time before. As a result of this brooding over the sins of their youth, they work themselves into a suggestion that they have ruined their system and have lost their sexual power, and such is the power of self-suggestion that in spite of perfect health and the absence of any abnormal condition, all attempts at normal intercourse end in dismal failure, which in the case of newly-married people is naturally a very grave and distressing occurrence. Ordinarily these cases get well after a certain period of time under the influence and care of a physician without any local treatment, but under general tonic regime. The main danger of these cases is that this class of cases fall particularly easy prey to medical quack healers, who exploit the ignorant and terror-stricken victims to the limit of their ability to pay, by intensifying their fear and curing them from non-existing terrible diseases.