When the hands and feet are inclined to become cold, the hypophosphites should be given.
As a tonic in these conditions, and especially when the patient is not often seen, formula No. 1 will act in a majority of cases very kindly.
Electricity must be resorted to for the permanent relief of nearly all cases. General Faradisation will be the most generally useful, used often and by short sittings.
The general bathing, resorted to in bath-houses, is often very injurious; as no selection of cases as to the peculiar necessities, and no adaptation, is made; but proper douching is a most excellent remedial measure, and must be conducted with special care and judgment, as regards the adaptation of kinds to each and every condition and temperament.
[CHAPTER IX.]
[Pseudo-Spermatorrhœa.]—A male, enjoying the best of health may, under certain influences, have an involuntary discharge of seminal or prostatic fluid; but as the latter will be treated in full below, I shall first consider accidental discharges of semen as a pseudo-spermatorrhœa. Impressions are wrought upon the nervous system, sometimes of a stimulant character—other times like a shock—that are followed by involuntary losses of semen. It is not uncommon for semen to be found in the clothing of criminals hanged by the neck; or for soldiers to ejaculate semen at the time of entering an expected battle. Involuntary discharges as often occur from the bowels under similar influences.
But mental shock is not essential to the production of such relaxation of sphincters. I have on numerous occasions produced an ejaculation of seminal fluid by the strong currents of electricity passed through the genitals, localized.
A cold bath has not been uncommonly the cause of such losses, in perfectly healthy subjects. I was once riding, in company with a friend, through the country on horseback. My friend had suffered some rheumatic pains, for which I gave him opium and quinine in large doses which, under the influence of the friction of the saddle, caused an ejaculation of semen without erection or erotic thoughts. He was a robust fellow, and knew nothing of sexual weakness of any kind.