The vice, commenced at puberty or before, interferes greatly with the development of the brain, and only a feeble intellect is possible as a product of such feeble brain-structure. The mental powers often yield, as it were, when the genital organs possess the power to copulate ad libitum. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Lunatics frequently possess such genital vigor, when their lunacy has been produced by masturbation and other sexual debauch.
Roberts Bartholow has, in his monograph, recorded a paragraph worthy of mention:
“It is to be remarked that the mental phenomena of spermatorrhœa are not always in proportion to seminal losses. In the cerebral form, in addition to those lesions of the sexual spinal system, of the digestive apparatus and of the circulation, described under the genital form, there are certain disorders of the mind. That spermatorrhœa will produce, in one class of cases, mental disorders, and not in another, indicates either that some predisposition to these disorders existed, or that the habit of self-pollution was merely an expression of mental alienation. The lascivious images which pervade the minds of boys, possessed of the highly developed nervous organization of masturbators, are those of delusional insanity. In one case the spermatorrhœa is a symptom of mental disorder; in the other, the spermatorrhœa is an exciting cause—the predisposition already existing.”
The general anæmia that so often occurs in spermatorrhœa, caused by impaired digestion and spermal losses, is secondarily the cause of the cerebral anæmia, and tertiarily of softening. The digestive powers, so much impaired by frequent draughts on the vegetative centers, must be a cause for a great disturbance in the nutritive supply of the brain. The vicarious expenditure of nerve-force upon the exaggerated secretory power of the testicles must be a source of great waste, as well as the actual loss of elements, necessary to the structures of a body losing annually by decay. The tendency of local spasm is of no little importance as a cause of local anæmias. Centric irritations, such as influence the vaso-motor centers, without a doubt, cause local spasms of the vasa vasorum, capillaries and supplying arterial trunks of organs; and the vessels of the brain are the most likely to be influenced in such a manner, and the tissues of the brain the most likely, of all tissues, to suffer from such a condition.
The brain-symptoms do not end with feeble intellection or insanity, but impairment of the special senses and motility is not unfrequently present, as a phenomenon evolved from structural changes in the brain. Asthenopia amblyopia, diplopia, dilatation of the pupil and hyperæsthesia alternated with anæsthesia of the visionary apparatus, aphonia, perversion of the sense of taste, with loss of smell and deafness, are rare yet occasional complications.
The usual catalogue of symptoms bears closely to one of two forms, the hyperæmic or anæmic, local or general, of the cerebral substance.
The profound impressions wrought upon the minds of these patients by popular sexual literature must greatly exaggerate the structural changes, but are not sufficient of themselves, as a rule, to produce anything but morbid emotions until after enfeeblement has first been organized.
The records of the State Asylum, at Utica, N. Y., show five hundred and twenty-one cases admitted directly attributable to this vice; and Dr. Jno. P. Gray, the able superintendent, thinks this greatly understated.
Sexual excesses, pollution, and other mismanagements of the sexual functions have received too little attention, and are too seldom mentioned in the etiology of nervous and brain lesions. Too little effort has been put forth to ascertain the proportion of mental diseases caused by the sexual and reproductive organs. A greater number of brain-lesions occurs, in which the sexual function has been a remote cause, than any author, as yet, has ventured to affirm. Statistics of any degree of accuracy are impossible to obtain; but supposition, imagination, and guess-work only can be found to assist in making up a statement of the most important of all causes of disease.
[Clinical Illustrations—Case.]—Mr. X. came from the South with his brother to consult a physician in St. Louis. I found the patient, who was aged 24 years, feeble and wan. He wore a thin, scraggy beard, about an inch long, over his chin and under his maxilla, but the side of his face contained only a little furze. When I entered the room it was not necessary to inquire which one of the young men had come to consult me, as his general aspect told me that he was a sick man. He was cadaverous in looks, staggering in gait, anæmic and haggard. He had been a masturbator, and practiced it as long as he could obtain erection, which had been until within a year; although I learned that for five years previous his erections had been only occasional and feeble. His semen was wasting nocturnally and his genitals flabby, cold and damp: his scrotum especially was relaxed and pendant. The spinal cord was very tender to the touch, giving great pain upon examination, over the lumbar, dorsal and cervical vertebræ. He complained of a sensation of constriction (girdle) around the body, painful digestion, constipation of the bowels, and talked incoherently. His mind wandered: he had no wishes to go home, or to stay, or to live, and became quite passive. He failed fast, and I soon lost sight of him, as he was placed in an insane asylum. All treatment failed to benefit him.