A very natural manner of applying Faradisation in impotence, as well as other forms of sexual neurosis, is to seat the patient upon a large wet sponge, to which the negative is connected, bringing the scrotum and perineum well in contact with the sponge, and stroking the spinal column well with the positive, also using a wet sponge. The operator will be governed by the patient’s sensibilities, as to time of sitting and strength of current. The current should not be painful or very unpleasant; and if twenty minutes produces any uneasy sensation, the next application should not be continued longer than ten minutes.
The galvanic current may be used in a similar manner.
Beard & Rockwell’s method of general Faradisation is a most excellent one for alternate applications.
A troublesome complication is often constipation of the bowels, which may be overcome by the judicious use of rhamnus purshiana. Not too much general bathing, but local bathing, as directed above, with stimulant friction, is always beneficial.
Turkish baths, so often ordered, must be avoided, as great general debility and languor often follow their use. No undue warmth can be made use of, either in dressing or bathing, as the neurosis, upon which all these unnatural phenomena depend, is aggravated.
The general treatment of neurosis, in impotency, differs very little from that in the neurosis of spermatorrhœa, as the conditions are very similar if not identical; only degrees of the same organic cerebro-spinal changes. The beginning is perhaps only a neurasthenia, but gradually increasing in intensity to spinal anæmia, or congestion, finally softening.
Any changes of the genitals must be treated according to principles mentioned under treatment of structural changes of the genitals.
Clinical Illustrations.—It must not be expected that all cases will be confined to one definite condition, or to one combination of phenomena that may be grouped together and named. No one will so fully comprehend this as the practical physician. Cases are constantly under the care of the medical man, suffering with conditions too numerous to mention, complicated with many strange lesions. Every case must necessarily be studied from its own merits, in and of itself, or success will not follow.
It is not uncommon to come in contact with spermatorrhœa and impotence, both together, also complicated with organic disease of testicles, prostate gland, and anus or rectum. At the same time the brain and spinal cord may be drawn upon by a variety of organic lesions. By this we shall see that a report of clinical cases will bear more upon the practical than the theoretical, as regards adapting doses to nosology.
Case.—J. S. consulted me in ’74. He was suffering from spermatorrhœa and partial impotence. He had tenderness over last lumbar vertebra and sacrum, anæsthesia of the genitals, dyspepsia, bowels constipated, and at times very languid; was brooding over his loss of power and involuntary discharges of semen, which were nocturnal, generally accompanied by lascivious dreams. The urethral sound revealed tenderness along the urethra and extreme soreness of the prostate gland. His semen was thin and spermatozoa scanty and imperfect. He was thin in flesh, and anæmic. His erections were imperfect, and he could not perform the act of coitus. He was a masturbator. I directed pills, formula No. 2, and continued until bowels became regular; also No. 1, which was continued one year without change, with cold local bathing and brisk friction over bowels, back, perineum and scrotum. His recovery has been very satisfactory.