Before puberty, the effect of the vice upon the genital organs is to cause an unnatural development, in both sexes, of the sensitive portions. When this is marked, it is pretty conclusive evidence of the vice. In girls, the vagina often becomes unnaturally enlarged, and leucorrhoea is often present. After puberty, the organs usually diminish in size, and become unnaturally lax and shrunken.
All of these signs should be thoroughly mastered by those who have children under their care, and if not continually watching for them, which would be an unpleasant task, such should be on the alert to detect the signs at once when they appear, and then carefully seek for others until there is no longer any doubt about the case.
[RESULTS OF SECRET VICE.]
The physician rarely meets more forlorn objects than the victims of prolonged self-abuse. These unfortunate beings he meets every day of his life, and listens so often to the same story of shameful abuse and retributive suffering that he dreads to hear it repeated. In these cases, there is usually a horrid sameness—the same cause, the same inevitable results. In most cases, the patient need not utter a word, for the physician can read in his countenance his whole history, as can most other people at all conversant with the subject.
In order to secure the greatest completeness consistent with necessary brevity, we will describe the effects observed in males and those in females under separate heads, noticing the symptoms of each morbid condition in connection with its description.
We shall describe, first, the local effects, then the general effects, physical and mental.
[Local Effects.]—Excitement of the genital organs produces the most intense congestion. No other organs in the body are capable of such rapid and enormous engorgement. When the act is frequently repeated, this condition becomes permanent in some of the tissues, particularly in the mucous membrane lining the urethra. This same membrane continues into and lines throughout the bladder, kidneys, and all the urinary organs, together with the vesiculæ seminales, the ejaculatory ducts, the vasa deferentia, and the testes. In consequence of this continuity of tissue, any irritation affecting one part is liable to extend to another, or to all the rest. We mention this anatomical fact here as a help to the understanding of the different morbid conditions which will be noticed.
[Urethral Irritation].—The chronic congestion of the urethra after a time becomes chronic irritability. The tissue is unusually sensitive, this condition being often indicated by a slight smarting in urination. It often extends throughout the whole length of the urethra, and becomes so intense that the passage of a sound, which would occasion little if any sensation in a healthy organ, produces the most acute pain, as we have observed in numerous instances, even when the greatest care was used in the introduction of the instrument.