Shooting pains are often felt in the organ, due to this irritation. Pain is in some cases most felt at the root, in others, at the head. It often darts from one point to another. Just before and just after urination the pain is most severe.
[Stricture].—Long-continued irritation of the mucous membrane of the urethra produces, ultimately, inflammation and swelling of the same in some portion of its extent. This condition may become permanent, and then constitutes real stricture, a most serious disease. More often the swelling is but transient, being due to some unusual excess, and will subside. Sometimes, also, a temporary stricture is produced by spasmodic contraction of the muscular fibers surrounding the urethra, which is excited by the local irritation. This kind of stricture is often met in the treatment of spermatorrhoea.
[Enlarged Prostate.]—This painful affection is a frequent result of the chronic irritation in the urethra, which the gland surrounds, the morbid action being communicated to it by its proximity. A diseased action is set up which results in enlargement and hardening. It is felt as a hard body just anterior to the anus, and becomes by pressure the source of much additional mischief. Sometimes the disease progresses to dangerous ulceration. It is attended by heat, pressure, and pain between the anus and the root of the penis.
[Urinary Diseases.]—The same congestion and irritability extend to the bladder and thence to the kidneys, producing irritation and inflammation of those organs. Mucus is often formed in large quantities; sometimes much is retained in the bladder. Earthy matter is deposited, which becomes entangled in the mucus, and thus a concretion or stone is produced, occasioning much suffering, and perhaps death.
We saw, not long since, a case of this kind. The patient was nearly sixty years of age, and had practiced masturbation from childhood. In consequence of his vice, a chronic irritation of the urethra had been produced, which was followed by enlargement of the prostate, then by chronic irritation of the bladder and the formation of stone. His sufferings were most excruciating whenever he attempted to urinate, which was only accomplished with the greatest difficulty and suffering.
One of the unpleasant results of irritation of the lining membrane of the bladder is inability to retain the urine long, which requires frequent urination and often causes incontinence of urine.
[Priapism].—This same morbid sensitiveness may produce priapism, or continuous and painful erection, one of the most "terrible and humiliating conditions," as Dr. Acton says, to which the human body is subject. The horrid desperation of patients suffering under this condition is almost inconceivable. It is, fortunately, rare, in its most severe forms; but hundreds suffer from it to a most painful degree as one of the punishments of transgression of nature's laws; and a most terrible punishment it is.
[Piles], [Prolapsus of Rectum], etc.—As the result of the straining caused by stricture, piles, prolapsus of the rectum, and fissure of the anus are not infrequently induced, as the following case observed at Charity Hospital, New York, illustrates:—