Plain Facts for Old and Young

by John Harvey Kellogg

The first cause is usually chiefly located in the urethra, and especially at the mouths of the ejaculatory ducts. Distention of the seminal vesicles with a superabundance of seminal fluid also acts as a source of irritation. Constipation, worms, and piles have an irritative influence which is often very seriously felt.

Unchaste thoughts act detrimentally in a two-fold way. They first stimulate the activity of the testes, thus increasing the overloading of the seminal vesicles. Lascivious thoughts during wakefulness are the chief cause of lascivious dreams.

Emissions do not usually occur during the soundest sleep, but during that condition which may be characterized as dozing, which is most often indulged in early in the morning after the soundest sleep is passed. This fact has an important bearing upon treatment, as will be seen hereafter.

At first, the emissions are always accompanied by dreams, the patient usually awaking immediately afterward; but after a time they take place without dreams and without awaking him, and are unaccompanied by sensation. This denotes a greatly increased gravity of the complaint.

Certain circumstances greatly increase the frequency of the emissions, and thus hasten the injury which they are certain to accomplish if not checked; as, neglect to relieve the bladder and bowels at night, late suppers, stimulating food and drinks, and anything that will excite the genital organs. Of all causes, amorous or erotic thoughts are the most powerful. Tea and coffee, spices and other condiments, and animal food have a special tendency in this direction. Certain positions in bed also serve as exciting or predisposing causes; as sleeping upon the back or abdomen. Feather beds and pillows and too warm covering in bed are also injurious for the same reason.

In frequency, emissions will vary in different persons from an occasional one at long and irregular intervals to two or three a week, or several—as many as four in one case we have met—in a single night.

The immediate effect of an emission will depend somewhat upon the frequency of occurrence and the condition of the individual. If very infrequent, and occurring in a comparatively robust person, after the seminal vesicles have become distended with seminal fluid, the immediate effect of an emission may be a sensation of temporary relief. This circumstance has led certain persons to suppose that emissions are natural and beneficial. This point will receive attention shortly.

If the emissions are more frequent, or if they occur in a person of a naturally feeble constitution, the immediate effect is lassitude, languor, indisposition and often inability to perform severe mental or physical labor, melancholy, amounting often to despair and even leading to suicide, and an exaggeration of local irritation, and of all the morbid conditions to be noticed under the head of "General Effects." Headache, indigestion, weakness of the back and knees, disturbed circulation, dimness of vision, and loss of appetite, are only a few of these.

[Are Occasional Emissions Necessary or Harmless?]—That an individual may suffer for years an involuntary seminal loss as frequently as once a month without apparently suffering very great injury, seems to be a settled fact with physicians of extensive experience, and is well confirmed by observation; yet there are those who suffer severely from losses no more frequent than this. But when seminal losses occur more frequently than once a month, they will certainly ultimate in great injury, even though immediate ill effects are not noticed, as in exceptional cases they may not be. If argument is necessary to sustain this position, as it hardly seems to be, we would refer to the fact that seminal losses do not occur in those who are, and always have been, continent both mentally and physically, when such rare individuals can be found. They occur the most rarely in those who the most nearly approach the standard of perfect chastity; so that whenever they occur, they may be taken as evidence of some form of sexual excess. This fact clearly shows that losses of this kind are not natural.

[Emission not Necessary to Health.]—If it be argued that an occasional emission is necessary to relieve the overloaded seminal vesicles, we reply, the same argument has been used as an apology for unchastity; but it is equally worthless in both instances. It might be as well argued that vomiting is a necessary physiological and healthful act, and should occur with regularity, because a person may so overload his stomach as to make the act necessary as a remedial measure. Vomiting is a diseased action, a pathological process, and is occasioned by the voluntary transgression of the individual. Hence, it is as unnecessary as gluttony, and must be wasteful of vitality, even though rendered necessary under some circumstances. So with emissions. If a person allows his mind to dwell upon unchaste subjects, indulges in erotic dreams, and riots in mental lasciviousness, he may render an emission almost necessary as a remedial effort. Nevertheless, he will suffer from the loss of the vital fluid just the same as though he had not, by his own concupiscence, rendered it in some degree necessary. And as it would have been infinitely better for him to have retained and digested food in his stomach instead of ejecting it—provided it were wholesome food—so it would have been better for him to have retained in his system the seminal fluid, which would have been disposed of by the system and probably utilized to very great advantage in the repair of certain of the tissues.