Plain Facts for Old and Young

by John Harvey Kellogg

[Eminent Testimony.]—An eminent English physician, Dr. Milton, who has treated many thousands of cases of this disease, remarks in a work upon the subject as follows:—

"Anything beyond one emission a month requires attention. I know this statement has been impugned, but I am quite prepared to abide by it. I did not put it forward till I considered I had quite sufficient evidence in my hands to justify me in doing so."

"An opinion prevails, as most of my readers are aware, among medical men, that a few emissions in youth do good instead of harm. It is difficult to understand how an unnatural evacuation can do good, except in the case of unnatural congestion. I have, however, convinced myself that the principle is wrong. Lads never really feel better for emissions; they very often feel decidedly worse. Occasionally they may fancy there is a sense of relief, but it is very much the same sort of relief that a drunkard feels from a dram. In early life the stomach may be repeatedly overloaded with impunity, but I suppose few would contend that overloading was therefore good. The fact is that emissions are invariably more or less injurious; not always visibly so in youth, nor susceptible of being assessed as to the damage inflicted by any given number of them, but still contributing, each in its turn, a mite toward the exhaustion and debility which the patient will one day complain of."

[Diurnal Emissions.]—As the disease progresses, the irritation and weakness of the organs become so great that an erection and emission occur upon the slightest sexual excitement. Mere proximity to a female, or the thought of one, will be sufficient to produce a pollution, attended by voluptuous sensations. But after a time the organs become so diseased and irritable that the slightest mechanical irritation, as friction of the clothing, the sitting posture, or riding horseback, will produce a discharge which may or may not be attended by sensation of any kind. Frequently a burning or more or less painful sensation occurs; erection does not take place. Even straining at stool will produce the discharge, or violent efforts to retain the feces when there is unnatural looseness.

The amount of the discharge may vary from a few drops to one or two drams, or even more. The character of the discharge is of considerable importance. When it occurs under the circumstances last described, viz., without erection or voluptuous sensations, it may be of a true seminal character, or it may contain no spermatozoa. This point can be determined by the microscope alone. The discharge is the result of sexual excitement or irritation, nevertheless, and indicates a most deplorable condition of the genital organs. The patient is sometimes unnecessarily frightened by it, and often exaggerates the amount of the losses, and the symptoms arising from them. However, when a single nocturnal emission occasions such detrimental results, what must be the effect of repeated discharges occurring several times a day, or every time an individual relieves his bowels, urinates, or entertains an unvirtuous thought! If the losses were always seminal, the work of ruin would soon be complete; fortunately, those discharges which are the most frequent are only occasionally of a true seminal character. It is not true, however, as has been claimed by some writers, one at least, that they are never seminal, as we have proved by repeated microscopic examinations.

[Cause of Diurnal Emissions.]—The causes of these discharges are spasmodic action of the muscles involved in ejaculation, which is occasioned by local irritation, and pressure upon the seminal vesicles by the distended rectum or bladder. They denote a condition of debility and irritation which may well occasion grave alarm.

In occasional instances, the internal irritation reaches such a height that blood is discharged with the seminal fluid.

[Internal Emissions.]—As the disease progresses, external discharges finally cease, in some cases, or partially so, and the individual is encouraged by that circumstance to think that he is recovering. He soon discovers his error, however, for he continues to droop even though the discharges apparently cease altogether. This seems a mystery until some medical friend or a medical work calls his attention to the fact that the discharges now occur internally instead of externally, the seminal fluid passing back into the bladder and being voided with the urine. An examination of the urine reveals the presence of cloudy matter appearing much like mucus, or a whitish sediment. A microscopic examination shows this matter to be composed largely of zoösperms, which decides its origin.

[An Important Caution.]—It is necessary, however, to caution the reader not to pronounce every whitish sediment or flocculent matter found in the urine to be a seminal discharge, for the great majority are of a different character. They are, most frequently, simply mucus or phosphates from the bladder. Seminal fluid cannot be distinguished from mucus by any other than a careful microscopic examination. A microscope of good quality and capable of magnifying at least one hundred and fifty diameters is required, together with considerable skill in the operator. Quacks have done an immense amount of harm by frightening patients into the belief that they were suffering from discharges of this kind when there was, in fact, nothing more than a copious deposit of phosphates, which is not at all infrequent in nervous people, especially after eating.