When the condition described does really exist, however, the patient cannot make too much haste to put himself under the care of a competent physician for treatment. If there is even a reasonable suspicion that it may exist, he should have his urine carefully examined by one competent to criticize it intelligently.
By many authors, the term spermatorrhoea is confined entirely to this stage of the disease.
It is said that the forcible interruption of ejaculation has been the cause of this unfortunate condition in many cases. Such a proceeding is certainly very hazardous.
One more caution should be offered; viz., that the occasional presence of spermatozoa in the urine is not a proof of the existence of internal emissions, as a few zoösperms may be left in the urethra after a voluntary or nocturnal emission, and thus find their way into the urine as it is discharged from the bladder.
[Impotence.]—In the progress of the disease a point is finally reached when the victim not only loses all desire for the natural exercise of the sexual function, but when such an act becomes impossible. This condition may have been reached even before all of the preceding symptoms have been developed. Ultimately it becomes impossible to longer practice the abominable vice itself, on account of the great degeneration and relaxation of the organs. The approach of this condition is indicated by increasing loss of erectile power, which is at first only temporary, but afterward becomes permanent. Still the involuntary discharges continue, and the victim sees himself gradually sinking lower and lower into the pit which his own hands have dug. The misery of his condition is unimaginable; manhood lost, body a wreck, and death staring him in the face.
This is a brief sketch of the local effects of the horrid vice of self-abuse. The description has not been at all overdrawn. We have yet to consider the general effects, some of which have already been incidentally touched upon in describing nocturnal emissions, with their immediate results.
[General Effects.]—The many serious effects which follow the habit of self-abuse, in addition to those terrible local maladies already described, are the direct results of two causes in the male; viz.,
1. Nervous exhaustion;
2. Loss of the seminal fluid.