The secret companion, a medical work on onanism ... and on venereal and syphilitic diseases ... followed by observations on marriage.

  • R.J. Brodie & Co.
Date:
[1845]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The secret companion, a medical work on onanism ... and on venereal and syphilitic diseases ... followed by observations on marriage. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    37/148 (page 31)
    Tabes Dorsalis—Affection of the Spine —The muscles of the loins and interior portion of the body are con- tracted, and violent spasmodic affections arise in them; the act of discharging the semen is often accompanied by cramps and the most distressing sensations across the loins, combined with fatigue and extreme debility; demonstrating the injury inflicted on the spinal mar- row. The symptoms vary in different individuals. Some feel as if a girdle was tightly drawn round the waist ; others a gnawing, lacerating, stabbing or dull pain, extending to one or both, and sometimes to the genital organs. In time the pains become more severe—• gradual debility of the lower parts of the body is ex- perienced, terminating, if not checked by judicious means, in palsy, paralysis, &c., &c., thus spinal deform- ities of every kind may be caused by Masturbation. The general practitioner very seldom suspects that the consumptive invalid derives the malady from these soli- tary habits, so fertile in spreading devastation, remorse, and anguish in society. We have already pointed out how the blood is circulated with the most alarming im- petuosity during an indulgence in these acts—increasing the action of the heart, thereby causing the blood to be driven with redoubled violence through the lungs ;— exhaustion follows, leaving the constitution liable to all those diseases arising from excessive debility—consump- tion is produced, and, if the cause is not discovered, the result must be fatal; but if the case is not too far gone, and the medical adviser discovers the origin, the malady may be checked in its progress, and the patient’s life c