others even with his impotent brain. But as soon as he began to direct his mind to any pursuit, he perceived the helplessness of his state. He could not dream of entering into any profession which required study, and for any other he had at the time no inclination. Thus after several struggling months, he sunk into a still deeper gloom, than any he had yet experienced; he blamed himself for not having the courage to finish his miserable life by suicide; his mind became half-addled by its physical weakness, and by the wear and tear of his passions, so that he seemed to himself ever on the verge of madness, and probably, had his constitution not been naturally a very tough and strong one, he might have become so; unable to rest anywhere, he tried several physicians, and systems of cure. Homoeopathy, to which he gave a short trial, had no effect, ard the water cure, with all its immense curative powers in chronic disease, afforded but little benefit. He stayed at a hydropathic establishment for two months, and gained considerably in muscular strength and weight, but the cerebral impotence continued as before.

He now got hold of Lallemand's work, which he contrived with difficulty to peruse, and gained from it the knowledge of the true sexual remedy for his case. However, this only added to his wretchedness, for there ensued a struggle between his knowledge of the means of cure, and his morbid bashfulness, in which the latter ever prevailed.

On

He went over to Paris for the purpose of consulting M. Lallemand, who told him that by employing the physiological means, namely, sexual intercourse, he would certainly recover. However his insuperable bashfulness, and powerless will, made it impossible for him to follow this advice, though convinced of its necessity. He returned to this country, and another year passed by in the same impotent and hypochondriacal state; his mind tortured by a divided and paralysed will, and restlessness and irritability making him a burden to himself, and a sorrow and mystery to his friends. He was then advised to try change of climate by some of the English physicians, (not one of whom, though acquainted with his past history, knew, or would recommend, what was necessary in his case,) and he set off for a long tour in the south of Europe. his way however, he passed through Paris, and again consulted M. Lallemand, who was surprised that his previous advice had not been followed. M. Lallemand, as he always does, demanded a written account of his case, and having read it, said, that all that he should advise, was, duly regulated sexual intercourse, and washing the genital organs every morning with cold water. By such means, health would gradually be restored, though it would probably require about six months to complete the cure. This time, these necessary means were at length adopted. Coition was at first permitted only once a week, and nothing that could have an exciting effect on the organs, such as being in female society, which called forth the venereal desires, taking spiced dishes &c., was allowed in the interim. A bougie was also introduced to strengthen and tonify the organ, when it was found, that there was a stricture of the urethra, produced by the previous cauterization. Dilatation of this, became of course a prominent part of the treatment; for stricture is itself one of the most dangerous causes of seminal losses, and had doubtless in this case greatly

aggravated the disease; and in two months the patient began to feel a slight improvement in his symptoms, and to entertain new hopes. However, he now contracted a gonorrhoea to his excessive chagrin. In the course of it he had bubo, and swelled testicle, the pain and tedium of which, besides the complete arrest of his treatment, brought him of course back to his former despair; for in a long chronic disease, after years of hopelessness and constant relapses and disappointments, far slighter evils are sufficient to prostrate the patient's fortitude.

The gonorrhoea lasted for six miserable months, in spite of all sorts of treatment, but was at last cured. After its stoppage, the treatment of the stricture, and the regular sexual intercourse, both of which had been of course entirely arrested, were renewed; and the stricture being by a treatment of two months, sufficiently dilated, health began gradually to return. He began almost imperceptibly, to recover the power of reading, and his nervous tone, physical and moral. Gradually, the gloom, which had so long brooded over his mind, was dispelled, and after about seven years of as great misery and impotence, as often falls to the lot of youth to endure, he began again to waken to life. Since then, his convalesence has progressed steadily, under the constant use of the natural means of health, and he has been able to enter on a profession, and to study with energy and vigour, though his mind has by no means its first elasticity, which could not be expected, after such long illness.

However, though his health will probably ever remain somewhat delicate, compared with those whose constitutions have not received such rude shocks, and though a strictly hygienic life is more evidently necessary for him, than for the more robust, yet has he cause for inexpressible thankfulness for the blessed change in his state, and to the hand that saved him.

In reading the above history, which gives so imperfect a sketch of the years of real suffering, that clouded the brightest days of a young and ardent spirit of no ordinary energies, let us regard it, not as a mere individual case, but as a type of a whole class, and involving most of the moral questions on sexual subjects, whose true solution is of such immense importance. Who was the true and good physician, the saviour of this youth? It was he, who, undisturbed in his clear perception of natural truth and duty by world-wide prejudices, could give him the invaluable results of his years of patient enquiry on the subject, and thus with the certainty of demonstration enable him to escape from his abyss of misery to the world of hope and joy. The ignorant physicians on the contrary, were they, who, influenced by the common moral prejudices on these matters, left the door to his recovery for ever barred against him; and, had there not been truer views, and a braver and more scientific man to apply them, would have permitted the unhappy sufferer to drag on his miserable life, and probably in a few years to have sunk into idiocy or hopeless hypochondria, a horror to himself and a cause of the deepest affliction to his friends and relatives. These things are true, and no fiction, and the world must before long admit them. The subject of love cannot, more than others, bear the supernatural mode of reasoning. In it, as in all others the world is escaping at the present day, from the

assumptions and dogmas of the supernatural, to the clear and demonstrable region of nature; and it is only by examining every individual case, as it occurs in nature, that we shall attain to true views on the subject.

Would that all mankind could learn to consider of infinite importance the fate of every single individual! We do not live, joy, and suffer for ourselves alone, but every one of us is a type of the whole of humanity, and if we could understand all the wants and requirements of his being, we would understand those of all mankind. We are too ready to sacrifice the interests of the individual, for what is falsely called the general good. No good can be general, which does not include the good of every being in the universe. The real interests of each individual will invariably be found, if we search deeply and patiently enough, to be inseparably bound up with those of all mankind.

Are

The true physician cannot bear the very name of sacrifice. If we begin by sacrificing the interests of any individual, which of us is safe? we not all individuals, and essentially implicated in every question which involves the rights or duties of any human being? Every single case of disease is of infinite importance to one individual, namely, to the sufferer, but of no less real importance to us, as also individuals, liable ourselves, or our children, and friends, to the same evils; and world-wide theories must fall, if they unrighteously stand in the way of his cure.

SPERMATORRHEA

OR,

INVOLUNTARY SEMINAL DISCHARGES.

HAVING now treated of some of the chief causes of this disease, I shall proceed to give a fuller description of its nature and symptoms. Until the researches of M. Lallemand, although recognised, it was very little understood, having been involved previously in the mystery and ignorance which brooded over all sexual subjects, and which even to a greater degree obscured the diseases of the female genital organs, as we shall see hereafter. It was whilst observing diseases of the brain, that M. Lallemand was first led to suspect, and examine into, the effects of seminal disease on the male system. Having once got hold of the clue, he followed it with the most admirable steadiness and sagacity, and after twenty years labour, he laid bare to the world, in his work on "involuntary seminal discharges," published only some few years ago, a host of the most important and original facts, exemplified by the histories of cases written by the patients themselves; which throws over the whole work the sad and living interest that subjective descriptions alone can give. His discoveries are in their originality and importance comparable with those of any other medical benefactor of his race, but are yet comparatively little known, or at least openly admitted and approved by our profession in this country; for this chief reason, that, shaking as they do the very foundations of the theoretical morality between the sexes, they are opposed by a host of prejudices.

Unhappy is it at all times when we have to do with supernatural prejudices, the most difficult of all to overcome; trebly unhappy is it, when they stand between a miserable sufferer and his rescue from what is almost worse than death. Had they, who would rigorously enforce abstinence or chastity, on him who is wasting from the surface of the earth from its effects, but a glimpse into his real hell of misery, they would pause, and at any rate wipe their hands of so dangerous and responsible a matter, as interfering with those who can and will rescue him. Men will not nowa-days submit to be made auto-da-fes of, for the edification of their zealous neighbours.

The venereal and genital complaints would be the most painful of all, were it only for the painful feelings which they almost invariably rouse in the breasts of those, who have suffered much from them. While in

other complaints, the public sympathy is at least with the sufferers, and all efforts that love and skill can devise, are made for their relief, in these diseases, and these only, quite the reverse is the case. So far from pitying and relieving, the public do all they can, however little they know what they are doing, and how sinful their feelings are, further to degrade and desolate the unfortunate sufferer, and throw every obstacle in the way of his recovery. Therefore, there is no class of diseases, which is characterised by such irritability and bitterness of feeling in the abused victims, none which so spoils the moral character, however noble it may be. Oh! that we may yet live to see these most ruinous and unhappy feelings disappear from the human breast; that the sexual diseases, perhaps the most important and widely spread of all at present, may be, like the rest, included in the true brotherly love and sympathy of all of us; and that every thing may be done to promote their cure, and to banish ther as far as possible from the world, which they have too long desolated!

By spermatorrhoea, or involuntary seminal discharges, is meant the loss of seminal fluid without the will of the patient, which, when it occurs frequently, constitutes, as we have seen, a most dreadful disease. These discharges may be divided into the nocturnal and the diurnal. In the nocturnal ones, the patient has generally a dream on some venereal subject, an erection of the penis, and a discharge of semen, and wakes just as the discharge is taking place. This form of the nocturnal emissions, which may occur in the strongest men, and is generally attendant on the period of puberty, is the least injurious, as it contains all the elements of the venereal orgasm except that, Ixion-like, the dreamer embraces a cloud.

Many persons, who live a life of abstinence, have such emissions, at shorter or longer intervals, for years, and yet remain tolerably strong and vigorous. However, they are always suspicious, and prove, even when they do not reduce the strength, that the genital organs are ready for, and in want of due exercise, just like the feeling of muscular irritability which we have when we take no exercise. All such warnings, if long disregarded, are apt to be followed by enfeeblement and disease. When this does take place, the emissions increase in frequency, and the patient begins to feel his health declining. The emissions may now take place nightly, or even three or four times in the night in bad cases, and this soon brings on a state of great exhaustion. The proportion in which nocturnal emissions weaken the strength in any one, must determine how far they constitute a disease. Sometimes, when few, they are of little consequence; at other times, if frequent, they bring on the greatest prostration and melancholy. As the disease progresses, discharges take place without a venereal dream or erection. The patient wakes suddenly from a stupor, just as the discharge is pouring out, which he will try in vain to check; or, perhaps, he does not wake till after it is over, and then, as a lethargic consciousness, which of itself tells him what has taken place, slowly awakens, he puts down his hand and sickens with despair, as he perceives the fatal drain, and thinks on the gloomy morrow, which will follow

As the disease advances still further, the organs lose their natural powers of pouring forth a large quantity involuntarily at one time. The