II. Sexual Neuropathy

32. I. Pollutions that are too frequent or too laborious. In a man, pollutions regularly occur during sleep without any cooperation of the will; when they are not too frequent, they do no harm to health. Their frequency varies according to age, bodily temperament, and manner of life: that they occur twice or three times in a month is entirely normal; that they are repeated for a few successive days, with a longer interval then intervening, is to be considered nothing strange; nor is a weekly pollution to be feared.

In sleep, however, they are generally, not to say always, produced with the imagination excited and with bodily pleasure.

There are nevertheless men who experience them too frequently at night, or during the day because of a slight cause or together with heaviness of the head.

Others also are truly tormented by an excessive difficulty of pollutions.

Finally, others suffer from what is called spermatorrhea; that is, without orgasm and ejaculation, they emit semen, often with urine or even while relieving the bowels.

These things, unless they take their origin from a defect, can be signs of various illnesses, especially especially to be attributed to the nervous system. (Compare Gemelli, Non moechaberis, p. 68.)

33. - II. Priapism designates a permanent erection of the male member without libidinous arousal.

34. - III. Sexual neurasthenia, in general, is accustomed to combine an excessively easy excitation with a sense of fatigue and debility. Its notion is variously handed down. It can be called sexual insofar as it variously disturbs the sexual state or sexual excitation.

Leaving aside involuntary causes, such as bodily debility itself or heredity, this nervous erethism can be produced or rendered more serious by venereal excesses, especially frequent masturbation, unnatural intercourse, and especially interrupted intercourse, but not by sexual abstinence ¹.

¹ Ellis and Moll, op. cit., p. 699.

In the man it prevents either erection alone, or ejaculation, or both; or it permits only an incipient erection with a discharge of semen.

It also induces excessively frequent nocturnal pollutions, which leave behind heaviness of the head and dejection of spirit ².

² Ibid., p. 697 ff.

Even a slight cause is sufficient for the sick to have diurnal pollutions, or to suffer from spermatorrhea.

Sometimes they have pains of the penis without an exterior cause, or experience heat and itching; they feel themselves filled with semen that is to be emitted, ready for carnal arousal; nor is their false hunger allayed by the venereal act.

We can also refer here an excessively prolonged erection of the penis, with a sense of pleasure, by which mark it is distinguished from priapism.

Sexual neurasthenia has been less explored in the woman. It is manifested in a similar manner by excessively easy excitation and more frequent pollution.