Impotence

“ The only cause for impotence remains sexual excesses. They are very seldom the immediate cause of the impotence. But they leave such weakness in the genital organs and in the nervous system that it requires only the least disturbance to provoke total impotence. Such disturbances, as remorse over the formerly committed irregularities, or distrust in one’s powers, or the mental attitude of the woman to whom sexual approaches are a matter of real or assumed indifference, are sufficient to render the weakened neurotic man total impotent. ”

“ Symptomatic impotence.—The organic type of impotence is relatively very rare. The other type, symptomatic impotence, is oftener met with. It is found in cerebral diseases, diabetes, tabes dorsalis, chronic nephritis, extreme obesitas, chronic rheumatism, chronic alcoholism and in the cachexies of anaemia, cholaemia and uraemia. But since the desire fails with the failure of power, such patients rarely seek medical aid for this anomaly. They consult the physician for their original ailment which is of far greater importance to them than the loss of power. ”

“ Yet impotence is, at the most, an infirmity, whether due to some congenital anatomical defect or to a disturbance of nervous balance in the delicate sexual mechanism, such as is apt to occur in men of abnormally sensitive temperament. ”

“ Psychic impotence is a very peculiar condition strikingly illustrating a powerful influence of the mind over bodily functions. 116It usually attacks young men in perfect health who are of a worrying and brooding disposition, particularly so over sexual matters. ”

“ Self-abuse and spermatorrhœa produce usually only temporary impotence and can generally be relieved by carrying out the instructions given elsewhere in this book.
7. Excessive indulgences often enfeeble the powers and often result in impotence. Dissipated single men, professional libertines, and married men who are immoderate, often pay the penalty of their violations of the laws of nature, by losing their vital power. In such cases of excess there may be some temporary relief, but as age advances the effects of such indiscretion will become more and more manifest. ”

“ The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. ”

“ A momentary psychic impotence is not necessarily pathological. While voluptuous sensations alternate during coitus with desire and corresponding erotic representations, a sudden idea of the ridiculousness of the situation, signs of pain or of bad temper in the woman, the idea of impotence or of the real object of coitus; finally, anything which acts as a contrast to the sensations and impulses of coitus, may interrupt it, so that the voluptuous sensations and sexual appetite disappear and erection subsides. Voluntary efforts are often incapable of putting things right again. ”

“ Functional Causes of Impotence. Repeated intoxication, and vicious indulgences, may so debilitate the constitution in general, and the organs of generation in particular, as to render the debauchee wholly incapable of venereal congress; such impotence however is not to be regarded as permanent; bark, steel, the cold-bath, and above all, a change of habits may restore the patient to the full possession of his powers. ”

“ Impotence, as it should be defined and considered, [127] is the manifestation of a disease in which there is permanent and actual impairment of the nerve-centres and, as a phenomenon of such centric changes, inability to procure an erection of the penis, at any and all times, sufficient to perform the act of coition. This is a chronic malady, of slow advent, and when once established there is very little tendency to recovery. The chagrin manifested in a man who is impotent is at all times striking. He feels that to be impotent is to be worse than dead. ”

“ Actual impotence during a period of manhood is very rare. Where there is ground for just apprehension the young man should always consult an intelligent and conscientious physician. If he suggests either stimulants or association with dissolute women in order to test your powers, in order to strengthen the reproductive system, accept this as a sufficient evidence of his incompetency, and immorality as well, and betake yourself to another physician. ”

“ The most frequent cause of psychic impotence is the thought of failure. An accidental single failure through the temporary abuse of alcohol, tobacco, coffee, or tea or through intense desire may occur, some day, which in the healthy man would pass unnoticed. But the nervous man will begin to brood over this failure, and this brooding will prevent the formation of associative paths in the brain at every subsequent attempt of coition. ”

“ Men whose impotence is due either to the corruption of their sperm owing to their cold nature, or to maladies of the organs, or to discharges or fevers and similar ills, or to their excessive promptness in ejaculation, can be cured. ”

“ Impotence consists in a lack of power to effect an erection; but there is a condition, not always impotence, where the person has lost all [129] desire for copulation, and will not make an effort to obtain an erection. He does not attempt to concentrate his will-power, and does not desire any relation whatever with the opposite sex, although he may have been a debauché in his early life. ”

“ Psychic Impotence.—An important sexual neurosis, at least in the eyes of sufferers from it, is what physicians have come to know as psychic impotence. Young married men, because of over-anxiety with regard to themselves for a number of reasons, but without any physical factor to disturb them, find it impossible to complete the sexual act. ”

“ The importance of retaining the sexual power, of using it wisely and temperately, cannot be over-estimated. It is paramount. Lose your sexual power, lose the power to reproduce your species, and, according to the laws of nature, your days of usefulness are past, and decay and death will soon overtake you.
Impotence sexually means impotence in everything, impotence mentally, physically, socially, etc. Your powers are fast waning—you might just as well be laid away without further notice. ”

“ By atonic impotence we mean a failure in satisfactory coitus, whether such failure manifests itself in precipitate emission, delayed emission, incomplete erection or absence of sexual desire. The disturbance with emission and erection are principal types of the disease for which we are most consulted, the last named condition, absence of sexual desire, being usually an advanced or later stage of complete exhaustion of this disease. ”

“ Impotence of procreation.—The type of impotence, most frequently met with but rarely complained of by men, is the impotence of propagation. Almost fifty per cent. of all cases of absolute sterility in married couples are caused by this anomaly in men. ”

“ Etiology of impotence in women.—The same causes, at work in producing impotence in men, are also affecting impotence in women. The only modification lies in the fact that impotence of copulation, which is the impotence par excellence in men, is of a negligible quantity in women. The main mode of impotence found in women is that of experiencing libido. This impotence may be either idiopathic or also caused by excesses as the impotence of copulation in men. Idiopathic impotence of libido is oftener met with in women than in men. ”

“ Impotence.—Some misapprehension as to the signification of this term is prevalent, owing to the extent of weakness and the morbid conditions to which it has been applied. The wrong application has been very common; i. e., in using it to describe a condition of sexual neurasthenia and temporary suspension of the sexual powers, from moral shock. A young man who exercises a doubt as to his ability to copulate may, upon the occasion, be unable to procure an erection ”

“ No God and no human being, except an envious one, is delighted by my impotence or my trouble, or esteems as any virtue in us tears, sighs, fears, and other things of this kind, which are signs of mental impotence ”

“ Those who show too great familiarity with the other sex, who entertain lascivious thoughts, continually exciting the sexual desires, always suffer a weakening of power and sometimes the actual diseases of degeneration, chronic inflammation of the gland, spermatorrhœa, impotence, and the like.—Young man, beware; your punishment for trifling with the affections of others may cost you a life of affliction. ”

“ While the full realization of impotence brings a psychalgia all its377 own, it also has physiological and psychological if not conscious compensations, while belated and, especially, stimulated activity of reproductive functions not only can never result in offspring of value to the world but saps vitality and accelerates the decay of every secondary sex quality of mind and body, so that complete chastity, psychic and somatic, should be the ideal of the old. ”

“ Absolute sexual continence is imposed upon the unmarried woman, under pain of being considered immoral or fallen, with the result of producing neurasthenia, impotence, depression, and a great variety of nervous complaints involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life, sleeplessness, and preoccupation with sexual desires and imaginings. ”

“ Prolong the delightful season of courting into and through wedded life and rich shall be your reward.
[pg 205, ToC]
15. A Want of Desire may often prevail, and may be caused by loss of sleep, study, constant thought, mental disturbance, anxiety, self-abuse, excessive use of tobacco or alcoholic drink, etc. Overwork may cause debility; a man may not have an erection for months, yet it may not be a sign of debility, sexual lethargy or impotence. Get the mind and the physical constitution in proper condition, and most all these difficulties will disappear. ”

“ Most common causes of paralytic impotence in young men are a persistent and excessive masturbation habit and excessive sexual indulgence. The earlier in life these vicious habits and excesses are started and the longer they last, the harder and harder is the cure of the resulting sexual exhausting impotence. In fact, these cases are the most 121difficult of all to cure, and many of them are incurable. Men suffering with paralytic impotence present a truly pitiful picture. ”

“ Moral Causes of Impotence. A temporary impotence from certain emotions of the mind is by no means so rare an occurrence as may be supposed; and in times of superstition was generally attributed to the influence of some magical incantation; an opinion which was even maintained by Zacchias, Teichmeyer, and Schurigio, but which it is hardly necessary to add, has been reprobated by Vogel, Cullen, and all modern authorities. Where this occurs it is often productive of the greatest distress of mind, and has not unfrequently led the unfortunate sufferer to the commission of suicide. ”

“ Such a person will let his cloak trail in the mud to avoid the trouble of lifting it up, etc.—if a person is mastered by things against which most people succeed in holding out, and is impotent to struggle against them, unless his impotence is due to hereditary constitution or to disease, as effeminacy is hereditary in the kings of Scythia, or as a woman is naturally weaker than a man. But the man addicted to boys would seem to be incontinent, and is effeminate.—Incontinence assumes sometimes the form of impetuosity, and at other times that of weakness. ”

“ In the male, impotence may arise from physical or mental causes. The physical causes may be—too great or too tender an age; malformation of the genital organs; crypsorchides, defect or disease in the testicles ”

“ In some cases the abstinence is due to nothing more nor less than acquired impotence, the man's inability to perform the act. In other cases the reason may be found in a previous venereal disease and the man's consequent fear to infect his wife. Consciously or unconsciously the man makes a virtue out of necessity.↑ See Marshall, Quarterly Journal Microscopic Science, Vol. ”

“ But when petty discomforts accumulate there comes a time when one more, however small it be, has the effect of a sudden infliction. He ground his teeth with fury at those pattering drops of water, but the realization of impotence seemed to descend upon him with such power that he lay back and closed his eyes, a prey to violent mental agitation. Then he uttered a foul oath, blew out his candle, pulled the blanket over his head and tried to go to sleep. I heard one of the other men laugh and say good-humouredly, "'E's gettin' on—'e'll soon be swearin' wi' the best of us." ”

“ When a single man fears that he is unable to fulfill the duties of marriage, he should not marry until his fear is dispelled. The suspicion of such a fear strongly tends to bring about the very weakness which he dreads. Go to a good physician (not to one of those quacks whose advertisements you see in the papers; they are invariably unreliable) , and state the case fully and freely.
5. Diseases, malformation, etc., may cause impotence. In case of malformation there is usually no remedy, but in case of disease it is usually within the reach of a skillful physician. ”

“ The inner connexion between weakness and violence is finely declared in Latin in the fact that ‘impotens’ and ‘impotentia’ imply both; so once did ‘impotent’ and ‘impotence’ in English (see Spenser’s Fairy Queen, ii. 11, 23) , though they now retain only the meaning of weak.
An impotent lover
Of women for a flash; but his fires quenched,
Hating as deadly. Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, act iii. sc. 2.
The Lady Davey, ever impotent in her passions, was even distracted with anger, that she was crossed in her will.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. ”

“ Inability to vitalize it by reason of trouble in the prostate gland. Hitherto the medical people have recognized but one form of impotence, whereas there are no less than four, each, of course, requiring quite dissimilar methods of curative treatment.
LIII. Nothing goes on either in soul or body without some sort of expenditure. We have a mental, moral, and affectional digestion as well as a physical one ”