them astray, even if their conceptions are correct of the condition for which they would fain become their own physicians. It is not without reason that the generality of medical practitioners refuse to prescribe for themselves, their children, or immediate relatives, and this wise fear is founded upon the enunciation of the foregoing principle, that no man is safely to be trusted with the management of his own case, seeing that from a variety of disturbing causes he is extremely likely to be led astray from the formation of that correct opinion he would easily arrive at in the case of a stranger, where feeling, fear, and that morbid anxiety which magnifies personal evils and danger, cannot be supposed to operate. If then the practitioners of the healing art, who are well acquainted with the powers and properties of the remedies they may employ upon themselves, are not safely to be left to take such a course, how much more infinitely unwise is it for those who are totally unacquainted, first, with the nature of disease, and secondly, with the action of medicines, to prescribe for their own ailments, especially seeing that the means of confidential consultation are placed easily and distinctly within their reach.

We have thus endeavoured candidly to explain the purpose of the present effort; to offer an intelligible portraiture of the interruptions to the enjoyment of sexual health, and by explaining the causes in a simple, forcible, and perspicuous manner, to enable the reader to disentangle the apparently inextricable and confused maze of his own wandering and diseased fancies, to point to the concealed, and, it may be, unsuspected cause of human suffering, to the restoration of health, pristine vigour, usefulness, activity, and joyous hilarity. Why do I suffer-why, when all around me invites to enjoyment; why is it that

while every face wears a smile, existence is to me a dreary blank-the world, its pleasures, cares, and duties, an irksome weariness? Are not these questions which even a cursory glance at the previous pages will enable the misguided to solve? Long experience of human nature, long acquaintance with some of its most painful infirmities, enable us to say it will be so; they will find their several complaints accurately described.

The copious illustrations of those general truths we have advanced are to be received as the results of careful and laborious study, not as the boyish effusions of an immature and speculative intellect. It is not that we profess to indulge any wild or chimerical fondness for untried remedies, or that we have watched disease with an eye warped by any preconceived theory, but soberly, patiently, and in the spirit of the calmest philosophical investigation, applying our knowledge of the powers and effects of remedies. If we claim any exclusive pretensions, any superiority of medical attainment, it is that we have directed our attention almost exclusively to a PARTICULAR LINE OF PRACTICE, and hope for that familiarity, with its details, which undivided attention alone can supply. In reference to those diseases of the generative function connected with CONSTITUTIONAL DEBILITY, our efforts have been successfully directed to restore the tone of exhausted organs, to re-animate the impotent and sinking powers of vitality, to reproduce that healthful vigour which is indispensable to the great purposes of existence. Our curative efforts are always directed rather to the CAUSE of the disorder than to the repression of those collateral evils which stand only in the relation of symptoms, for between these and the effects of debilitating vices, there is a distinction not easily

appreciable by ordinary minds. Relief, however, may generally be secured by close attention to the management of the mental peculiarities as well as of the strictly corporeal organization. The medicines we employ are mostly those which are already known (yet we think imperfectly) to the medical profession,-they consist of such as are employed by men of acknowledged reputation, brilliant attainments, and incontrovertible skill.

The peculiarity of our treatment is not in the selection of hitherto undiscovered remedies, but in the practical adaptation and application of those we already possess. To act directly upon the seminal vessels, and to impart tone without the production of irritation; to strengthen without inflaming, or temporarily exciting the generative power: to RENOVATE by the exhibition of remedies which cure by the removal of the proximate cause of debility and disease, and so permanently restore the lost energies of the system—THIS IS THE MODE OF PRACTICE which in our hands has been SIGNALLY SUCCESSFUL.

The direct object of this work is then to maintain the correctness of those great leading principles of treatment which have formed the study of a laborious life, and if in the end the sum of human happiness be increased by their promulgation, we shall feel that in this respect we have not failed to fulfil in our day and generation our individual duty.

There would not have been the slightest difficulty in detailing the histories of numberless cases which, in pursuance of these principles, have been brought to a successful issue, did not the strictest secrecy forbid it. Many of these have been deplorable forms of NERVOUS IRRITATION, characterized by a con

stant fear of dying, which pervades with its baneful influence the whole nervous system, writhing the heart with inexpressible anguish, and exciting the most dreadful suggestions of horror and despair. GENERATIVE DEBILITY, as connected or arising out of this state, disordered digestion, dry cough, consumptive habits, weakness in the voice, hoarseness, shortness of breath upon the least exercise, and relaxation of the whole system, dimness of sight and loss of memory; these conditions have engaged our most special and direct attention, while female Sterility, Chlorosis or Green Sickness, Fluor Albus or Whites; and in man the various grades of Seminal Weakness, Nocturnal Emissions, Impotence, or the relief of those weaknesses engendered by the lurking and uneradicated poison of Syphilis, have claimed an equal share of notice. Multitudes of each of these varieties have been exchanged, under our care, for health, vigour, and happiness; but to relate these cases would have augmented the size of the work most inconveniently. For the satisfaction of the reader a few illustrative cases are appended at the end of the volume; and to those who are afflicted with any of the consequences of Sensualism, a reference to the "Notice to Patients" will point out the method to be adopted, by which their alleviation and cure may be effected.

CHAPTER IV.

OF GONORRHEA (OR CLAP), ITS SYMPTOMS, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF ITS TREATMENT, WITH REMARKS UPON SWELLED TESTICLE, STRICTURE, AND GLEET.

VENEREAL Intercourse is occasionally impure and infectious; and there are some of those poisons generated and transmitted by sexual contact, which are of a peculiarly malignant and destructive character. In ordinary language, one of them produces effects limited to the surface upon which it falls, others lead out to the whole range of syphilitic diseases, and are followed by constitutional derangements of the direst description. The first is known as the poison of gonorrhoea or clap; the latter as the infectious agent producing syphilis or pox. The matter of clap if applied to the skin, or to any secreting surface, produces there local inflammation and a peculiar discharge, mostly without breach of surface, while the noxious virus of pox occasions where it falls an ulcerated ragged destruction of parts, styled, in the nomenclature of the schools, a CHANCre. Further, the peculiar secretion of this sore may be taken up by the absorbents of the living system, and conveyed into the general mass of the circulating blood; and in its passage through the glands of the groin, (generally the nearest to the spot originally infected,) these bodies are apt to enlarge, inflame, become intensely painful, to suppurate and burst, forming the complication known by the name of BUBO. The original ulceration may heal, and yet from the contamination of the general absorbent