On spermatorrhoea : its pathology, results, and complications / by J.L. Milton.

  • Milton, J. L. (John Laws), 1820-1898.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On spermatorrhoea : its pathology, results, and complications / by J.L. Milton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    PREFACE. Every effort has been made to render this edition as complete as the nature of the subject admitted. I am not aware that any attainable sources of information have been neglected. It is, however, only right to say that, although numerous references have been made to the writings of others, the bulk of the work is, after all, essentially clinical, the fruit of observation rather than of reading. Even since the appearance of the last edition I have again been told, what I have been told before, that the description I had given of the effects produced by the disease was over- drawn. My answer is very simple. I have taken my accounts from the statements made by patients, not from the opinions of compilers. I have spoken of symptoms and results as I found them, and as any one may find them who chooses to seek for them. Whether a description from Nature agrees or not with the doctrines taught in schools, and laid down in text-books, is a matter which does not concern me, and upon which I accordingly forbear to enter. It has been said that Spermatorrhoea is a mere symptom, a result of morbid imagination which ought not to be ranked as a disease. With all deference I submit that the arguments in favour of spermatorrhoea being a disease are unanswerable. Even were it merely a symptom I should consider that it merits all the attention my readers can give it. One of the best practitioners of modern days, Sir Benjamin Brodie, tells us