In such cases we are obviously dealing with abnormal
persons, and no one will dispute the possibility of harmful results; in
some of the cases, when masturbation was stopped, the eye trouble
improved. Even in these cases, however, the troubles were but slight, the
chief being, apparently, photopsia (a subjective sensation of light) with
otherwise normal conditions of pupil, vision, color-sense, and retina. In
some cases there was photophobia, and he has also found paralysis of
accommodation and conjunctivitis. At a later date Salmo Cohn, in his
comprehensive monograph on the relationship between the eye and the sexual
organs in women, brought together numerous cases of eye troubles in young
women associated with masturbation, but in most of these cases
masturbation had been practiced with great frequency for a long period and
the ocular affections were usually not serious.[319] In England, Power has
investigated the relations of the sexual system to eye disease. He is
inclined to think that the effects of masturbation have been exaggerated,
but he believes that it may produce such for the most part trivial
complaints as photopsisae, muscsae, muscular asthenopia, possibly
blepharospasm, and perhaps conjunctivitis. He goes on, however, to point
out that more serious complaints of the eye are caused by excess in normal
coitus, by sexual abstinence, and especially by disordered menstruation.
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