Excess may act, according to the familiar old-fashioned
adage, like the lighted match. But we must always remember the obvious
truth, that it makes a considerable difference whether you threw your
lighted match into a powder magazine or into the sea.
While we may thus dismiss the extravagant views widely held during the
past century, concerning the awful results of masturbation, as due to
ignorance and false tradition, it must be pointed out that, even in
healthy or moderately healthy individuals, any excess in solitary
self-excitement may still produce results which, though slight, are yet
harmful. The skin, digestion, and circulation may all be disordered;
headache and neuralgia may occur; and, as in normal sexual excess or in
undue frequency of sexual excitement during sleep, there is a certain
general lowering of nervous tone. Probably the most important of the
comparatively frequent results--though this also arises usually on a
somewhat morbid soil--is neurasthenia with its manifold symptoms. There
can be little doubt that the ancient belief, dating from the time of
Hippocrates, that sexual excesses produce spinal disease, as well as the
belief that masturbation causes insanity, are largely due to the failure
to diagnose neurasthenia.
The following case of neurasthenia, recorded by Eulenburg, may be
given as a classical picture of the nervous disturbances which
may be associated with masturbation, and are frequently regarded
as solely caused by habits of masturbation: Miss H.
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