SELF-PRESERVATION: A MEDICAL TREATISE ON THE SECRET INFIRMITIES AND DISORDERS OF THE GENERATIVE ORGANS, RESULTING FROM SOLITARY HABITS, YOUTHFUL EXCESS, OR INFECTION; WITH PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE PREMATURE ILLUSTRATED WITH ANATOMICAL PLATES IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. BY SAMUEL LA'MERT, M.D. No. 37, BEDFORD-SQUARE, LONDON; Doctor of Medicine, Matriculated Member of the University of Edinburgh, Honorary AND SOLD IN LONDON BY JAMES GILBERT, 49, PATERNOSTER ROW; AND BY ALL BOOKSELLERS IN THE KINGDOM AND COLONIES : IN PARIS, BY LAROQUE, 5, BOULEVARD PREFACE TO THE FORTY-SEVENTH EDITION. THE Author of these pages, in thus sending forth to the world a forty-seventh edition, cannot refrain from expressing his gratification at the extraordinary and continual success that has attended his efforts, in mitigating and averting those concealed infirmities and disorders, resulting from solitary habits and excessive indulgence in sexual pleasures. He is proud to acknowledge the universal confidence that has been placed in his professional ability, from men of the highest rank to those of humble sphere, in almost every part of the world; thus proving the fact, that suffering humanity must always derive the greatest advantages, from duly qualified members of the medical profession adopting a particular class of disorders for their exclusive study, in preference to a superficial general knowledge of all the diseases that afflict mankind. The present edition is embellished with original plates, illustrating the Healthy and Diseased Anatomy of the Reproductive Organs; and thus, at a single glance will be seen, the intimate sympathy that exists between the mental and generative functions, which when unnaturally excited, lead to the production of the greatest amount of human misery, anxiety, and suffering, that can possibly be conceived. No. 37, BEDFORD SQUARE. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE World has a right to expect, from those who have devoted the ceaseless energies of their whole existence to medical and surgical science, that they shall publish the truths which they have discovered in the pursuit and practical application of professional knowledge. An era has at length arrived in the history of medicine, when not merely the vague conjectures of celebrated men, but the implicit and slavish subserviency to prescriptive authority, must give way to the legitimate inferences deducible from accurate observation. Modern improvements in the healing art have been effected by the labours of unassociated inquirers, who, regardless of system, when opposed to the steady light of public advancement, have assiduously investigated particular forms or classes of disease. Singling out some special department, rather than confusing the mind with the whole range of human infirmity, the effort has been successful because well directed; an active and impatient spirit of inquiry has been generated, pervading almost every separate department of the profession, and its continued operation bids fair finally to remove medicine from the rank of conjectural sciences. Amenable to public opinion for our acts, and exerting an influence most salutary or deadly, pregnant either for evil or for good, in proportion as it is commensurate with the confidence of mankind, it is our first duty to seek the most absolute publicity in the declaration of the principles which actuate, the motives which govern, and the plans we propose, in carrying out the relief of those evils entrusted to our management. A knowledge of the general principals of pathology is absolutely indispensable to him to whom is entrusted the knife of the surgeon, or who wields the pen in prescription; it is quite true that no branch of medicine, however limited, can be well and thoroughly understood except by one who has carefully studied the structure and actions of the whole frame, in health as well as in disease, and then extended his view over the whole field of medical science. But this preliminary knowledge, far from implying that the medical practitioner should indiscriminately attack disease in all its multifarious forms and varieties, only arms him with better requisites for the successful encounter of a selected difficulty. If the division of effort be productive of such transcendent advantages in every other department of labour and study, no good reason can be assigned why the science of medicine should form an isolated exception to which the general principle is inapplicable. From my earliest youth I have been induced to leave the beaten track of general practice, in order that I might uninterruptedly devote my undivided efforts to a strangely neglected, but most important department of professional duty. Whether we regard the awfully desolating results upon the happiness of mankind, the transmission of disease, debility, and pain to generations yet |