The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English Part 131

WORLD'S DISPENSARY MEDICAL a.s.sOCIATION, Buffalo, N.Y.: _Gentlemen_--Your kind favor, thoughtfully inquiring after my health, came duly to hand.

In answer, permit me to say that it was not my intention to take further treatment as I considered my cure to be perfect, all local and general symptoms having wholly subsided before I had finished the month's course, and thus far manifesting no disposition to return. However, in the light of your wisdom and experience, I have reconsidered the matter and now believe with you that another month's course of treatment is advisable, in order effectually to guard against the possibility of a relapse. I accordingly inclose you the price of the additional month's course. The second morning after commencing the use of your medicines I awoke refreshed in body and mind, and this experience has been repeated every morning since. The emissions were arrested at once, and I have not had a single unnatural discharge since, except once when I experienced a slight nocturnal emission, which, however, was followed by no depressing after-effects, but altogether the reverse. I feel so much stronger and better in all respects that It is a positive pleasure for me to do a hard day's work now.

Respectfully, B., Crystal Lake, Wis.

CASE 86,291.

This gentleman had suffered during eleven years from seminal weakness as the result of indiscretions in youth; nocturnal emissions were present, and there was also a seminal loss with the urine, and at stool; the patient's memory was greatly impaired and his mind otherwise affected from the vital drain; he was dyspeptic, his bowels were costive, and threatening symptoms of consumption had already begun to manifest themselves when he came under our care. Two months of our special treatment, at the patient's home, effected a perfect and permanent cure, and completely arrested all abnormal seminal losses. The following grateful letter is from the gentleman in question:

WORLD'S DISPENSARY MEDICAL a.s.sOCIATION, Buffalo, N.Y.:

_Gentlemen_--Permit me to say that, six months after having discontinued your treatment, my cure remains perfect. This great permanent and enduring benefit was secured to me through only two months of your skillful treatment and careful management of my case. Your medicines had a wonderful control over my disease, driving away its terrible symptoms as if by magic; they imparted to me a new power, filled my body and mind with unusual vigor, and transformed me from one racked with pain and living death or worse, to a full measure of health and happiness. I feel that if I had not been opportunely and successfully treated by you, that my life would have been permanently blighted, and that the happy and contented mind that now inspires these lines would ere this have been dethroned of reason. I feel that you have been my savior. I have not had a single nocturnal emission since leaving your treatment, six months ago. Thanking you, gentlemen, from the depths of a grateful heart, I remain.

Your obedient servant, G., Cayuta, Schuyler Co., N.Y.

Did the interest of our readers demand it, we could add to the preceding list an almost endless number of extracts from letters written by grateful patients, expressing their heart-felt thanks for having been cured of spermatorrhea and impotency by our treatment. But we have we trust given sufficient to ill.u.s.trate our great success in dealing with these maladies.

A CAUTION TO THE AFFLICTED. We are daily consulted by persons suffering from spermatorrhea and impotency who have been victimized by ignorant charlatans. Some seek to dupe and swindle the unwary by claiming to have themselves been cured of spermatorrhea or impotency by some prescription, which they offer to send free to any sufferer. When the prescription is obtained it is found to consist of a few articles well-known to every druggist, coupled with certain arbitrary and fict.i.tious terms, unknown to everybody and not to be found in any medical work extant. Following the prescription is a modest suggestion that if it cannot be filled by the home druggist, the benevolently-disposed party furnishing the prescription will be pleased to send the medicine, already prepared, for from three to five dollars.

Of course, the whole scheme from beginning to end being a swindle, when the "medicine" is obtained and taken it proves entirely useless. Skill and genuine merit do not go begging. Men who spend hundreds of dollars for the publication of advertis.e.m.e.nts offering to give away valuable information can always be safely set down as swindlers.

In the public prints will be found advertised various ready prepared, "put-up," or proprietary, so-called "remedies," "Specifics," "Boluses,"

"Pastiles," "Rectal Pearls," "Urethral Crayons," "Voltaic Belts,"

"Galvanic Belts," "Batteries," and "Pads," all recommended as infallible remedies for spermatorrhea and impotency.

A vast experience in the treatment of these affections has satisfied us that each case must be studied and treated according to the symptoms manifested, and that medicines that are adapted to one stage of the disease are entirely unsuited to other stages of the same case. No "Pad"

or "Battery and Pad," "Galvanic" or "Voltaic Belts," "Battery," "Bolus,"

or "Soluble Crayon," ever did or can help a case of this disease, except it be in the imagination. Although the proprietors of the most popular proprietary medicines in the market, medicines carefully adapted to the cure of the diseases for which they are recommended, yet, should we attempt to get up a general remedy to cure spermatorrhea and kindred maladies, we are certain it would be an utter failure, and this is entirely true of all such preparations now and heretofore offered for sale, and, from the very nature of the diseases they are recommended to cure, ever must be. Each case must have medicines carefully prepared to meet the conditions present, and when these conditions, from the effects of treatment or other causes, change, the treatment must be varied accordingly.

POSITIVE INJURY instead of benefit often results from the employment of some of the nostrums advertised for the cure of spermatorrhea, impotency and kindred affections. Especially have we found that the use of "Soluble Urethral Crayons," "Boluses," "Pastiles", and kindred contrivances, which are so extensively advertised, are exceedingly injurious, and often render otherwise moderate and simple cases, complicated and incurable.

Although of pretended French origin, they are evidently the invention of an ignoramus, who knows nothing of the delicate anatomy of the generative organs or of the proper treatment of the diseases incident thereto, for none other would have thought of such a preposterous plan of treatment. No man should insert such absurdly devised and mischief breeding contrivances into his urethra (urinary ca.n.a.l), for thereby he is almost sure to do himself a permanent injury. So far from having been invented by an eminent French surgeon, as claimed, such treatment is entirely unknown in France, and ever has been, as the writer well knows from personal observation and enquiry while sojourning in that country and visiting its most noted hospitals and medical inst.i.tutions.

All the various "Troches," "Boluses," "Wafers," "Suppositories,"

"Pearls," "Rectal Pearls," "Rectal Capsules," and other contrivances which are recommended for the cure of Spermatorrhea and kindred weaknesses, and which are designed to be employed by inserting them into the lower bowel (r.e.c.t.u.m), and there permitting them to dissolve, are only so many irrational and filthy devices for duping the ignorant and innocent sufferers from these maladies.

AN ALLURING SWINDLE. A still more enticing, and hence more dangerous, device for swindling unfortunate sufferers, is the widely advertised "Vacuum Treatment" or "appliance" so loudly and plausibly recommended for "Developing weak and wasted organs." A simple, little, bra.s.s air pump, connected with a gla.s.s tube, or cylinder, fitted with a valve at one end, which costs not to exceed one dollar and a half, is the worthless device palmed off on the confiding ones _at from fifteen to thirty dollars_. This is done under the _false pretense_ that its daily use to pump blood into the weak or wasted organs, will cause their development and growth.

Thousands have invested their hard earned cash in this worse than worthless, injurious, contrivance. In fact the head of the concern putting out this alluring device is said to have ama.s.sed a fortune out of the nefarious business.

So far from benefiting any one, out of several hundreds of cases that have come under our personal observation, in which this apparatus has been faithfully used for a long period of time, we have never met with a single case that had derived the slightest benefit therefrom. On the contrary, we have been called upon to examine many who had been _seriously injured_ by its use.

The sudden congestion or filling and over-distention of the delicate blood-vessels of the organ operated upon, caused by placing it in a vacuum, is liable to rupture these minute vessels, causing the infiltration of blood into the tissues and giving rise to inflammation, and in some cases, to _suppuration, mortification, sloughing_ and _death_.

In other cases, the blood-vessels of the organ and adjacent parts are so weakened by the _strain_ put upon them as to induce varicocele and other diseased conditions. In spermatorrhea, it is the worst possible thing that can be applied, for by forcing an undue amount of blood into the part the sensitiveness of the organ is increased, irritation is set up in the deep urethra, and the emissions are increased in frequency. In this, and other ways, hundreds of men but slightly out of health have been permanently injured.

But this is only a small part of the story connected with the reprehensible business of palming off "The Vacuum Developing and Strengthening Appliance." The precious rascals, not content with making from a thousand to fifteen hundred per cent. profit on the miserable device furnished, while advertising fifteen dollars ($15.00) as the price of the "appliance" and "accompanying preparations," for "_ordinary cases_," make a general practice, when they have secured the fifteen dollars ($15.00), of sending it by express _with a bill to be collected on delivery_ FOR FIFTEEN DOLLARS ($15.00) MORE. With this bill they send an explanation, that "on re-examining the case" they "found it necessary, or thought it advisable, to send their stronger and more expensive preparations and appliances _for the worst cases_ AND SO HAVE CHARGED FIFTEEN DOLLARS ($15.00) MORE TO COVER THE EXTRA EXPENSE."

It is astonishing that there are those who can be induced to part with their money for such claptrap devices, and still more so that having been duped and swindled out of their hard earned money through false pretenses and promises of benefit held out to them, they should submit quietly to such extortion and not have the swindlers arrested and prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretenses as they richly deserve. For what crime can be more deserving of punishment than the holding out of false hopes and pretenses to the unfortunate? Employing the United States mails for swindling is a pretty dangerous business, and sooner or later these rascals will, we predict, find it out to their sorrow. They are pretty sure to get hold of some men, ere long, who will invoke the aid of the United States District Attorney to bring them to justice.

YOUNG MAN, if you have, through ignorance, fallen into practices that have arrested your physical growth and development in any of your organs or parts, shun all such unscientific and worse than worthless contrivances as you would shun a pestilence. No matter how plausible the web of arguments woven to entrap you, be a.s.sured, they are the utterance of knaves who care not what false hopes they encourage so they secure your money.

Consult only those whose well known skill, experience and integrity will insure honest dealings and the most scientific treatment known to the "healing art," and who supply the latter at reasonable cost.

Be a.s.sured also, that when, through proper treatment, your weakness and functional derangements are overcome, the parts that have suffered therefrom, will regain all the strength and development possible to impart to them through the aid of the physician's skill. Nature often accomplishes wonders in this direction, when aided by the skillful pract.i.tioner.

VARICOCELE;

_OR, ENLARGED VEINS OF THE s.c.r.o.t.u.m SOMETIMES CALLED FALSE RUPTURE_

Probably no affection of the generative organs has been given more attention by surgeons than this. Its great frequency, being present in about one-third of all cases of spermatorrhea, and its disposition to result in impotency and wasting away of the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, bring it constantly before the profession.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 1.

A healthy t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2.

t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e wasted from Varicocele.

The enlarged and torturous veins are shown to be about as large as the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e.]

CAUSES.--Varicocele commonly results from long continued fatiguing exercise, in the upright position, heavy lifting, jumping, straining, severe constipation, injuries from horseback riding, bicycle riding, especially the latter, or any obstruction or obstacle to the free return of blood through the spermatic veins. Self abuse and excessive s.e.xual indulgence are also prolific causes of varicocele.

When the spermatic veins are over-distended to such an extent that their tonicity is impaired, they gradually lose their capacity for transmitting the blood, and a slowly increasing enlargement and tortuously of veins results. This goes on, becoming steadily more marked, until the pressure of the engorged vessels upon the spermatic cord impedes the full circulation of blood in the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e and causes a wasting and softening of this gland. A loss of s.e.xual power and increasing weakness of the generative organs generally follow this gradual destruction of the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e, and sometimes total and incurable impotency results.

This affection is also designated by the terms _circocele_ and _spermatocele_. It consists of an enlargement or varicose condition of the veins of the s.c.r.o.t.u.m or spermatic cord, and affects the left side more frequently than the right. This is due to the fact that the spermatic veins of that side are longer, more dependent and tortuous, and, consequently, support a greater column of blood than the other side. The enlarged veins feel like a bundle of earth-worms. The knotty and tortuous vessels sometimes form quite a large tumor, which is, now ever, but rarely sensitive to the touch, yet sometimes causes a feeling of weight in the s.c.r.o.t.u.m and loins, and sometimes produces a sensation of numbness in the thighs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3.

Well developed Varicocele.]

When varicocele of an aggravated or largely developed type is present, a.s.sociated with any weakness of the generative organs, as spermatorrhea or impotency, it must be cured before the organs can regain a healthy condition, as by the constant pressure of the abnormal quant.i.ty of blood and enlarged veins upon the spermatic cord, arteries, and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, the irritability, weakness, and wasting, are increased. The use of suspensory bandages, with strongly astringent lotions, will, in mild cases, produce relief and many times cure. Except in the worst cases, it is well to try these means before resort is had to operative surgical treatment, unless the patient is anxious to be cured in a more speedy manner. The treatment by suspensory bandage and lotions is necessarily somewhat slow in producing remedial results; yet, many quite well marked cases have, in our experience, been cured by such means perseveringly applied. Although many who have been unable to come to us for an operation, have been cured by suspensory bandages and our improved lotions applied to the affected parts, in all cases in which the veins are very much enlarged, we recommend the sufferers to come here and undergo our surgical treatment, which is painless in its execution and radical in its results.

It has been recognized by physicians and surgeons for over a century, that in bad cases of varicocele a cure can only be certainly and permanently effected by operation. Many have been the methods of operation advanced by the prominent surgeons of every age, but all have met with such an alarming mortality, that they have been one by one abandoned, except as a last resort in extremely bad cases. A late author gives the percentage of deaths from the various old operations, now in general use throughout this country and Europe, as varying from seven to fifteen per cent. of all cases. In contrast to this, we point with pride to our records, by which we are shown to have operated upon over a thousand cases by our original method, obtaining in each and every instance a perfect cure, without a single alarming symptom or a death ensuing. This we think is sufficient evidence of the perfect safety of the operation and its superiority over every other method. So every sufferer with the disease, we would recommend it as a positive means of securing a permanent cure. Various worse than useless devices are advertised by quacks, who, as a cla.s.s, are afraid to undertake surgical treatment for the cure of varicocele. One has what he calls a "varix clamp," or "clasp," to be worn upon the enlarged veins. Many "compressors" and other equally useless devices are advertised and sold for the same purpose. These are not only perfectly worthless, but positively dangerous in their application. The pressure they make upon the spermatic cord, nerves, and artery, is very apt to result in impotency and a rapid wasting away of the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. Patients should avoid all the catch-penny devices recommended for varicocele, as none of them are worth a moment's consideration.

Even a moderate degree of morbid enlargement of the spermatic veins will sometimes cause such engorgement and obstruction to the free circulation of the blood in the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e, as to cause gradual wasting or shriveling of that organ. In some cases the morbid condition will give rise to seminal weakness, or spermatorrhea. Many of these cases that can only be cured by surgery, are trifled with by quacks, who attribute the spermatorrhea, or loss of s.e.m.e.n, to everything else than its true cause--varicocele.

To ill.u.s.trate, Mr. B., of Colorado, applied at the Invalids' Hotel and Surgical Inst.i.tute, a few years ago, and said he had for five years been troubled with nightly emissions of s.e.m.e.n and his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es were gradually wasting away. He had been under the treatment of men making great pretensions as specialists, to whom he had paid several hundred dollars in the vain hope of getting cured of spermatorrhea. They treated him with medicines only, and did him no good whatever. On examination, we found a very varicose or enlarged condition of the left spermatic veins, and gave it as our opinion that the seminal loss was wholly due to this abnormal condition and could only be cured by an operation that would remove the varicocele. The operation was promptly performed. In two days he was able to leave his bed, and in a week started home to Colorado. Some months thereafter we received a letter from him wherein he said: "The enlarged veins continued to absorb and grow less and less, until, in a few weeks' time, all unnatural enlargement had disappeared.

With a steady improvement in the condition of the veins, I experienced corresponding improvement in my general health, and the seminal losses grew less and less, and finally, long ago, disappeared entirely. I feel that my manhood, with all the powers that should belong thereto, are mine to enjoy. In other words, my restoration to health is complete. Had I saved the large amount of money that I fooled away on those quacks, and given it all to you, I feel that you would then have been only fairly paid for the great good you have done me."

The foregoing is but a fair sample of letters that we are almost constantly receiving from those who have pursued useless treatment for spermatorrhea, dependent upon varicocele, and have been speedily cured by our never-failing operation for this malady. Among the great variety of operations in surgery for various diseased conditions, performed by our surgeons, none have been attended with more uniform satisfaction, and perfect success, than has our operation for varicocele.