You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This is evidently a popular book. It first appeared in 1916 and there have been fourteen reprintings since then. The present one is called the second edition.
The author is a genito-urinary surgeon and he writes from the point of view that 'the treatment of sexual neuroses belongs to the genitourinary
rather than the neurological specialist.' We presume that he includes medical psychologists under the latter term, for neurology and psychology are often confused with one another—sometimes deliberately and with malice aforethought.
Max Huhner ascribes masturbation, impotence, pollutions, priapism, satyriasis and even enuresis to congestion of the posterior urethra and his great panacea is to pass an urethral endoscope and to apply a solution of silver nitrate to the verumontanum, in some cases with massage of the prostate; yet exactly the same or analogous conditions in the female are regarded as primary neuroses and you can do nothing for them. There is not even a hint of psychological treatment in the whole book, except perhaps when the author alludes to the psychical effect of passing an instrument with an electric light on the end of it up the urethra.
There is a special chapter on Coitus Interruptus, which is one of the causes of a congested verumontanum as well as of cardiac symptoms (with oedema of the feet, by the way), 'nervous exhaustibility', 'general neurasthenia' and gastro-intestinal symptoms; but there is not a word about fear or apprehensiveness and the author has evidently never heard of the anxiety neurosis. Treatment consists of abstinence from coitus, the application of silver nitrate to the verumontanum and the administration of bromides. There is no mention of other methods of contraception.
There is an unnecessarily long chapter (30 pages) on the possibility and justifiability of continence.
Throughout the book the clinical cases are well recorded. One of the cases of impotence—admittedly psychical, by the way—should be of psycho-analytical