Dr. Edward Charles Spitzka

  • Excessive venery and masturbation have from time immemorial been supposed to be the direct causes of insanity. Unquestionably they exert a deleterious influence on the nervous system, and may provoke insanity partly through their direct influence on the nervous centres, partly through their weakening effect on the general nutrition. That there is a close connection between pathological nervous states and the sexual function is exemplified in the satyriasis of mania and the early stages of paretic dementia as well as in the sexual delusion of monomania and the abnormal genital sensations of that condition.1

  • In his "Masturbatic Insanity," Dr. Spitzka presents a study of twelve cases of insanity, all of which he attributes to masturbation. He claims that the occurrence of psychoses as the result of masturbation is primarily due to arrested brain nutrition. This results from the withdrawal from the circulation of brain-nourishing lecithin and other phosphorus compounds through excessive seminal discharges. For we must remember that lecithin is a chief constituent of the myelin sheaths of nerve- cells and essential for their activity, during which it is consumed--for it is the nerve-oil that keeps the fire of nerve and brain activity burning. Since lecithin is also a principal constituent of the semen, we can readily understand why excessive sexual activity should lead to lecithin deficiency and undernutrition of nerve and brain cells.2

Footnotes:

1. Edward Charles Spitzka, Insanity: It's Classification, Diagnosis & Treatment. (1887) EB Treat

2. Dr. Bernard. R.W., Science Discovers the Physiological Value of Continence. (1957) Health Research: Pomeroy