In three months, the patient was improved by the use of moxas and of antiscrofulous remedies, by a suitable regimen, and particularly by abstaining from onanism, for which he had conceived not only disgust, but even a horror. The abdominal limbs regained their strength, heat, and sensibility; the patient could walk on crutches, and could even stand erect for a few moments, and could take a few steps unaided.
In this case, which is remarkable in more than one respect, the symptoms of myelitis preceded the curve of the spine, and then disappeared, although the spine did not regain its primitive rectitude. The debility, numbness, retraction, and paralysis of the limbs, appeared long before the pain in the back, after which the curve in the back began to appear; and then these limbs regained their sensibility, force, and motion, while the gibbosity remained always the same. This curve, then, could not be the cause of the paraplegia, because the latter appeared first, and the spine remained curved after the paralysis was removed. The development of symptoms apparently scrofulous, in a man more than twenty years old, who had hitherto presented nothing analogous, and whose parents were healthy; the loss of his hair; the affection of the seminal passages, and the state of the genital organs, &c., &c.--facts to which we shall recur hereafter--all contribute to render this case interesting.
We shall see, in the following case, also related by M. Dalandeterie, an instance of vertebral caries in an onanist:--
A cook, forty-five years old, of bad constitution, but having always enjoyed robust health, indulged in masturbation, although not to very great excess. Eighteen months before his case was published, he perceived pains and weakness in the loins, frequent colics, often followed by brownish dejections, and sometimes by obstinate constipation. He suffered, too, from flatulency; and in the left haunch there was a pain, which increased or diminished with this flatulence.
The patient, notwithstanding the progress of these symptoms, continued to masturbate. Debility and pains in his loins extended into the abdominal limbs, and increased so much, that he was obliged to keep his bed: he could only lie on his left side; but in this position his motions were easy. The diminution in the natural heat, the livid color of the skin, the softness and flaccidity of the flesh, debility, loss of sleep and of flesh, thirst, constipation, &c., were added to the symptoms already mentioned.