To comprehend and study true impotence, the student will be attracted to the brain and spinal cord; as there only can the pathology be carefully comprehended. Nearly all the descriptions of this perplexing malady have been confined principally to the chronic flaccid penis and the general nervous phenomena most likely to co-exist. I must say that our knowledge is very limited beyond the superficial sources of information; and we have to content ourselves with simply describing the appearance, for the real disease itself; not but what structural changes exist in the sexual organs, worthy of note, but such changes are only secondary. Depending upon organic disorganization of the nerve-substance, we have all grades of loss of sexual power, from the simple chronic premature ejaculation to advanced and perfect paralysis of the organ. Any male who, from exhaustion of nervous force, cannot perform the act of copulation in a normal manner, may be said to be in a degree impotent. If he be able to effect intromission and then unable to complete the act, from premature ejaculation――providing this is a common occurrence――he may be said to be impotent. The continent may undergo premature ejaculation and not be impotent. Neither is flaccidity likely to follow ejaculation from such cause. The more advanced cases of impotence are not even capable of procuring erections; and often semen is discharged in the flaccid condition without the knowledge of the patient: such may be the result of spermatorrhœa and impotence combined. The long-continued and frequent indulgence of masturbation must be a most frequent cause of impotence. I have only observed a very few whom I knew to have brought upon themselves this condition without the habit of masturbation; and even then I am not positive in knowledge. Yet they were rare debauchés, with money to squander and appetites so salacious that the almost constant contact with women was their custom. On the other hand, it seems that a male human being is constructed for endurance of his sexual organs. A notorious polygamist in practice, once living in the city of Elmira, New York, was known to lavish his smiles on his “kept women,” whom he numbered by scores, and still he was potent till he died in advanced life. We must have a most excellent example in the famous President Young whose wives, we are inclined to believe, must have kept him on the _qui vive_, as his children bear evidence, as well as the fascination and attractiveness of his young wives. The exciting cause of impotence must combine a constant and long-continued sexual debauch with the depraved chain of thought that must necessarily accompany such degradation; and the practice of self-pollution must be the most fruitful of all causes.