One day I was rung up by a psychologist to ask if I would teach a patient to inject himself in the penis. The case was as follows: a young Turkish man was due to leave for his homeland to collect his wife. They had only been married for a few weeks, but unfortunately his […]

A spinal cord lesion is a catastrophic event. There is an abundance of therapies for this group of mostly young patients: physiotherapy, water therapy, psychotherapy, you name it. But sex therapy is not on the list. Not only many professional helpers, but family members and others believe the patient will never again have a sex […]

Some years ago there was a discussion about whether someone born with a serious disorder of the external sex organ could have a satisfac­tory sex life as an adult. When a survey was conducted among adult men with an ‘open’ bladder (exstrofia vesicae) and the accompanying seriously abnormal (short) penis, it was found that seven […]

Quite a few men believe that a steady intake of alcohol heightens po­tency — but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Chronic excessive alcohol consumption can lead to all kinds of sexual problems. Alcohol attacks the body in various ways: in the long run both the central and the peripheral nervous system can be […]

In the last century it was also believed that certain medicines could adversely affect potency. Roubaud described how in the treatment of tuberculosis with iodine vapour he saw four cases of impotence develop. Saltpetre also acquired a bad reputation. The use of bromide compounds mainly affected sexual desire. Camphor dulled the sensi­tivity of the genitalia. […]

In the Middle Ages witches were often accused of having caused impotence. They could do this, for instance, by putting a spell on the member so that it disappeared completely into the abdomen; German witches especially were regarded as very skilled at this. The first person to link impotence and witchcraft was Hincmar, the archbishop […]

Our views on impotence are completely bound up with the time and culture we live in. The ancient Chinese, for instance, never saw the phenomenon of impotence as a significant problem. When the penis no longer became hard enough, the method of ‘soft’ entry was recom­mended, as described by Jolan Chang in The Tao of […]

Under normal circumstances every man has nocturnal erections, the duration and hardness of which are related to age. Usually a man has such erections between three and five times a night for between twenty and thirty minutes as part of dreaming. In ed with a physical cause, nocturnal erections occur scarcely if at all. The […]

In the physical examination we check whether there is a normal pattern of male hair growth, we listen with the aid of a stethoscope to see if there are any indications of vascular constriction, and if necessary we test reflexes, and feel the penis and the scrotum. Physical examination of a man with ed does […]

Not only patients but doctors too consider it important to decide whether the erection problem is caused by psychological or physical factors. Why is that? In the case of a patient with a duodenal ulcer not much attention is usually given to underlying psychosocial problems. A prescription for medication to inhibit or neutralize stomach acid […]