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|Text=Whitman cultivated acquaintances with a number of New York physicians during the 1840s and 1850s, including {{Highlighting|several who wrote anti-onanist works. Representative of these was '''Edward H. Dixon''', author of a number of quasi-popular articles on "[[Onanism]]" and "Spermatorrhea"}} which appeared in book form in the years preceding the first ''Leaves of Grass''…. Whitman frequently reviewed and reprinted Dixon's pronouncements on sexuality and hygiene during his editorship of the Brooklyn ''Daily Times'' in the 1840s, and he entered the addresses of the physician's home and office in a notebook in 1856. {{Highlighting|Dixon was a leading American 'expert' on 'spermatorrhea,' a diagnostic category which commanded much attention in the medical literature (and patent medical advertising) of the time.}} The sufferer of this 'disorder' had supposedly (owing to excessive [[masturbation]]) lost any ability to control his seminal flow and become subject to continual debilitating seminal "discharges." Thousands of male victims of gonorrheal or other urinary-tract infections, as well as men who were simply anxious about experiencing 'wet-dreams,' must have misdiagnosed their 'complaints' (or been misdiagnosed by physicians) and relied on 'spermatorrhea' remedies, which included such extreme and painful practices as cauterization of the [[urethra]].