The following description is less long, and not quite so terrible as the first one.
“I had the misfortune, in my tenderest youth, being, to the best of my remembrance, not above eight or ten years of age, to contract that pernicious habit of self-pollution, which very early ruined my constitution; but especially, for some years past, I find myself under an extraordinary oppression: my nerves are extremely weak, my hands without strength, always shaking, and in a perpetual sweat. I have violent pains in my stomach, arms, legs, sometimes in my loins, and in my breast. I am often troubled with a cough; my eyes are always weak and dim; I have a devouring appetite, and yet I grow very lean, and never but look extremely ill.”
In the Section on the method of cure, will be seen the success of the remedies in this case.
“Nature herself (says a third correspondent) opened my eyes to the cause of that languor under which I found myself, and to the danger of that abyss into which I was precipitating myself. Pimples or eruptions on the part which was the instrument of my crime, and the faintness I felt in the midst of the act itself, left me no room to doubt of the cause of my suffering.”
I might add here a great number of cases of this nature, on which I have been consulted since the second edition of this work, but they would be useless repetitions. I shall only confine myself to two or three of the most recent.
A man in the flower of his age wrote to me, but the other day, in the following terms.
“In my early youth I contracted a most dreadful habit, which has ruined my health. I am overwhelmed with stoppages and giddinesses of my head, which give me room to apprehend an apoplexy. I have been bled for them; but those who advised me, are sensible they were in the wrong of it. I have a contraction of my breast, and consequently a difficulty of breathing. I have frequently pains of the stomach, and I suffer successively almost all over my body. In the day-time I am heavy, inclined to doze, and restless; in the night my sleep is disturbed and agitated, and does not refresh or repair me. I have often itchings; I am pale, my eyes are weak and sore, my complexion is jaundiced, and I have an offensive breath, &c.”
Another writes me thus: “I cannot walk two hundred paces without resting. My weakness is extreme. I have continual pains all over my body, but especially in my shoulders. I preserve my appetite, but that is rather a misfortune to me, as I have pains of the stomach the moment I have eaten, and throw up whatever I have got down. If I read a page or two, my eyes water, and are sore. I often sigh involuntarily. Filo xylino flaccidius veretrum, omnisque erectionis impotens, semen quidem, manu sollicitum effluere sinit, nequaquam vero ejaculat, adeo cæterum imminutum et retractum, ut oculi de sexu vix judicare possint.”
The particulars of this case, with the success of my method of treatment of it, will appear, in their place, in this work; and I furnish them with the more reason, for that he was the most weakened and the most governable of any patient I have seen.
A third, who had abandoned himself to this detestable practice, at the age of twelve years, appeared to have suffered even more in his intellectual faculties than in his bodily health. To the following purpose was the account of himself: “I feel (says he) my warmth sensibly diminish. My sensations are considerably dulled; the fire of my imagination greatly slackened; the sense of my existence infinitely less quick; every thing that passes at present before me appears to me like a dream; I have difficulty of conception, and less presence of mind; in short, I feel I am perishing, though I preserve my sleep, my appetite, and am not much altered in my looks.”
A consequence, and not a rare one, of this practice, is the Hypochondrialgia, and if those who are Hypochondriacs, from other causes, abandon themselves to it, all the symptoms of that disorder are exasperated by it, and it becomes incurable. I have seen the most cruel inquietude, agitations, anxieties result from these two causes united; and repeated observations have proved to me, that, in those Hypochondriacs, who are subject sometimes to attacks of delirium, or frenzy, self-pollution always hastens on the fits. The brain, weakened by this double cause, successively loses its faculties, and the patients fall at length into a state of an idiotism, which is never interrupted but by some attacks of madness.
The Memoirs of curious Naturalists mention a melancholic man, who, in pursuance of Horace’s advice, used, sometimes, to seek in wine, a diversion from his melancholy, and who, in the honey-moon of his second marriage, having indulged excessively the pleasures of coition, fell into so dreadful a frenzy, that it was necessary to chain him down[36].
Jakin, in his Commentaries upon Rhazes, has preserved to us the history of a melancholic man, whom excesses of that kind threw into a consumption, attended with a frenzy, which made an end of him in a few days[37].
It is well known that the epileptical paroxysms, accompanied with an effusion of the seminal liquid, leave a greater faintness and stupor than other fits, without that symptom. Coition will provoke and bring on the fits of that disorder, in those who are subject to it; and it is to this cause that M. Van Swieten imputes the great faintness into which those fall, who have frequent returns of those fits[38]. The late M. Didier knew a merchant of Montpelier, who never performed the act of coition without having immediately after it an attack of the epilepsy[39]. Galen makes the like observation[40]. The Observations of Henricus ab Heers, not to mention many others, attest the like effect[41].
M. Van Swieten knew an epileptic patient, who was attacked with a fit on his wedding night[42].
M. Hoffman knew a woman, who was very lewd, and who, for the most part, had a fit of the epilepsy after every act of venery[43].
And here it may not be improper to introduce what M. Boerhaave says, in his treatise on the Disorders of the Nerves, that in the venereal ardor, all the nerves are affected, sometimes even to death. He mentions the example of a woman, who, after every coition, fell constantly into a pretty long fainting fit; and that of a man, who died in the act of his first coition, the force of the spasm having instantaneously thrown him into a total palsy. And I find in the excellent work with which M. de Sauvages has lately inriched the physical world, a most singular, and perhaps before unheard of, case of a man, who, in the midst of the act used to be attacked (and this disorder lasted twelve years) with a spasm, which threw his whole body into a state of rigescence, with loss of sense: Ita ut illum præ oneris impotentia in alteram lecti partem excutere cogeretur uxor, ut evacuatio spermatis lenta flaccidoque veretro demum succedebat, remittente corporis rigiditate[44].
I know several cases which have some affinity to this. M. de Haller has specified a great many, in his remarks on the Institutes of Boerhaave[45]; and there are numbers to be seen in the works of other observers.
It has precedently been remarked, that self-pollution would produce this dreadful disorder, and that happens oftener than is imagined: Can it then be surprizing, that the acts of it should recall the fits, as I have more than once seen it in persons subject to the epilepsy; or is it strange that they should render it incurable?
This total rigescence or inflexibility of the body, of which M. Boerhaave makes mention, is one of the most uncommon symptoms; I never saw it above once, but then it was in the most consummate degree. The ill had begun by a stiffness of the neck and spine, and successively spread to all the limbs: this was the case of an unfortunate young man, whom I saw some time before his death. Uncapable of lying on the bed in any other posture but the supine one, and without power to move hand or foot, immoveable, in short, and reduced to receive no aliments but as they were put into his mouth; he languished a few weeks in this deplorable condition, and died, or rather went out like a taper, almost without any indication of pain.
I have since seen another terrible example of this total and mortal rigescence, which will deserve a specification here.
On the 10th of February, 1760, I was called to visit, in the country, a man of about forty years of age, who had been very strong and robust, but who had been guilty of great excesses with women and wine, and who had moreover often exercised himself at trials of bodily strength. It was some months precedently that his disorder had begun by a weakness in his legs which made him stagger as he walked, as if he had been drunk. Sometimes he would actually fall down, though on the plainest ground. He could not descend any steps without a great deal of trouble, and hardly durst stir out of his apartment. His hands shook terribly; it was with much difficulty he could write a few words, and those sadly scrawled. But he could dictate readily enough, though his tongue, which had never had any great volubility, began to have rather somewhat less. His memory was good, and the only thing that could make any detriment to his intellects to be suspected, was, that he was less attentive to the game of draughts, and that his countenance was a good deal altered. He had an appetite, and slept; but it was with difficulty he could turn himself in his bed.
It appeared to me, that his excesses with women and wine were the primary cause of his disorder, and I judged, that his straining in his trials of bodily strength might be the reason why his muscles were more particularly attacked. The season was rather unfavorable to the employment of remedies, and yet it was requisite, in the mean while, to stop the progress of the disease. I advised him frictions of the whole body, with flannel, and other corroboratives; proposing to myself to augment the doses with the adjunction of the cold-bath, in the beginning of the summer. At the end of some weeks the tremors of his hand appeared some what abated. In the month of April there was a conciliation held on him, in which his disorder was imputed to an accident of his having, about two years before, written, for some months, in a room newly plaistered and damp. Upon this there were applied warm baths, unctuous frictions, powders said to be diaphoretic and antispasmodic; but no alteration for the better followed. In the month of June, a second consultation decided for his going to the baths of Leuk, in Valais: he went, and on his return he had more tremors, and a greater stiffness. Since then (September, 1760) till the month of January 1764, I have not seen him above three or four times.
In 1762, on the credit of some advertisement, he sent for, from Frankfort, the medicines of the Onania, which did him no service. Last year, he took others from some foreign physician, but with as little success. His disorder had, from the beginning, made slow but daily advances, and many months before his death, he could no longer support himself on his legs, nor could he so much as move his hands or arms. The embarrassment of his tongue increased, and his voice failed him to such a degree, that there was no hearing easily what he said. The extensor muscles of the head let it continually fall on the breast. He had constantly an uneasiness in his back: his sleep and appetite successively diminished: the last months of his life he could hardly swallow any thing. Since Christmas an oppression came on him, with an irregular fever. His eyes grew dim in a singular manner. When I saw him again in the month of January, he used to pass the whole day, and a great part of the night, in an elbow-chair, leaning backward, his feet extended on a chair, his head falling down every instant on his breast, having always a person standing near him, and constantly employed in changing his attitude, lifting his head up to feed him, to give him snuff, to blow his nose; and to make out, by listening attentively, what he said. The last days of his life he was reduced to pronounce his words letter by letter, which were taken down in writing just as he could articulate them. Finding that I gave him no hopes, and that I only employed some lenitives for his oppression and fever, urged, at length, by a desire of living, he opened himself in, confidence to one of his friends, for his immediately acquainting me of it, as the cause to which he imputed all his illness, and which was his self-pollution, having begun that infamous practice many years ago, and continued it as long as he could; adding, that he had felt this disorder increase in proportion to his delivering himself up to it. This confession he confirmed to me some days afterward, and withal, that it was on this account that he had been determined to send for the medicines of the Onania.
Excess of venery does not only produce the languors of chronical diseases, but sometimes throws into acute ones, and always aggravates any disorders that proceed from other causes; it easily produces malignancies, which, in my opinion, are but a failure of the forces of nature.
Hippocrates, in his histories of epidemical diseases, has, of old, left us his observation on a young man, who, after excesses of wine and venery, was seized with a fever, accompanied by the most vexatious and irregular symptoms, and which proved mortal[46].
All that M. Hoffman says on this head deserves a reference to it. After having spoke of the danger of the pleasures of love, for wounded persons, he examines that of such as, having a fever, will nevertheless venture upon them. He begins by quoting an observation of Fabricius Hildanus, who says, that a man having had a commerce with a woman, the tenth day of a pleurisy, which had had a favourable crisis from a profuse sweat, was attacked with a violent fever and remarkable tremors, and died the thirteenth day. He gives you afterwards the history of a man of fifty years of age, gouty, and much addicted to venery and wine, who, in the first days of his recovery from a false pleurisy, was attacked, immediately after a coition, with a general tremor, an excessive flushing in the face, a fever, and all the symptoms of the disorder from which he was recovering, but much more violent than the first time, and was in a much greater danger. He tells you too of a man, who never indulged any venereal excesses without having, for many days afterwards, fits of an intermittent fever. He concludes with a case from Bartholinus, who saw a new-married man attacked, on the next morning of his wedding night, after conjugal excesses, with an acute fever, a great lowness of spirits, faintnesses, nauseas of the stomach, an immoderate thirst, lightness of head, want of sleep, and anxieties; but who was cured by rest and some restoratives[47].
M. Chesneau saw a young married couple, attacked, the first week of their wedding, with a violent continual fever, with a flushing in the face, which was also considerably swelled: both of them had a great pain in the small of their back, and both perished in a few days[48].
M. Vandermonde describes a fever produced by the same cause, a very tedious fever, and attended with the most dreadful symptoms, but of which the issue was more happy than in the case adduced by Hippocrates. I will not here recite the description of it, because of its length; but I earnestly recommend to physicians the reading it in the work itself, which is now easily to be come at any where. I shall subsequently and in another place speak of the method of cure.
M. de Sauvages describes this disorder under the title of the burning fever of the exhausted: the pulse is sometimes strong and full, at others weak and low. The urines are red, the skin dry and hot, the thirst considerable. They have nauseas, and cannot sleep[49].
In 1761 and 1762 I saw two young men both very healthy, very strong, and vigorous, who were attacked, the one on the next morning the other on the next night of their respective weddings, with a violent fever, without any shudder, their pulse quick and hard, lightness of head, many slight convulsive motions, an intolerable restlessness, and the skin very dry. The second was extremely thirsty, and made water with great difficulty. I imagined, at first, that an excess of wine might have some share in these accidents, but I was fully convinced to the contrary, at least by the second. They were both of them cured in about two days time, a circumstance, which, joined to the epoch of their disorder, and to its symptoms, leaves no doubt about the cause of it.
Careful observations and sad experience have taught me, that acute disorders were always very dangerous in persons accustomed to self-pollution; their progress is commonly irregular, their symptoms unaccountable, their periods interverted. The constitution affords no resources; Art is obliged to do every thing, and as it never procures perfect Crises, when, after a great deal of pains, the disease is got under, the patient remains rather in a state of languor than of recovery, which exacts a continuation of the most assiduous care, to hinder him from falling into some chronical disorder.
I find that Fonseca has already stated this danger. “Many young persons (says he) and those very robust ones, are either attacked, after excesses with women, on the same night, with an acute fever that kills them, or fall into grievous disorders, of which they find it a difficult matter to be cured; for when the body is weakened by venereal excesses, if it should be attacked with an acute distemper, there is no remedy[50].”
A young lad, not quite sixteen, had abandoned himself to self-pollution, with such a rage, that, at length, instead of seed, he only brought blood, of which the emission was soon followed by excessive pains, and by an inflammation of all the organs of generation. Happening to be in the country, I was consulted. I ordered extremely emollient cataplasms, which produced the effect I expected from them: but I have since learnt, that he died soon after of the small-pox; and do not in the least doubt of the hurt he did his constitution by the fury of that infamous practice, having much contributed to render that distemper mortal. What a warning should not this be to young people!
All those who have sometimes occasion to have the venereal disorder under their cure, know that it frequently becomes mortal, in such as have had their constitution impaired or worn out by frequency of debauchery. I have seen the most deplorable objects in that way.
SECTION V.
Consequences of self-pollution to the female sex.
The preceding observations appear, all of them (except that from Mr. Stehelin, which concludes the second Section,) to concern principally the men: but it would be an essential imperfection, in a treatise on this subject, to omit an admonition to the female sex, of their exposing themselves to the same dangers, on their pursuing the same depraved course. There are numerous examples of their having drawn upon themselves all the evils I have set forth, and women but too often perish miserably the victims of this detestable lewdness. The English treatise upon Onania is full of confessions of this kind, which there is no reading without being seized with horror and compassion; the malignity of the disorders occasioned by it, seems even to have a superior degree of activity among the women, to what it has among the men.
Besides the symptoms which I have already described, the women are particularly exposed to hysteric fits, or dreadful vaporous affections; to incurable jaundices, to cruel cramps of the stomach and back; to sharp prickings of the nose, to the fluor albus, of which the acridity is a perpetual source of the most torturous pains; to the procidentia, and ulcerations of the womb, and to all the infirmities which are the consequences of these two disorders; to elongations of the clitoris, and eruptions on it; to the furor uterinus, which, depriving them at once of modesty and reason, puts them on a level with the most lascivious brutes, till a desperate death delivers them from pain and infamy.
The face, that faithful mirror of the intellectual and bodily affections, is the first to give outward signs of the inward disorders. Then that plumpness, that fresh color, whose union constitutes that air of youth, which alone can supply the place of beauty, and without which beauty itself can produce no other impression than that of a cold unconcerned admiration; that plumpness, I say, that fresh color, are the first to fade away and disappear: leanness, a sallow complexion, a coarseness of the skin succeed immediately to them; the eyes lose their lustre, tarnish, and express, in their languor, that of the whole machine, the lips lose their vermilion, the teeth their whiteness; in short, it is not rare that the whole figure receives a considerable damage by the total deformation of the shape.
The Rickets is a disorder, as to which Boerhaave is mistaken, when he says, it does not attack persons after the age of three years. It is not uncommon to see young people of both sexes, but especially the female, who, after their having been well-shaped to the age of eight, ten, twelve, or fourteen, and even sixteen years, fall, little by little, into a distortion of shape, through the curvature of the spine; and this disorder sometimes becomes very considerable. It is not here the place for entering into particulars of this ailment, nor into an enumeration of the causes which produce it. Hippocrates has pointed out two[51]. I shall have, perhaps, occasion of communicating, in another work, what several observations have taught me on that subject; but what I ought not to omit here, is, that self-pollution holds the first rank among the causes that produce it.
M. Hoffman having already observed, that young persons, who give themselves up to the pleasures of venery before they have attained their full growth, could not thrive, and must rather go back than advance in their stature[52], I only add, that it is obvious to sense, that a cause which can hinder growth, must, a fortiori, disturb the order, and produce those irregularities in the course of it, which contribute to the disorders of which I am treating.
One symptom common to both sexes, and which I place under this head, because it is the most frequent among women, is that indifference which this infamous habit leaves for the lawful pleasures of the marriage-bed, even while the desires of sensuality, and strength are not yet extinguished; an indifference, which does not only attach numbers to a single life, but which often pursues even to the nuptial couch.
In the collection of cases made by Dr. Beckers, a woman confesses, that this vile habit had got such an ascendant over her senses, that she had an aversion against the lawful means of satisfying the desires of nature, in the natural way.
I myself know a man, who being taught these abominations by his tutor, had the like distaste, on the first of his marriage; and his anguish at this situation, joined to the faintness contracted by that habit, threw him into a profound melancholy, which yielded, however, at length, to the nervous and restorative remedies.
Here, before I proceed farther, let me entreat fathers and mothers to make their own reflections on the occasion of the misfortune of this last mentioned patient; and there are more examples than one of the like case. If one may, to such a degree, be deceived in the choice of those to whom the important care of forming the head and heart of young persons, what ought one not to fear from those, who, being only designed to give the corporal graces and talents of education, are less scrupulously examined as to their morals? And what ought not one still more to fear from servants, too often hired without any character of their morals at all.
The young boy, or rather merely a child, of whom I made mention from M. Rast, was, as has been remarked, seduced into that vice by a maid-servant.
The English collection of cases of self-pollution is full of the like examples; and I could produce many instances of young plants blasted and lost through the villainy of the gardeners intrusted with their cultivation: and, in that light, there are such gardeners of both sexes.
What remedy, will it be said, is there for such evils? The answer is out of my sphere; I shall then make it a short one. The most scrupulous attention ought to be given to the choice of a preceptor; nor ought the care to end at that, but a watchful eye be kept over him and his pupil; that sort of watchful eye, which belongs to a sensible and careful father of a family, and which discovers the most hidden doings in every corner of the house; that eye, I say, which discovers those antlers of the stag, which escaped all other eyes, a penetrative vigilance, in short, from which nothing can be concealed, and which it is possible to have, when one is in earnest in it.
Young persons ought never to be left alone with masters liable to any suspicion; and all intercourse should be forbidden with the servants.
It is not long since that a girl of about eighteen years of age, who had enjoyed a very good health, fell into an astonishing weakness; her strength decayed daily; she was all the day stupified with a kind of dozing, and all night tormented with a want of sleep, her appetite was gone, and œdematous swellings spread over her whole body. She consulted an able surgeon, who, having satisfied himself of there having been no disorder in the menstrual flux, suspected self-pollution. The effect of his first question confirmed to him the justness of his suspicion, and the confession of the patient converted it to a certainty. He made her sensible of the danger of this practice, a cessation of which, and some remedies, stopped, in a few days, the progress of the evil, and even produced some amendment of health.
Besides self-pollution, manual or instrumental, there is another defilement, or contamination, which may be termed clitoridian, of which the known origin is traced up to the second Sappho.
A vice too common among the Roman women, from that epoch at which the general dissoluteness of morals began, and which was more than once the object of the epigrams and satires of those times.
Nature, in her sportive indulgence to variety, gives to some women a degree of resemblance to men, which, for want of sufficient examination, has, for ages, obtained a belief of that chimæra of Hermaphrodites. The supernatural size of a part which is commonly a very small one of the female organ of generation, and upon which M. Tronchin has given a learned dissertation, constitutes the whole wonder, as the odious abuse of that part does the whole ill. Vain, perhaps, of this sort of resemblance, there have been some of these imperfect women, who have usurped the functions of virility. The Greeks call them Tribades. They are a sort of monstrous beings too frequent, and which seduce the young of the fair sex with the more facility, for their having in their favor, that reason for loving eunuchs, which Juvenal imputes to some women,
There are not those consequences to be dreaded, the impossibility of hiding which betrays such as have had complaisances or weaknesses in the natural way. Of this circumstance the Tribad takes the advantage to draw the young of her sex into the crime, without her innocent accomplices even suspecting the danger: and yet it is not less in that way than in other means of pollutions; the consequences are equally pernicious. All these deviations from the course of nature lead to weaknesses, languor, pain, and death. This last kind of lewdness deserves the more attention, for that it is, in our days, grown frequent, and that it would not be difficult to find more than one Laufella, more than one Medullina, who, like those Roman heroines in obscenity, think they should slight those extraordinary gifts of nature, if they did not pervert them to the confusion of the arbitrary distinction of the sex to which they were born. It is well known, that, some years ago, at a certain court, a lady was so much in love with a young girl to her taste, that she conceived a violent jealousy against a celebrated man of Literature, who had conceived a liking for her.
But it is time to have done with these melancholic instances of the depravity and turpitude of human nature; I am mortified and sick of describing them. I will not here then accumulate a greater number of facts: those which remain for me to specify, will naturally find their place elsewhere. I shall next pass to an examination of the causes of the evils proceeding from this practice, after first concluding this Section with the following general observation.
It is this. Young people born with a weak constitution, have, on a parity of crimes, much worse consequences to fear, than those who are naturally vigorous. None escape punishment, but all do not experience it equally severe. Those especially who have reason to apprehend any hereditary diseases by the father’s or the mother’s side; such as are threatened with the gout, the stone, the consumption, the king’s evil; those who have any touches of a cough, of an asthma, of spitting of blood, of head-achs, of the epilepsy; those who have any tendency to that kind of rickets which I have precedently mentioned; all these unfortunates, I say, ought to be intimately persuaded, that every act of this sort of debauchery gives a severe blow to his constitution, most certainly hastens the attack of the evils they dread, renders the fits infinitely more vexatious, and will throw them, in the flower of their youth, into all the infirmities of the most languishing old age.
ARTICLE II.
The Causes.
SECTION VI.
Importance of the seminal liquid.
How comes it that an over-abundant emission of seed produces all the evils I have precedently described? This is what I am actually proceeding to examine. These causes may be reduced to two, to wit,
The privation of that liquid.
The circumstances accompanying the emission.
An anatomical particularisation of the organs of this secretion; the conjectures, more or less probable, on the process of nature in that secretion; with observations on its sensible qualities, would be so many points of discussion misplaced here. To prove the utility of that liquid to the human constitution, is all that is essential to the purposes of this work; and this is to be done by the testimonies of the most eminent physicians, including withal a determination of its effects on the body.
The following Section will be appropriated to an examination of the effects which are produced by the circumstances that accompany the emission.
It was the opinion of Hippocrates, that the seed was a secretion from the whole body, but especially from the head. “The human seed (says he) proceeds from all the humors of the body, and is the most essential part of them. This is proved by the weakness, the faintness, which accompanies the loss of it in the act of coition, be the quantity never so small. There are veins and nerves, which, from all the parts in the body, concur to their centre in the parts of generation; when these are turgid, and genially heated, there is felt in them a stimulation, or pruriency, which communicating itself to the whole body, carries with it an impression of pleasure and glowing warmth; the humors enter into a kind of fermentation, which separates from them all that is the most precious and balsamic in them; and this part separated from the rest, is carried, by means of the spinal marrow, to the organs of generation[54].”
Galen adopts his ideas. “This humor” (says he) “is but the most subtile, the most refined part of all the others. It has its proper veins and nerves, which carries it from the whole body, to the seminal repositories, the testicles[55].”
In another place, he says: “The loss of the seed is at the same time attended with a loss of vital spirit, so that it is no wonder that over-frequent coition should enervate the constitution, since it deprives the body of its purest essence[56].”
The same author has preserved to us, in his History of Philosophy, the opinions of several philosophers on this subject. May I be allowed to recite them here?
Aristotle, whose works of natural philosophy will be in esteem as long as the value of observations shall be known, with a just allowance at once for the merit and the difficulty of opening the career of them, calls it “the excretion of the ultimate aliment, (which, in terms more clear, signifies the most perfectly elaborated part of our aliments) endowed with the faculty of reproducing bodies in the likeness of that whereby it was itself produced.”
Pythagoras calls it, “the flower, or quintessence of the purest blood.”
Alcmæon, his disciple, a great naturalist and an eminent physician, one of the first that discovered the importance of dissecting animals, and of all the heathen philosophers, he that appears to have had the truest ideas of the nature of the soul, Alcmæon, I say, calls the seed “a portion of the brain.”
Plato termed it, “an emanation from the spinal marrow.”
Democritus thought of it as Hippocrates and Galen.
Epicure, that respectable character, who better knew than any one, that it was pleasure alone that constituted the happiness of man, but who at the same time fixed the nature of those pleasures by such rules as the Christian Hero would not disown, or object to them: yes, Epicure, whose doctrine has been so cruelly disfigured and blackened by the Stoics, that those who knew nothing of him but through the chanel of their information, have suffered themselves to be misled by it in their opinion, to such a degree, that they have mistaken for a libertine, a debauchee, a man, “who (as M. Fenelon observes) was of an exemplary continency, and whose morals were extremely regular.” To which I shall add, that his principles are the most severe censure on the tenets of his pretended modern sectaries, who knowing nothing of him but his name, most basely and unworthily misuse it, by employing it to authorise systems of infamy, which he would abhor, and by which those men of probity and sense, who love the truth, ought not to permit his memory to be dishonoured, if so it was that men, themselves lost to honour, could dishonour any one. Epicure, I say, looked on the seed as a particle of the soul and the body, and grounded, upon this idea, his precepts for the chary preservation of it.
Though many of these opinions differ in some measure, they all agree to prove how precious this humor was held.
It has been a question whether it has any analogy to any other humor? Or is it the same with that liquid, which, under the name of the animal spirits, conveyed by the nerves, concurs to all the functions of the animal machine that are of any, though ever so little importance, and of which the depravation produces such an infinity of evils, so frequent and so unaccountable? To answer this question positively, it would be requisite first to know intimately the nature of these two humors; and we are very far from having as yet reached that degree of knowledge: we can at best propose nothing more than ingenious and probable conjectures.
Hoffman says, “It is easy enough to conceive how there is such a close alliance between the brain and the testicles, since both those organs separate from the blood the most subtile and the most exquisite lymph, destined to give force and motion to the parts, and even to have an influence on the functions of the soul. So that it is not possible but that an over-abundant dissipation of these liquids should destroy the strength of the mind and body[57].”
Elsewhere he says, “That the seminal liquid is like the animal spirits, which are separated from the brain, distributed through all the nerves of the body, and seems to be of the same nature; whence it comes, that the more of it is dissipated, the less there is secreted of the animal spirits.”
M. de Gorter is in the same idea. “The seed (says he) is the most perfect, the most importantly essential of all the animal liquids: it is also the most elaborate; it is the result of all the digestions; its intimate connection with the animal spirits, proves that, like them, it draws its origin from the most perfect humors[58].”
In short, it appears by these testimonies, and by a croud of others which it would be superfluous to quote, that it is a liquid of the utmost importance; that it might be called the essential oil of the animal liquids; or, perhaps more correctly, the spiritus rector, the dissipation of which leaves the other humors weak, and, in some measure, dead or vapid.
But whatever may be the original importance of this humor, it may be objected, that since it is separated from the others, and deposited in its appropriate reservoirs, of what use can it be to the body after this its separation? It is granted, they will say, that an over-abundant evacuation of those humors, which are in actual circulation through the vessels, and by that very circulation contribute to nutrition, such as the blood, the serosity, the lymph, &c. may weaken; but it is not so easy to conceive how a humor, that is no longer in circulation, that is, in a state of separation, can produce this effect.
I answer, in the first place, that examples of this kind, and too frequent not to be generally known, ought to obviate such an objection. Who might not have observed, that an evacuation of milk (to go no further than that instance) though moderate and of no long duration, is capable of weakening a nurse that has not a strong constitution, to such a degree, that she may feel the influences of it for the rest of her life? And even the robustest would sink under it, if continued beyond a certain length of time. The reason is sensibly apparent. Upon evacuating too often the reservoirs appropriated to the reception of any liquid, the humors are, by a necessary consequence of the laws of the animal machine, determined to an afflux thither in the greater abundance. This secretion becomes excessive, all the others suffer by it, and especially nutrition, which is but a kind of secretion; the animal constitution falls into languor and debility.
Secondly, There is an answer, relative to the seed which does not hold as to the milk, which is only a liquid simply nutritious, of which an over-abundant secretion does no detriment, but in so much as it diminishes the quantity of humors: whereas the seed is an active liquid, of which the presence produces effects necessary to the play of the organs, which ceases on its evacuation; a liquid, of which, for that very reason, the superfluous emission is detrimental, in a double view. This requires explanation.
There are humors, such as those of the sweat and perspiration, which leave the body as soon as they are separated from the other humors, and thrown out by the vessels of circulation.
There are others, such as the urine, which, after this separation and expulsion, are retained, for a certain time, in reservoirs appropriated for that purpose, and out of which they are not discharged, but when they are in a quantity great enough to excite, in those reservoirs, an irritation that mechanically forces them to void them.
There is a third sort of humors, which, like the second, are separated and retained in their respective reservoirs, not for the purpose of being, at least intirely, evacuated, but to acquire, in those reservoirs, a perfection that renders them fit for new, or other functions, when they return into the mass of humors. Such, among others, is the seminal liquid. Separated in the testicles, it passes thence, by a duct of some length, into the seminal vesicules, and being constantly repumped by the absorbent vessels, it is, successively, by little intervals, returned into the total mass of the humors. This is a truth demonstrable by many proofs. One alone may suffice. In a healthy man, the secretion of this liquid is continually formed in the testicles: it flows into these reservatories of which the capaciousness is very limited, not perhaps great enough for what is separated in one day; and yet there are men so continent as not to evacuate any for whole years. What would become of it, if it was not continually disposed of, by its re-entry through the vessels of circulation? A re-entry, that is extremely facilitated by the structure of all the organs that serve for the separation, the conveyance, and the preservation of this humor. The veins are there much more considerable than the arteries, and that in such a proportion as is observed no where else[59]. It is probable then that this resorption is not only made in the seminal vesicules, but that it has already taken place in the testicles, in the epididymises, which are a kind of first reservatory appendant to the testicles, and in the vasa deferentia, or chanel by which the seed is conveyed from the testicles to the seminal vesicules.
It was not unknown to Galen that the humors were inriched by the retained seed, though he was not apprized of the mechanism.
“Every thing (says he) is full of it, with those who abstain from venery; but there is none of it to be found with those who abandon themselves to excesses of that sensuality.”
He then labors hard to discover why a small quantity of that liquid can give so much strength to the body; at length he decides, “that it has an exquisite virtue, so that it can with surprising quickness communicate its energy to all parts of the body[60].”
He proves afterwards, by various examples, that a small cause often produces great effects, and at length concludes thus: “Needs it be any wonder that the testicles furnish a liquid of a nature to diffuse fresh vigor over the whole body, when the brain produces motion and sensation, and the heart gives pulse to the arteries!”
I shall wind up this Section with what one of the greatest men of the age (M. Haller) says on the seminal humor.
“The seed is kept in the seminal vesicules till the man makes use of it, or that nocturnal pollutions deprive him of it. During all that time, the quantity there is of it excites the animal system to the venereal act; but the greatest quantity of this seed, the most volatile, the most odorous, that which has the most strength, is repumped into the blood, and produces, at its entrance into it, the most surprising changes; the beard, the hair, calluses; it alters the voice and manner: for it is not age that produces in animals this change; it is the seed alone that operates them, and they are never remarked in eunuchs[61].”
How does the seed operate these effects? Ay, that is a problem of which the solution is not perhaps as yet mature. But this however may, with great probability, be said, that this liquid is a stimulative, a goad, that irritates the parts with which it is in contact: its strong odor, and the palpable irritation it exercises on the organs of generation, leave, as to that, no doubt; nor is it unconceivable that these acrid particles, being continually resorbed and removed with the humors, should, slightly at least, but continually, stimulate the vessels, which, by that very means, contract themselves with the more force; their action upon the fluids is then the more efficacious, the circulation the more animated, the more lively, the nutrition the more exact, and all the other functions executed in the more perfect manner for it: whereas, when this aid is denied or failed, several functions never display themselves, or take place, which is the case in eunuchs[62]; and all are defectively performed, and the worse for that want.
Here then occurs a natural enough question; it is this: How comes it that Eunuchs are not afflicted with the same evils as those who exhaust themselves by excesses of venery?
It is hardly possible to answer this question, satisfactorily, till the end of the following Section.
SECTION VII.
An examination of the circumstances which accompany the emission.
There are several evacuations which are performed imperceptibly: all the others, except one, are effected in a state of perfect health, with a facility to which it is owing that they have no influence over the rest of the machine: the slightest motion of the organ which contains the matter of them, suffices for the expulsion. The excepted one is the evacuation of the seed, towards which nothing less is required than a general commotion, a convulsion of all the parts, an augmentation of quickness in the course of all the humors, to dislodge and give it issue.
Can it be thought here too hazardous a conjecture to look on this necessary concurrence of the whole animal system, as a sensible proof of the influence it has over the whole body?
“Coition (says Democritus) is a sort of epilepsy.”
“It is (says M. Haller) a most violent action, bordering upon convulsion, and which must therefore astonishingly weaken, being detrimental to the nervous system.”
It has been seen, in an observation precedently set forth, that an emission was preceded by actual convulsions, by a sort of epilepsy; and the same observation furnishes evident proof of the influence which those violent emotions had on the unhappy man who was subjected to them.
The immediateness of the faintness after the act has to many appeared, and not without reason, a proof, that it could not be only the privation of the seed that occasioned it; but what demonstratively proves how much the spasm or convulsion must weaken, is the weakness incident to those who are afflicted with convulsive disorders: that which follows the fits of epilepsy is sometimes excessive.
It could be only to the spasm, or convulsion, that the singular effect was to be imputed, which coition had on one whose name was Amman, and whose history was preserved to us by Platerus. Being advanced in years he had re-married, and being about to consummate his nuptials, he was seized with so violent a suffocation, that he was obliged to discontinue the attempt. The same accident returned every time that he renewed the trial. He applied, upon this, to a number of quacks. One of them, who had made him take a great many of his pretended remedies, assured him that he had no longer any danger to fear. On the faith of his Æsculapius, he ventured upon a fresh attempt. The same symptom was instantly the consequence: however, full of confidence, he would persist, and died in the act itself, in the arms of his wife[63].
Those violent palpitations which sometimes accompany that of coition, are also a convulsive symptom. Hippocrates speaks of a young man, to whom excesses of venery and wine had occasioned, among other symptoms, continual palpitations[64]. And Dolæus knew one, who, in the act itself, was seized with so violent a palpitation, that he must have been suffocated if he had persisted[65].
The case of the child, above quoted, is also a proof, (which did not escape the sagacity of M. Rast,) of the power of the convulsive cause; since at that age he could hardly evacuate any thing but the humor of the prostates, and not genuine seed.
These remarks have fallen under the observation of a number of good authors, who have written upon this matter. Galen seems to have hit upon them, where he says, “Pleasure itself weakens the vital forces.”
Mr. Fleming has not omitted the cause, in his fine poem on the maladies of the nerves: