And, surely, if there are any human beings in this case, the self-pollutors must be among them.

When the veil is drawn, the representation of their conduct appears to them in all its most hideous colors and aspects. They find themselves guilty of a crime, of which divine justice would not postpone the punishment, but punished it immediately with death; a crime reputed a very great one even by the heathens themselves.

The shame that pursues them infinitely augments their misery. Such, it is true, is the dissoluteness in some places, that debauches with women are hardly looked upon there, but as matter of custom; the guilty of them make no mystery of it, and have no notion of their being the more contemptible for it: But where is the self-pollutor that dares avow his infamy? Ought not this necessity of wrapping himself up in the shades of secrecy, appear, in his own eyes, a proof of the criminality of this act? What numbers have not perished for their never having dared to reveal the cause of their evils?

It appears a natural sentiment in several letters of the Onania, “I would rather die than appear before you, after such a confession.”

And indeed one cannot help being infinitely more ready to excuse a man, who being seduced by that inclination which Nature has ingraved on all hearts, and of which she makes use for the preservation of the species, is in no wrong but that of not respecting the boundaries set by the laws, and by health. He is one carried away by his passions, and who is wanting to himself. We are much more willing to absolve such an one, than him who in his sin violates all the laws of Nature, perverting all her sentiments, and disappoints all her ends. Sensible of how great a horror he must be in to society, if his crime was known, that idea alone must incessantly torment him.

“It seems to me (says one of these criminals, a fragment of whose letter I have above quoted) as if every one could read in my face, the infamous cause of my ailments, and this idea renders company insupportable to me.”

They fall into melancholy and despair; of which examples may have been seen in the fourth Section of this work, and they labor under all the evils that are brought on by a continuity of dejection or sadness, without having, and this is dreadful indeed for a criminal, any pretext of justification, any motive of comfort. And what are the effects of such a melancholy? A relaxation of the fibres, a lentor of the circulation, imperfection of the digestions, a deficient nutrition, obstructions occasioned by those shrinkings or contractions which most particularly seem the effect of sadness or melancholy: [“the strainers of the liver, says Senac, close themselves, and the bilious overflow spreads over the whole body:”] spasms, convulsions, palsies, pains, increase of anguish ad infinitum; with all the train of evils consequential to these.

It would be superfluous to enlarge more here on the dangers particular to self-pollution: they are but too real, and too self-evident: I proceed to the last part of this work, the methods of cure.

ARTICLE III.
Curative Indication.

SECTION IX.
Means of Cure proposed by other Physicians.

There are some diseases against which the success of remedies is next to sure. Those which are the consequences of venereal exhaustion, and, a fortiori, of self-pollution, do not enter into this class; and the prognostic which is to be made of them, when they shall have arrived at a certain degree, has nothing in it but what is desperately terrible.

Hippocrates has, in such case, denounced Death. “It is a deplorable disorder, says Boerhaave; I have often seen it, but could never cure it.”[92]

M. Van Swieten had, for three years, a patient whom he mentions for it, under his hands, without success. I have seen some perish miserably of this disorder. There were even others of those patients, to whom I could not so much as give relief. Yet these examples should not intirely discourage: there are not wanting instances of a happier issue. Some may be found in the collection of the Onania, and in the Observations of Physicians; my own practice has furnished me some. In the same place where Hippocrates gives a description of this disease, he points out means of cure.

“When, (says he,) the patient is in this condition, let there be fomentations made for him, over his whole body; then give him a medicine that may provoke a puke; after that, another to purge his head, and then a cathartic by stool. After the purgatives, give whey or asses milk; after that, cows milk for forty days. While he drinks milk, he must abstain from flesh meats, and in the evening he may have some boiled wheat. After his milk diet is over, he should be nourished with the most tender meats, beginning with a small quantity, and by this means he will recover afresh. For a whole twelvemonth he must avoid all kind of debauchery, all venereal indulgence, and all immoderate exercise; he must confine himself to walks, in which he will do well to avoid the cold, or the sun.”

It is remarkable here, that Hippocrates begins the method of cure by an emetic, and by purging. Now there is a danger of such an authority’s obtaining the force of a law, and yet the observation of this law would, in a number of cases, be pernicious. But it is easy to get rid of this perplexity, by observing, that he only ordered purgatives in a view to divert the fluxion which he supposed threw itself from the head on the spine of the back; and that, in another place, he puts those who are sick, after venereal excesses, in the catalogue of those to whom no purgatives should be given, “because not only they can do no good, but, on the contrary, they may do a great deal of harm[93].” So that it is this last rule which must be considered as the general one: the first constitutes an exception, and an exception which appears founded on a theory, of which the error is now discovered, and which especially therefore ought to have no force.

In Hoffman’s dissertation, which I have already often quoted, there are to be found two observations, that should recommend great circumspection as to the use of emetics. They are as follow:

A man of fifty years of age, having, for a long time, indulged himself in excesses with women, fell into a state of languor, emaciation, and consumptiveness. His sight grew dim, so that at length objects appeared to him as if he saw them through a cloud. It was at this epoch that he took an emetic by way of preventing a fever, which he apprehended, after a long use of eating ham. This medicine made his head swell, and totally deprived him of his eye-sight.

A common prostitute, who, every time that she had commerce with a man, felt a dimness in her eyes come upon her, having taken an emetic, lost her eye-sight intirely[94].

M. Boerhaave seems to have rather meant to establish the difficulties of the cure, than to point out the means of obtaining it.

“There are (says he) little hopes of cure; the milk passes too easily; the exercise of riding does no good to this kind of patients; they complain that these remedies weaken them; and, in fact, exercise encreases the waste of their seed, in the course of their nocturnal pollutions by dreams, and at the same time diminishes their strength. When the day re-appears, they quit their beds, all bathed in their own sweat, and but the weaker for even their sleep; they cannot bear aromatics, of which the effects are also dangerous. The only resource, in these cases, is that of aliments, a moderate exercise of the body, bathing the feet, and frictions used with precaution[95].”

Among the consultations of this great man, which M. de Haller has added to the edition which he has procured to us of them, there is one for a man, who had rendered himself totally impotent for the joys of love.

“A man (as the case is stated) has so much weakened the organs of generation, that the seed comes away of itself, every time that he has any beginning of erection, for that is never a complete one[96], and the seed never spurts forth with any force, but dribbles away, drop by drop, which renders him impotent; his memory, stomach, loins, legs, are totally weakened.”

M. Boerhaave answered: “These disorders are always extremely hard to cure: they hardly ever declare themselves, but when the body has lost so much of its vital forces, that the remedies remain without efficacy. However, it may not be amiss to try what the following ones will produce.

“First, A dry and temperate regimen, composed of fowls, of beef, of mutton, of kid, all rather roasted than boiled, a small quantity of ale, but excellent in its kind, of a very little wine, but then that wine must be of a very generous restorative sort.

“Secondly, A great deal of exercise, augmented, by due degrees; it should only border upon weariness, and always be taken fasting.

“Thirdly, Frictions, with a flannel perfumed with the smoke of incense, to be used to the loins, the abdominal region, the pubis, the groin, the scrotum, and regularly repeated night and morning.

“Fourthly, He should take, every two hours, half a drachm of the following kind of electuary:

“Immediately after which he should drink half an ounce of the following medicinal wine:

“I hope (added Boerhaave) that the patient will be cured, after having employed this regimen for two months.”

But he would not make use of it, and died, in a few weeks, of a malignant flux. What would have been the effect of this remedy? That can be only conjectured.

M. Zimmermann wrote to me, that he had made a patient try it for two months, but without any success.

M. Hoffman sets forth the precautions which he conceived ought to be taken, and the methods to be employed.

“We must (says he) avoid all the remedies which do not agree with weak habits of body, or that may weaken still more those who are already enervated: such are all astringents, all over-refrigerants, all saturnines, nitrous, acid, and especially narcotic medicines: all these are pernicious in cases of this kind, and unfortunately there is, however, too much use made of them.

“The end to be proposed is to re-establish the vital forces, and to restore to the fibres the tension they have lost. Heating remedies, volatiles, aromatics, those that have an agreeable but strong odor, are not proper here: nothing but the mildest aliments should be allowed, such as are the fittest to repair that nutritious gelatinous substance, which immoderate evacuations will have destroyed: such are strong broths of beef, of veal, of capon, with a little of wine, of lemon-juice, of salt, of nutmeg, and cloves. To the use of this diet may beneficially be joined, those remedies which favor perspiration, and which reanimate the languishing tone of the fibres.”

In another consultation for a self-pollutor, he ordered the taking, every morning, a certain measure of asses milk mixed with a third of the quantity of Selter-water.

It would be useless here to quote the precepts, or observations of other authors. I shall content myself with relating here a very instructive case, such as it stands in a thesis of M. Wespremi, which thesis includes fourteen observations, all interesting ones[97].

“W. Conybeare, about thirty-six years old, had had, for six years past, his eyes so dimmed, without any apparent blemish in them, that he saw all objects as it were through a thick cloud. He had been successively in the three most celebrated hospitals in London, St. Thomas’s, St. Bartholomew’s, and St. George’s; at length, about two years ago, he came to ours. In all the others, after other remedies, it had been tried whether a mercurial salivation might not cure this kind of gutta serena. The physicians were tired out, and the patient quite discouraged. On my interrogating him very particularly, and very carefully, upon his illness, he told me, that, from time to time, he felt a pain all along the spine of his back, especially when he stooped to take up any thing; that his legs were so weak, that he could scarce stand a minute upright, without leaning, which if he did not, his legs would tremble, and he had then a vertigo and dizziness; that his memory was so weakened, that he sometimes appeared stupid; and I could myself observe, that he was greatly emaciated. All this made me suspect, that his gutta serena might be no other than the symptom of a more dreadful disorder, and that the patient was attacked with a real tabes dorsalis.

“I pathetically urged him to own to me, whether he had not polluted himself with the abominable crime of Onan, which intirely destroys the balsamic parts of the nervous fluid. After much hesitation, and blushing, he confessed it. I ordered him to take, over night, two mercurial pills, containing six grains each, of mercurius dulcis, and the next day an ounce of purgative salts, and to repeat that four times in the space of fifteen days. On the expiration of that term, I made him, according to the prescription of Hippocrates, live forty days intirely upon a milk-diet, during which time he used to have himself, two or three times a week, rubbed, as he went to bed. At the end of this method of treatment, he returned from the country, in a much better condition than he had gone thither. I advised him, afterwards the cold-bath for three weeks. For two months together he took, twice a day, the mineral electuary and volatile julep, to which he joined frictions, and the bathing his feet. These remedies so far restored his health, that he wanted to resume the exercise of his trade, which was that of a baker; but I advised him to betake himself to some other business, being afraid that his inhaling the flower, that rises in the kneading, might form in his as yet weak stomach and breast, a paste, of which the effects might be dangerous.”

M. Stehelin gave some relief to the youth mentioned towards the end of the second Section, by strengthening baths, by Tinct. Mart. Ludovic. and by aperitive broths.

The principal remedies mentioned in the Onania consist of nostrums, which the author reserved to himself. It may be observed on it, in general, and the observation is important, that he employed no evacuants, and that only corroboratives constituted the basis of them, under the names of The strengthening tincture, and The prolific powder. They act, without that action’s producing any sensible effect, but, as the author says, they inrich, strengthen, and nourish the parts of generation in both sexes. According then to him, they give them new vigor; they favor the generation of seed, and powerfully restore oppressed nature: in a word, like all nostrums, they do every thing that is required of them. There is a third secret remedy mentioned, under the name of The restorative draught, which operates very efficaciously, and, in fact, if any faith may be given to the testimonies adduced in favor of these remedies, they have doubtless great virtue. Besides these three nostrums, he gives some formularies: One is a draught, composed of amber, aromatics, and of some other remedies of that class: A second is a liniment, composed of essential oils, of balsams, of acrid tinctures. Both, these compositions appear to me too stimulative, and as they have not any experience in their favor, I omit the particularising them. He specifies two others, which seem more proper.

Take a quart of this every day.

Before I go on to the next Section, I think myself bound to mention, that very sensible views, applicable to the disease of which I am treating, may be found in a book lately published, intitled, Precis de Medecine pratique, a work of M. Lieutaud, physician to the young royal family of France, who, after having got to himself a distinguished name among the Anatomists and Physiologists, has moreover secured to himself one of the first ranks among the practitioners, by his excellent treatise on intermittent and remittent fevers.

The chapters of his last work relative to the tabes dorsalis, are those which have for their title calor morbosus, morbific heat, at disease, be it here parenthetically remarked, very frequent, of which no one had before treated, and which has been often subjected to improper methods of cure, as I have elsewhere lamented, and of which M. Lieutaud has been the first to unfold the symptoms, the nature, and curative indication. Vires exhaustæ, and anæmia, or deficiency of blood, a very interesting chapter, which is intirely and originally that author’s.

M. Lewis, whose work I could not procure for myself before the impression of the first edition of mine, is one who has the most of any enlarged upon the method of cure. I had the pleasure of finding that we agreed perfectly in our ideas, and that we employed the same remedies, especially the bark, and the cold bath; a conformity which appears to me a proof in favor of the practice we have, in this case, both followed. I shall only quote here the two aphorisms that comprehend the substance of his doctrine: I shall avail myself of some passages in the explanation which he gives to them, to confirm, in the following Section, my own practice.

“The cure of this disease (says that able physician) depends as much on knowing what to avoid as what to do. Without a nice regularity of the non-naturals, therefore, medicine will have little or no effect. Thus the salubrity of the air is or great importance; the diet should be analeptic and cooling; sleep little, and in due season; moderate exercise must be used, especially riding on horseback. The secretions of the body are to be regulated if out of order, and the patient should be entertained with chearful company and mirthful diversions. All the remedies that are necessary, are derived from the two classes of balsamics and astringents[99].”

He recommends strongly, in the place of tea, which, he observes, is always prejudicial to the nerves, the infusion of mint, or balm, in every dish of which is to be put a tea-spoonful of the balsamic mixture of cream and yolks of eggs beat together, with two or three drops of oil of cinnamon, which he says give a very agreeable flavor, and is highly grateful to the stomach[100]. This indeed I have had occasion to remark myself, of its being both balsamic and strengthening; but I shall place here a remark that may have its use: It is, that M. Lewis specifies among the corroboratives, medicines from lead, Tinct. faturnia[101]; and I think it my duty to give this caution, without offence to his authority and to that of other respectable physicians, that the internal use of all preparations of lead is a real poison, according to the almost unanimous confession of all the faculty. I have seen the most tragical effects from it; and the shameless rashness of quacks, furnishes but too many occasions of observing such. But if the use of it is to be preserved, like that of some other poisons, let the administration of it at least be reserved for those who are able to discern its dangers and its virtues, and not indicated without due precaution in works designed for the public.

I shall conclude this Section with the method employed by M. Storck in the cure of these disorders: it is a very simple and a very efficacious one. And by comparing all these methods, it will be seen, that they are all founded on the same principles, all tend to the same end, and all employ means nearly similar, a conformity which forms a recommendation of the method, and inspires confidence.

“I begin (says M. Storck) by trying to restore the patient with nourishing broths. Rice, oatmeal, barley boiled with broth, or milk, or milk itself, are all very serviceable; but it must be observed, to let him eat but little at a time, and often. Should the stomach be so weakened, which is sometimes the case when the disorder is far advanced, that it cannot bear even these light aliments without great anguish, the patient should be put to the female breast of milk, a recourse which has retrieved many out of the most desperate condition. To restore strength and activity to the relaxed fibres, I would recommend the use of wine heated with a hot iron, bark, and cinnamon. As soon as the patient has strength enough to walk, it will be of infinite service to him, his going into the purest air of the country, or mountains[102].”

SECTION X.
The Author’s Practice.

There are some diseases of which it is difficult to discover exactly the cause, and consequently it must be so to determine the indication, and to regulate the method of cure; and yet such diseases are easily cured when those points are once ascertained. It is not so of the Tabes dorsalis. That disease is known, its cause is known: (it is, as M. Lewis observes, a particular sort of consumption, of which the proximate cause is a general debility of the nerves:) the indication is easily formed, and there can be no great differing in opinions about the essential method of cure: and yet even the best methods often fail; this is a reason the more for fixing the particulars with exactness.

A general relaxation of the fibres, a weakness of the nervous system, a depravation of the fluids, are the causes of this evil. It depends on the weakening of all the parts; the great requisite is to restore strength to them; this is the sole indication, which has again its respective subdivisions, derived from the different parts that are weakened; but as the same remedies are of service in them all, it is needless to particularise those subdivisions here, which has been already done in the course of this work.

Those who are totally ignorant of physic, and who nevertheless talk more of it than those who understand it, will probably think it very easy to accomplish this indication; and that with good aliments, and the cordials with which pharmacy abounds, it is a matter of great facility to restore strength; while, on the contrary, sad experiences have taught our greatest physicians that nothing could be more difficult.

“It is easy (says M. Gorter) to diminish the vital forces, but we have hardly any thing capable to repair them[103].” This may easily be conceived, on reflecting, that aliments and remedies are nothing but the instruments of which Nature makes use to support itself, to repair her losses, and to remedy the disorders which happen to the body. And what is Nature? The aggregate of the forces of the body harmoniously distributed. It is the vital force respectively distributed into the different parts. When those forces are exhausted, Nature it is that consequently fails; she is the working architect that no longer executes her functions; furnish her with materials, as long as you please, she is in no condition to employ them. You may bury an architect, with all his building, under stone, wood, and mortar, without an inch of a wall being thereby repaired. Just so it is with diseases dependent on the destruction of the vital forces: the aliments repair nothing, the remedies operate nothing. I have seen stomachs so weakened, that aliments received from it no more preparation than in a vessel of wood: sometimes they take place in it according to the laws of their specific gravities, and when, at length, a new ingestion has, by its weight, irritated the stomach, they have been known, on a slight effort, to come away, successively, clearly separate one from another. At other times, through a long stay in the stomach, they corrupt in it, and are vomited up just as if they had been suffered to putrify in a vessel of silver or porcelain. What good can be hoped from aliments of this sort? The exhaustion of strength is not, indeed, so considerable in all: there are some in whom the vital forces are only weakened without being totally destroyed; for these there remains some resource in aliments, and even in remedies. What remains unperished of Nature draws some benefit from aliments: as to the remedies, they are to be sought for among those which have been observed to be fittest for re-animating that principle of the vital action which is verging to extinction: these are the adventitious aids, with which the architect is to be enabled to work at his task at the least expence possible of the strength that is left him: sometimes, too, they serve, as a spur to a weak horse, that may oblige him to make an effort to get out of a plunge in a slough; but what expertness, what prudence are not required, to be able at one cast of the eye, to judge comparatively the depth of the slough, and the strength of the animal? If the attempt is beyond his strength, that spur will, it is true, oblige him to make an effort; but if that effort is not sufficient to disengage him, and bring him into the good road again, it will only serve to totally exhaust him.

The weakness which is produced by self-pollution, is attended with such a difficulty in the choice of restorative remedies, as does not occur in other cases; which is, that those articles must, with the greatest care, be avoided, that, bringing with them any irritation, might awaken the sensual passion. In the animal mechanism, that mechanism so different from the inanimate, and so little subjected to the same rules, there is a law, that, when the motions augment, the augmentation is the most considerable in the parts the most susceptible. In self-polluters those parts are the generative ones. It is in these parts that the effect of the irritating remedies will the most sensibly manifest itself; and the dangerous consequences of this effect cannot be too circumstantially guarded against in the choice of the means of cure. What then are they to be? This is what I shall examine, after having particularised the regimen. In this particularisation, I shall follow the common division of the six non-naturals, as they are termed, Air, Aliments, Rest, Motion, the natural Evacuations, and the Passions.

AIR.

Air has the influence over us, that water has over fish, and even a much more considerable one. Those who know how great a power the air has, and who also know that there have been Epicures who could, by the taste, discover not only the river, but even the part of the river out of which the fish had been taken;

such, I say, will easily be sensible of the importance it is of to the sick, their breathing one air preferable to another. Such as may have once entered into a room inhabited without being aired; such as may have kept walking on the side of a marsh in the heats; or have resided in low places, surrounded, on all sides, with eminences; such as have made a transition from a populous town to the country; who have breathed the air at sun-rise or at mid-day, before or after a shower of rain; all these, I say, will conceive how great an influence the air has over health.

The sick or weakly have, more than others, need of a good air; it is a remedy that acts, and perhaps the only one that does so, without the concurrence of our nature’s vital forces, to which it gives no trouble, and is no draught upon them: and for that very reason, it is of the greatest importance not to neglect it. That air which is the properest for a general atony or relaxation, is a dry, temperate air: too moist, or too hot an air are pernicious. I know one labouring under a disorder of this kind, whom great heats throw into a total faintness or exhaustion of strength, and whose state of health varies in summer, according to the vicissitudes of days less hot or less cold. A cold air is much less to be dreaded; and it is necessarily, and according to Nature, that it should be so. Heat relaxes still more the fibres which are already but too relaxed, and dissolves still more the humors already too much dissolved: Cold, on the contrary, is a remedy against these two evils. When the Caribes are attacked with the palsy, after, and in consequence of those dreadful convulsions of the cholic, to which they are subject, when they cannot be sent to the warm-baths in the north of Jamaica, the other expedient is to send them to some place of a colder air than that of their country; and this bare change of air has always manifestly a favorable effect.

Another essential quality of the air, is, that it should not be impregnated with noxious particles: that it should not have lost, by its stay or stagnation in inhabited places, that kind of reviving quality which constitutes all its efficacy, and which might be called its vital spirit as necessary to plants as to animals; and such is the air one breathes in a country, open, airy, interspersed with the verdure of herbs, bushes, and trees.

“Let the sick, says Aretæus[104], live near meadows, fountains, rivulets; the freshness they exhale, and the gaiety which those objects inspire, fortify the mind, restore strength to the body, and give new life.”

The air of the town, continually sucked in and let out again, continually crouded with foul vapors or infected exhalations, combines at once the two inconveniences of possessing less of that vital spirit, and of being big with noxious particles.

On the other hand, the air of the country is enriched with the two opposite qualities. It is a pure virgin air, an air impregnated with all that is the most volatile, the most agreeable, the most cordial, in the effluvia of the plants, and in the vapor of the earth, which is itself very salubrious.

But it would be of no use to fix on a place with a good air to live in, if one does not chuse to breathe it. The air of rooms, or chambers, if it is not continually renewed, is nearly the same in all. It can hardly be called a change of air, from a close room in town to a close room in the country. There is no enjoying the benefits of a healthy atmosphere but in the open fields. If infirmities, or weakness, hinder the procurement of that benefit, by the going or the being carried thither, at least the air of the room, or chamber, should be renewed several times in a day; not simply by opening a door or a window, which renews it only a little, but in letting into the chamber a torrent of fresh air, by opening, all at once, two or three different and opposite inlets. There is no disorder that does not require this precaution; but it is requisite not to expose the sick person to the force of the current of air, and it is always very easy to place him out of the power of it.

It is also extremely important to breathe the morning air. Those who deprive themselves of it, for the sake of remaining in a stifling atmosphere between four curtains, voluntarily renounce the most agreeable, and perhaps the most strengthening of all remedies. The freshness of the night will, by morning, have restored to the air all its vivifying principle; and the dew which evaporates, by degrees, after having loaded itself with all the balm of the flowers on which it will have dwelt, renders the air truly medicinal; you solace yourself in a vaporous bath of the essence of plants, the air of which you continually draw in, and of which nothing can be equivalently substituted to the good effect. The ease, the refreshment, the strength, the appetite, which we may feel procured by it, for the rest of the day, are a proof in every one’s power, and a stronger one than all that I could add.

I have, very recently, seen the most sensible effects of it on some valetudinarians, and especially on such as were hypochondriacs: these experienced, in the clearest manner, that if they indulged themselves in breathing the morning air, they were always the more chearful, the more lively, for the rest of the day; and those who passed that rest of the day with them, could not, by that mark, be mistaken as to the hour of their rising.

It is easy then to conceive, how important this effect is for those who are affected, in any degree, with the Tabes dorsalis, who are so often hypochondriacal; and in whom a return of chearfulness is alone sufficient to furnish an unquestionable sign of a general amendment of health.

ALIMENTS.

In the choice of Aliments I would recommend the two following rules:

First, To take no aliments, but what, under a small volume, contain a great deal of nourishment, and are of easy digestion. This is an aphorism of Sanctorius: Coïtus immoderatus postulat cibos paucos et boni nutrimenti[105].

Secondly, To avoid all that have any acridity.

It is of great importance to restore to the stomach all its strength; and nothing is more destructive of the forces of the animal fibres than an over-stretch; so that the dilatation of the stomach by an over-abundance of aliments would daily weaken it: besides, if it is too full, weak persons feel a state of uneasiness, of anguish, of debility, and melancholy, that augments all their disorders. Both these inconveniences are prevented by the choice of aliments, such as I have recommended, by taking of them a little at a time, and frequently. It is essential that they should afford an easy nutrition: the stomach is in no condition with persons in their state, to conquer any thing hard of digestion: its action, which is extremely faint and languid, would be totally destroyed by aliments too indigest, or of a nature to diminish its strength.

Upon these principles may be formed a catalogue of such as are proper in this case, and of those which should be excluded. In this last class are all flesh-meats naturally hard and indigestible; such as pork; all flesh of old animals; all that has been hardened by salt or smoak, a preparation which, at the same time, renders them acrid: all that are too fat, or greasy; a quality which, in any other subject of aliment whatever, relaxes the fibres of the stomach, diminishes the action, already too weak, of the digestive juices; they remain indigested, dispose to obstructions, and acquire, by their stay in the stomach, an acridity, which, breeding a continual irritation, gives inquietude, pains, want of rest, anguish, feverishness. In short, there is nothing which persons of a weak digestion ought more carefully to avoid, than fat or greasy food. Unfermented pastry-ware, especially when kneaded up with fat, is another sort of aliment much above the strength of a weak stomach. Flatulent garden-stuff is also very noxious, by producing a turgescence that distends it, and at the same time cramps the circulation in the neighbouring parts; such, in general, are all forts of cabbage, of leguminous pulse, and such plants as have a taste and smell remarkably acrid, which last quality renders them noxious, independently of their flatulency.

Fruits, which are so salutary in acute and inflammatory distempers, in obstructions, especially those of the liver, and in several other disorders, are never proper in this case; they weaken, relax, and enervate the strength of the stomach; they augment the attenuation of the blood, already too aqueous; and ill digested, they ferment in the stomach and intestines, and this fermentation sets free an astonishing quantity of air, which produces enormous distensions, that absolutely disturb the course of the circulation. I have, in a woman, seen this effect: so considerable, for her having eaten too many cherries and currants, four and twenty hours after a very easy delivery, that her belly was stretched to such a degree as to become livid; she appeared lethargically dozing, and her pulse was almost imperceptible. Fruits also leave, in the first passages, a principle of acidity, apt to occasion several dangerous symptoms, so that it is necessary to abstain almost totally from them. Crude garden-stuff, vinegar, verjuice, have the like inconveniences, and deserve the like exclusion.

But though the catalogue of prohibited articles of food be a long one, that of the allowable ones is still longer. It comprehends the flesh of all young animals, fed in healthy places, and wholesomely fed; such especially is that of veal, lamb, or young mutton, young beef, fowl, pigeon, turkey, partridge. Lark, thrushes, quails, and other wild fowl, without being absolutely forbidden, are, however, attended with such inconveniences, as not to allow of their entering into daily food. Fish is under the same restriction.

But it is not enough only to chuse your flesh-meats with due discernment, but they must also be properly prepared. The best way is to roast them by a gentle fire, so as to preserve their gravy, and not dry them up too much; or to stew them slowly in their own juices. The flesh-meats that are boiled in too much water, give out to it all that they have of juiciness, and remain incapable of nourishing: thus they often become nothing but fleshy fibres deprived of their nutritious juice, and equally insipid to the taste, and indigestible to the stomach. It is common for weak persons, and even for such of them as are above all suspicions of being too nice, not to be able to eat of them without their stomach being disordered by them. The more tender flesh meats are, the less they can bear this preparation, which, in the case of sick people, ought to be reserved for extracting by it from hard or tough meats whatever nourishment they may contain.

Yet whatever preparation may be carefully employed upon the flesh meats, there are persons who cannot digest them: and to them it becomes as necessary to give them the broth, extracted by a gentle boiling; but as that has too great a tendency to putrefaction, it must be accompanied with some bread, and a dash of lemon juice, or a little wine: such a mixture is of the most desirable, in that case, for nourishment. Some lobsters boiled, and crushed in the broth, heighten its relish, and make it perhaps more strengthening; but they have the double inconvenience, of being somewhat heating, and of rendering the broth more susceptible of a quick corruption; so that on these two accounts it is good to be on one’s guard.

Bread and garden-stuff have not the advantage of containing at once a great deal of nourishment in a small quantity; but the use of them, especially of bread, is indispensably necessary, to prevent, not only the distaste which the use of a regimen consisting totally of animal meats would not fail of producing, but also that putridity which would be the consequence of them, if not mixed with vegetables. Without this precaution, there would soon a spontaneous alkali disclose itself in the first passages, with all the disorders consequential thereto. I have seen terrible accidents produced by this regimen, in weak persons, to whom it had been prescribed. One of the commonest symptoms is, thirst; they are obliged to drink, and drink weakens them: besides, the liquid they drink does not easily mix with the humors of the body, as that mixture depends on the action of the vessels, which is very languid; and if, unfortunately, as is not unfrequent with those who do not use much motion, the action of the kidneys diminishes, the liquids pass into the cellular membrane, and immediately form œdematous swellings there, and, at length, dropsies of all kinds.

These dangers are prevented by a due alliance of the vegetable regimen with the animal. The best garden-ware are, the tender roots, herbs of the endive kind, artichoaks, asparagus. There are some others, which, though tender, are of disservice; being too cooling, they deaden the strength of the stomach.

Farinaceous grains, prepared and boiled in cream, with flesh broth, are an aliment not to be slighted, as it combines every thing that is nourishing in the two kingdoms animal and vegetable, while their mixture prevents the danger from each aliment given single; the broth hinders the meal from turning sour, the meat the broth from putrefying. By reading, with a little reflexion, observant Naturalists, it may easily be perceived, that distempers are more malignant in the north of Europe than in its middle regions: may not that be owing to more flesh meats being eaten in proportion than vegetables?

What I have above said of fruits, need not, however, hinder, where the stomach still preserves something of its strength, one’s indulging one’s self, now and then, with a small quantity of the best chosen for the sort, and for ripeness; the most watery are those which are the least proper.

Eggs are an aliment of the animal kind, and an aliment extremely useful; they strengthen greatly, and are easy of digestion, provided that they have but little or even no preparation by fire, for if the white is once hardened it does not dissolve again; it becomes heavy, indigest, and unnutritious: it might then be the aliment of those who digest too quickly, and not of those who have rather no digestion. The best way of eating them, is just as they are new laid from the fowl, without any preparation, or in the shell, after only three or four dips in boiling water, or stirred into warm, and not boiling broth.

Conclusively; there remains to mention the aliment from milk; which unites all the qualities that can be desired, without having any of the inconveniences that are to be dreaded. It is the most simple, the most easily assimilable, and the quickest restorative: all prepared as it is by nature, it needs no risk of spoiling it by an artificial preparation: like the broth of flesh meats it nourishes, but is not susceptible of putridity; it prevents thirst, it supplies the place of meat and drink; it keeps up all the secretions; it disposes for tranquil sleep; in short, it fulfils all the indications that present themselves in this case. M. Lewis attests its having produced the best effects[106]. Why then is not it always employed, always substituted to the other aliments? Answer. For a reason which is peculiar to it, which unnaturalises its effect, and which makes it sometimes produce a very different one, from that which might be hoped from it, or reasonably expected.

This reason is, that sort of decomposition to which it is subject. If the digestion of it is not very quick, if it stays too long in the stomach, or if, without too long a stay there, it meets in it with matters of a nature to hasten that decomposition, it undergoes in the stomach all the changes, which fall under our observation, out of it. The butyrous, the caseous, the serous parts separate; the whey sometimes occasions a quick diarrhœa; sometimes it passes off by the urinary passages, or by perspiration without nourishing; the other parts, if they stay in the stomach, are not long before they trouble it, cause uneasy sensations, bloatedness, loathings, cholics; and if one is not immediately affected by them, it is because they will have passed into the intestines, where they may, it is true, remain some time without a sensible prejudice, but they acquire there a singular acridity, and after a certain time they produce mischiefs which the delay will not have rendered the less dangerous; and, indeed, it may be established for a law, that should render one extremely circumspect in the prescription of it in dangerous cases, that if it is an aliment of which the digestion is the easiest, it is also that of which the indigestion is the most noxious. We have already mentioned the difficulties that Boerhaave found in the use of it; but however great they may be, the advantages to be drawn from it are so considerable, that it is worth while to study all possible means for surmounting them, and happily such means there are. They may be ranged under two classes; attentions to the regimen, and the medicines. Of these last I shall refer the discussion to one of the following articles.

The attentions to the regimen are, first, the choice of the milk. From whatever species it may be determined to procure it, the female that furnishes it should be healthy, and live regular: Secondly, during the time of taking it, all aliments should be avoided that can turn it sour; such are all fruits, raw or prepared, and in general every thing that is acid: Thirdly, it must be taken at times very distant from other aliments; it not taking kindly any mixture: Fourthly to take only a little of it at a time: Fifthly, all the while to take care of keeping the breast, the abdominal region, and the legs extremely warm: and, above all, Sixthly, (for without this precaution all the others would be useless,) to be very moderate as to the quantity of even the best chosen aliments. During this recourse to milk, there should be no trouble given to the stomach; the smallest over-load, the slightest indigestion, leaves in it a principle of corruption, which presently turns the milk, and may, of the most wholesome of aliments, make a poison sometimes very violent, and, at least, almost always infallibly one, in a greater or less degree.

Another question occurs: What is the milk that merits preference? In answer to this, I will not enter into an examination of the various sorts of milk; this would be over-lengthening my work by an adventitious subject; for satisfaction in which there are many recourses extant, and perhaps none better than a dissertation, now indeed out of print, of the late Mons. d’Apples, M. D. and Professor of Greek and Morality in this College[107].

Now-a-days there are hardly any kinds of milk used but of the female breast, or of asses milk, the goat’s, or the cow’s. Each has its different qualities: it is the comparison of these qualities, and of the indication presented by the disorder, that should determine the choice from among them. There are few cases in which milk from the cow may not be succedaneously used for all the others. That from the female breast is generally believed the most strengthening: it is the notion of the greatest masters in the art, and yet this opinion bears upon a ruinous foundation, which is, the women’s making use of animal food, without considering at the same time that the preference is constantly given to the milk of a hale robust nurse from the country, who eats no flesh-meats, or, at least, very little, and who lives only upon bread and vegetables. I believe, however, that there are cases in which it may be tried with success. The noble cures operated by the use of it, leave no doubt of its efficacy; but there is one inconvenience which is peculiar to it, which is, that it must be taken immediately from the breast that furnishes it: this is a precaution, of which Galen has already taken notice of the necessity, and, in ridicule of those who would not care to confine themselves to it, he refers them “like asses, to asses milk.” But in the case of recourse to the female breast for lactation, might not the vessel of conveyance excite those desires which the main point is to keep under? Might it not expose the patient to the temptation of renewing the adventure of that Prince, the story of whom Capivaccio has preserved to us? He had two nurses given him, whose milk produced so good an effect, that he put them both into a condition of supplying him, at the end of some months, with new milk on a fresh account, if he should happen to need it.

It is thought that asses milk has the nearest analogy to that of the female breast; but, if I may be allowed to say it, this assertion is rather matter of opinion than of experience. It is the most serous, and, from that very quality, the most laxative. It is a most pernicious error the imagining it the most strengthening. Daily observations demonstrate the contrary, and prove not only that it is not the most efficacious, but that it is, perhaps, the least so. I have rarely seen any good effects from it; sometimes I have seen bad ones, and am not the only one that has seen them. M. de Haller, writing to me, says, “It appears to me, that this same asses milk rarely does what it is desired to do.” Now, the inutility of a pretended remedy, in disorders where the hopes of a cure are founded on it, is one of the most grievous defects. M. Hoffman advised it in cases where there were at once an exhaustion and a desire[108].

Before I quit this subject of Aliments, I ought to conclude with the counsel of Horace, to avoid mixtures.