I have shown the dangers of an over-abundant evacuation of the seminal liquid, by excesses of venery, and by self-pollution: I have also observed, in the beginning of this work, that it was to be lost both by nocturnal pollutions through libidinous dreams, and by that running called the simple gonorrhœa. I shall briefly examine these two disorders.
Such are the laws that unite the soul to the body, that even when the senses are locked up by sleep, the soul is taken up with ideas transmitted to it in the day.
Another law of this union is, that without disturbing this imprisonment of the other senses; or, that I may express myself less equivocally than in metaphor, without restoring to them their sensibility to external impressions, the soul can, during sleep, beget the motions necessary to the execution of those acts of the will, which the ideas on which she busies herself suggests to her. Taken up with ideas relative to the pleasures of love, delivered up to lascivious dreams, those objects which she paints to herself, produce upon the organs of generation the same motions that they would have produced in the time of being awake, and the act naturally consummates itself in reality, if it is consummated in the imagination. The accident to Horace in one of the places of repose on his journey to Brundusium, is well known.
The organs of generation, on the other hand, when they are the first irritated, sometimes excite nothing but the imagination, and bring on dreams, which terminate as the precedently mentioned ones. These principles serve to explain the different kinds of these nocturnal pollutions.
The first is that which proceeds from an over-abundance of the seminal liquid; it is what persons in the vigor of life, who are sanguine, hearty, and continent, are liable to. The heat of the bed coming to rarefy the humors, and the seminal liquid being more susceptible of rarefaction than any other, the irritated vesiculæ hurry away the imagination, which, being destitute of the helps that would discover the illusion to her, delivers herself wholly up to it; the idea of coition produces the ultimate effect of it, the ejaculation. In this case, this evacuation is not a disease; it is rather a favorable crisis, that disembarrasses from a humor, which, in too great an abundance, or too long retained, might be rather hurtful: and though some Physicians, who have no faith but in what they themselves have seen, have denied it, it is not the less true that this liquid may, by its over-abundance, produce disorders different from the priapism or the furor uterinus. I hope I may be allowed a short digression on this question; it is not a foreign one to my subject.
Galen has preserved to us the history of a man and woman to whom the excess of the seminal liquid was the cause of bad health, and who were both of them cured by renouncing that continency to which they had taxed themselves[133]; and he looks on the retention of this humor as capable of producing very bad effects. I had, at Montpelier, occasion to make an observation, in every point similar to that great man’s. A widow, of a healthy vigorous habit of body, of near forty years of age, who had for a long time been accustomed to the enjoyments of the nuptial bed, and had been for some years deprived of them, used, from time to time, to fall into such violent hysteric fits, that she lost the use of her senses by them: no remedy could dissipate those fits; there was no way to make her come out of them but by strong frictions of the genital parts, which procuring to her a convulsive tremor, followed by a copious ejaculation, she, that instant, recovered her senses.
Zacutus Lusitanus relates a case very similar to this. “A girl (says he) was in a very violent convulsive paroxysm, so as to be on the point of suffocation by it; without feeling, without sense, a general tremor over her whole body, her eyes set; having tried all other remedies in vain, I ordered an acrid irritative pessary to be applied, which produced a copious spermatic evacuation, and she immediately recovered her senses[134].”
M. Hoffman has also preserved to us the history of a nun, who could not be recovered out of an hysterical paroxysm but by the excital of that evacuation. And Zacutus, in the same work I have just quoted, speaks of two men, to whose health the suppression of the pleasures of love was a detriment. The one was attacked with a swelling at the navel which no remedy could diminish, and which was dissipated on his marrying: the other, weakened by his debauches in that way, quitted them all on a sudden; six months afterwards he had vertigos, and soon afterwards some attacks of a real epilepsy, which were imputed to some disorders of his stomach. Accordingly they gave him stomachics, which exasperated his disorder, and he died in a violent fit of the epilepsy. On being opened, every thing was found in proper order, except the vesiculæ seminales and the vasa deferentia, which were found full of a sperm, green, and in some places ulcerous[135].
A Physician, respectable for his skill and for his age, and who long attended the Austrian armies in Italy, told me, he had remarked, that those German soldiers who were not married, and who lived chastely, were often attacked with fits of epilepsy, priapisms, or nocturnal pollutions; accidents which proceeded from an over-abundant secretion of the seminal liquid; which perhaps too had the more stimulative acridity from the heat of the country, where the diet is also more rich.
We have from the same Dr. Jaques, whom I have quoted in the second Article of this work, a thesis[136], of which M. de la Mettrie has given a translation[137], in which he adduces many examples of diseases produced by a privation of the pleasures of venery; and M. de la Mettrie mentions another work upon cloistered virginity, of which the object is the same.
M. Zindel published at Basle, about fifteen years ago, a dissertation, in which he has collected together, scattered observations on the diseases produced by too rigid a chastity[138]. And here may be placed what M. de Sauvages says of the dangers of a rigorous chastity to those women with whose constitutions it does not agree; they are so much the more the victims of the warmth of it, the more careful they are to conceal it; they pine, and fall into melancholy, disrelish of life, emaciation, and pollutions. He adds a case, which furnishes perhaps an example of the severest trial to which a conflict of constitution and virtue could expose the party distracted between them: it is that of a young girl, who, devoured with a raging fire, and yet preserving her soul pure, with an astonishing fortitude was subject to pollutions even in those moments in which she was deploring her misfortune at the feet of her confessor, a decrepid, loathsome old man.[139]
“A young girl, who marries an old husband” (said a new married woman to her female friend) “had better throw herself into the river, with a mill-stone about her neck.”
In short, not to mention many others, M. Gaubius places excessive continency in the class of causes of diseases. “It is rare, indeed, (he says,) that it produces any evils, and yet it has been known so to do, in some men, born with a warm constitution, and who breed a great deal of the seminal liquid, and in some women[140].” And he proceeds to an enumeration of those disorders. The existence then of them is not to be denied; but the rarity of them may at the same time be affirmed, especially in the present age, which seems to be the age of sensuality: and, in truth, we see every day that gross mistake committed, of attributing indistinctly to this cause, that is to say, to a need of employment for the organs of generation, all the diseases which attack marriageable persons of both sexes, and in advising marriage to them as the only remedy; a remedy often misjudged, often even noxious, because it cannot destroy the complaints which proceed from other causes of disorder, and may add to such evils, those which pregnancy and lying-in commonly produce in persons of a languishing state of health. I return to the subject of pollutions.
I have shown, that the first kind of them, produced by that over-abundance of the seminal liquid, which it lessens by evacuation, is not of itself an evil; but it may become one by recurring too frequently, and at times when the over-abundance no longer exists. I have also already observed, that one evacuation disposed for a second, and so on, so great is the force of habit, which consists in this, that the reiteration of the same motions gives them the greater facility, insomuch that they reproduce themselves on the slightest cause; an observation of great use towards the understanding the animal œconomy, upon which Galen, and especially M. Maty[141], have said some excellent things; and still it has not been treated of to the bottom. From the habit then there results this inconveniency, that these evacuations become a consequence of it, independently of the want, and when it no longer exists. Then they are extremely pernicious, and have all the dangers of an excessive evacuation procured by other means. Satyrus surnamed Gragropilex, residing at Thasus, had had, from the age of twenty-five, frequent nocturnal pollutions: nay, sometimes the liquid would come from him in the day time. He died of a consumption in his thirtieth year[142].
M. Zimmerman told me of a man of a remarkably fine genius, to whom pollutions had caused the loss of all the activity of his understanding, and whose body was exactly in that condition described by Boerhaave (Section I.) In that Section too may be seen the evils which Hoffman observed consequential to pollutions. The most common symptoms, when the disorder has not as yet made any great progress, are, a continual oppression, most considerable in the morning, and acute pains of the loins. Some months ago I was consulted about a laborer in the vines, aged about fifty years, before that time very robust, but whom frequent pollutions had, for three or four months, so prodigiously weakened, that he could not work but a few hours a day. Often he was even totally debarred from it by pains in his loins, which confined him to his bed, and he every day grew leaner. I gave him some advice, of which I could not learn the execution or effect.
I knew a man who had become deaf for some weeks on his neglecting a cold, and who, on his having a nocturnal pollution, was, the next day, much deafer than ordinary, with great restlessness and anxiety; and another, whose weakness was owing to many causes, and who, after a pollution, wakes under the greatest oppression, and with so general a numbness, that he is for an hour like a paralytic, and remains the whole day after under a great dejection.
In this first class may be put the pollutions of those, who, having been accustomed to frequent emissions, suddenly suspend them. Such were those of a woman whom Galen makes mention; she had been, for some time, in the state of widow-hood, and the retention of the spermatic liquid brought upon her disorders of the uterus. In her sleep she had convulsive motions of her loins, arms, and legs, which were accompanied with an abundant emission of a thick matter, with the same sensations as in the act of coition[143]. A female dancer had received accidentally a slight hurt near her left breast; her surgeon prescribed to her rather a strict diet, and especially forbad her those pleasures to which she was pretty much accustomed. The third night of the privation, to which she had submitted without minding the injunctions of diet, she had a pollution, which returning several times the following nights, made her visibly fall away, and caused to her violent pains of the loins. Her wound, however, did not fail of healing, in a great measure, and would have been quite so, if she had been observant of the surgeon’s rules of diet, who, firm in the principles of his art, continued his prohibition of venery, and bled and purged her. Wearied out, at length, and weakened, she left off his remedies, and, resuming her usual course of life, her weakness and her pains quickly went off.
But do not let any one, by any means, from this last mentioned observation, conclude against the utility of the precepts of the most skillful masters in the art of surgery, who, grounding it on other observations, strictly forbid coition to the wounded; there is no practitioner that might not easily have convinced himself how pernicious it must be to them. I shall only adduce one example, in which self-pollution was mortal, and of which G. Fabri de Hilden has preserved to us the history.
Cosmus Slotan had amputated the hand of a young man, that was shattered by a gun-shot wound. As he knew him to be of a very hot constitution, he had strictly forbid him any commerce with his wife, whom he likewise apprized of the danger. But when all fear of the worst accidents was dissipated, and the cure was proceeding in a fair way, the patient finding desires come upon him, for which his wife refused to have the complaisance he wanted of her, he, without coition, procured to himself an emission of the semen, which was immediately followed by a fever, by a delirium, by convulsions, and other violent symptoms, of which he died in four days time[144].
I knew a young married man, who, having inconsiderately thrown himself out of the seat of a cabriolet, (a chaise,) fell on his side; the hind-wheel went over his foot, between the heel and the ancle-bone; there was neither fracture nor luxation, but a considerable contusion: finding himself recovered at the end of five days, he proceeded with his bride as if he had had no such accident. Two hours afterwards his leg swelled, with the most unsufferable torture, and he had a strong fever, which lasted thirty hours.
But return we to the point. It is of great importance early to prevent the progress of habit; and whatever may be the first cause of the pollutions, not to suffer them to grow upon one. When they have been a long while upon one, they are very hard to cure. “There is no disorder (says Hoffman) that more torments the patients, nor gives more trouble to physicians, than nocturnal pollutions, when they have lasted a long time, and become habitual, especially if they return every night. The very best remedies are almost always in vain employed; they even often do more harm than good[145].”
All the Physicians who have written on this distemper have asserted, that the cure of it is extremely difficult; and all the Physicians who occasionally have had it under their cure, have themselves found it so; nor is there any room for being surprized at it. Unless one either restore to the organs their strength, and diminish their irritability during the time that passes between two pollutions, which is impossible; or on a sudden prevent the return of lascivious dreams, which it is not easy to do, one may be sure that the pollution will return, and destroy almost all the good that may have been operated by the small quantity of remedy applied since the last: so that from the term of one pollution to that of another, the ground that may have been gained must be infinitely little, and a great number of remedies must be accumulated before any sensible good effect can be obtained.
Coelius Aurelianus has collected together the best things that the antients have said on the management in this case.
First, He would have the patient avoid, as much as possible, all libidinous ideas.
Secondly, That he should lie on a bed of a hard and refreshing matter; that he should apply to his loins a thin plate of lead, and to all the parts which are the seat of the disorder, spunges soaked in water and vinegar, and cooling things, as the balaustæ, acacia, hypocist, the psillium.
Thirdly, That he should use no diet but of cooling and yet not laxative articles of meat and drink.
Fourthly, He advises restoratives, or analeptics.
Fifthly, The use of the cold-bath.
Sixthly, Not to sleep on one’s back, but on one side, or prone.
All this advice is full of sensible things; but let us examine more distinctly the indication that presents itself. It is to diminish the quantity of the seminal liquid, and to prevent those lascivious dreams. Now generally speaking, the diet and the regimen are much more proper to obtain these ends, than medicines. The fittest aliments are those which are procured from the vegetable kingdom, pulse, herbs, grain, and fruits. Among the meats, those which contain the least substance. In both the one and the other class, the choice should fall on those which have the least acridity. It has been precedently remarked, what an influence this regimen has on the tranquillity of sleep; it cannot be too much recommended to persons afflicted with nocturnal pollutions, to whom that tranquillity is so necessary. They ought especially to renounce suppers, or at least never sup but lightly: this single attention contributes more to operate a cure than all the medicines.
Some years ago I knew a young man, who had almost every night a nocturnal pollution, and who had before had some fits of the night-mare. A barber-surgeon had ordered him to drink every night, at his lying down, some glasses of warm water; which, without diminishing the pollutions, augmented the other complaint. Both these evils then united, and returned every night. The dream of the night-mare was the phantom of a female, which caused at the same time his pollution. Weakened by the double disorder, and by the privation of a tranquil sleep, he was going fast into a consumption. I prescribed his taking nothing for supper but a little bread and some raw fruits, and, as he went to bed, to drink a glass of cold water, with fifteen drops of the anodine mineral liquor of Hoffman. It was not long before he regained his tranquillity of sleep; his two disorders left him intirely, and he soon recovered his strength.
Heavy, indigest meats, game or venison, especially at night, are a perfect poison for this disorder; and, I repeat it, without leaving off suppers, and especially of animal food, all the other remedies can be of no service. Wine, spirituous liquors, coffee, are, in many lights, hurtful. The best drink is that of pure water; or there may, to advantage, in each bottle of it be dissolved a drachm of nitre.
The precept that Coelius gives for avoiding soft beds, is of the greatest importance. There should be no feathers suffered in it: straw is preferable to horse-hair, and I have known some patients receive benefit from covering the mattrass with leather.
The advice against not lying on one’s back, is especially necessary; this posture, in the night, contributing to render the sleep the more agitated, and to heat more the parts of generation.
In short, as habit has, in this case, a very great influence, and that to break it is the capital point, the following observation may furnish a means of succeeding. I owe it to an Italian gentleman, respectable for his virtues, and one of the worthiest characters I ever remember to have known. He consulted me upon a disorder of a very different kind; but in order to give me the clearer notions of his present case, he let me into the history of his health. He had five years before then been troubled with frequent pollutions, which totally exhausted him. Upon this he took, over-night, a firm resolution to wake of himself the first moment that the appearance of a female should strike his imagination; and, before he fell asleep, he took care to dwell fixedly and strongly on this idea. This remedy was attended with the happiest success; the idea of the danger, and his resolution of waking of himself, being closely, over-night, linked with the idea of a woman, reproduced themselves, in the midst of his sleep, at the same time, and jointly with this last: he waked at the time, and this precaution, repeated for some nights, dissipated the disorder.
But I would not have those two last instances inspire too much security: there are cases against which the best remedies must fail; that which Hoffman relates[146] is an example; and it would be right to give before-hand to patients the advice which he gave to his; it is this; that without a long perseverance in the use of proper remedies, there is no efficacy to be hoped for from them; or rather, that in such a case, as that the regimen is the great essential, it is often only by means of a long observance of it, that any perceptible relief can be obtained. If remedies are employed, they ought to be regulated by the same indications as the regimen. It is not long since I knew a copious bleeding carry off this disorder. Nitrous powders, lemonades, acid spirits, almond emulsions, may be of service.
M. Hoffman prescribed for the self-pollutor, who, after having renounced his infamous practices, had fallen under the disorder of nocturnal pollutions, the following powder:
℞. C. C. pphicè ppati. Ossis sepiæ ana unc. ss. Succini cum instillat. Olei tartar. per deliquium ppat. dr. ii. Cascar. dr. i.
Of which he took one drachm over-night, with black cherry-water; and in the morning the Seltzer waters with milk; his drink, a ptisan of santal; the China-root, cichoreum, scorzonera, and cinnamon. With these helps, and a proper diet, the patient got well in a few weeks. M. Zimmerman, by means of the same powder, has cured “very frequent pollutions, attended with the common languor in that case, and which had lasted for several years, in a young man of twenty.” It is not easy to explain how this powder, which is but a simple absorbent, can do any good; but I have seen good effects from camphire.
Another sort of pollutions is such as are incident to Hypochondriacs. The circulation proceeds in them but slowly, especially in the veins of the Hypogastrium, which is specifically the reason why the parts from which those veins bring back the blood are often obstructed; the nerves are easily put into motion; the humors have a character of acridity extremely fit to irritate; their sleep is commonly disturbed with dreams: here you have many causes of pollution, and indeed they are much subject to them. “The imagination (says M. Boerhaave) often, during sleep, produces emissions of the seed. The most sedentary of the men of letters, and the splenetic, are liable to this accident; and the efflux of the seed is often so considerable, as to cause them to fall into an atrophy[147].” This disorder has for them so much the more vexatious consequences, for that they never give a loose to any excesses of this kind, without being extremely incommoded, as M. Fleming has happily expressed it:
For them there is but one method of cure, which is, to attack the principal disorder. The removal of the obstructions is the first thing to be done; after which the cold-bath should be used, and that salutary bark which God preserve to us. Then is truly the case of recourse to those two powerful remedies, with which martials may be allied. If an attention to the choice of aliments is necessary in all cases, it is particularly so in this. The Hypochondriacs, in general, perform their digestions very ill; the ill-digested aliments produce flatulent turgescences, which disturbing the circulation, dispose to pollutions in two ways; first, by obstructing the return of the blood in the veins of the genitals; secondly, by disturbing the tranquillity of sleep, and thereby consequently disposing to dreams. Thence sensibly appears the reason why Pythagoras forbad his disciples the eating flatulent aliments, which he, wisely, considered as detrimental both to the clearness and strength of the intellectual functions, and to corporal chastity. Besides the two reasons which I have given, I might venture to point out a third, which I have strongly had room to suspect in two patients; and that is, the expansion of the air, disengaged from the fluids in the corpus cavernosum, which produced an erection, together with the venereal pruriency. It is now well known that all our liquids are impregnated with this fluid, but that so long as they are in perfect health, that fluid is, as it were, imprisoned, and deprived of all elasticity. Great Naturalists have been of opinion, that there were but two ways of restoring to it its elasticity; the one, a considerably greater degree of heat than is observed in the animal body; and the other, putrefaction. But a multitude of observations of disorders produced by the air so dilated, have proved, that, independently of these two causes, there were other alterations in the fluids, which would have the same effect, and these alterations appear the most frequent in Hypochondriacs: so that it is not wonderful that the cavernous parts should be the seat of the expansion of this diseased air: on the contrary, there is no part which appears more likely to be exposed to it; and if attention has not thereto been given before now, it is probably rather for want of observers than of observableness. Observations, however, clearly evince the necessity of avoiding those aliments which, abounding more than others in air, are the more hurtful, both by that which separates from them in the first passages, and by that which they convey into the blood. Who does not know that new beer, which is extremely flatulent, occasions violent erections? Since my last edition of this work, I have seen that M. Thierry, one of the most learned Physicians, and of the most celebrated practitioners of France, has taken notice of these flatulent erections.
And here may be added, as bearing some affinity to this last kind of pollution, and principally attacking such as are melancholically affected, a disease that might be called a furor genitalis. It differs from a Priapism, and from the Satyriasis. I shall describe it by an observation already published in the first Latin edition of this work, and omitted in the French one.
A man about fifty years of age had labored under it for twenty-four years, and in all that long term could not pass twenty-four hours without recourse to women, or to that horrid supplement, self-pollution; and commonly he would reiterate the act several times a day. The seed was thin, acrid, unprolific, and the evacuation very quick. His nerves were excessively weakened: he had violent fits of melancholy, and vapors; his faculties were stupified, his hearing very indifferent or slow, his eyes extremely weak; in short, he died in the most wretched condition. I had never prescribed any thing for him; but he had taken a great number of remedies. Many of them had done him no service; all those that were of a hot nature had been prejudicial to him. Only bark, infused in wine, by order of M. Albinus, had relieved him: and the authority of this great Physician is a fresh, and, surely, a respectable testimony, in favor of that remedy.
Among the Consultations of M. Hoffman may be seen a case nearly similar to this; the pruriency was almost continual, and body and soul equally enervated[148].
“The Gonorrhœa (says Galen, who knew none but the simple one) is a running of the seed without erection.” Many authors, in all ages, make mention of it, and Moses, the most antient of all. In the observations of Hippocrates may be seen the example of a Mountaineer, whose disorder seems to have been a marasmus, and who had an involuntary evacuation of the urine and seminal liquid[149]. M. Boerhaave seems, however, as to the seminal efflux, to have set down this disorder among the number of doubtful things. “You may (says he) read in books of physic, that the seed has sometimes run, without its being perceived or felt. But this disorder must be extremely rare, as I know of no instance in the which the seed has come out without some degree of titillation: or else it was not the true seminal liquid separated in the testicles, and amassed in the seminal vesicules, though I have seen the liquid of the prostatæ flow forth[150].” This authority is, doubtless, very respectable; but besides that M. Boerhaave does not decisively pronounce on this point, he has against him all the Physicians; and, not to go out of his own school, one of his most illustrious disciples, Gaubius, admits the evacuation of the seed without sensation. My own observations leave me no room to doubt of the existence of both the one and the other disorder. I have seen men who, after a virulent gonorrhœa, after excesses of venery, or self-pollutions, had a constant running at the yard, but which did not render them incapable of erection and ejaculation; they even complained, that a single ejaculation weakened them more than a running of some weeks; which is an evident proof that the liquid of these two evacuations was not the same; and that that which comes by a gonorrhœa flows only from the prostatæ, from some other glands about the urethra, from the follicular cellules distributed over its whole length, or, in short, from the dilated exhaling vessels. I have seen other men, who, like the first, had a continual running, but a running which weakened them much more, and which rendered them incapable of all venereal pruriency, of all erection, and, from that very circumstance, of all ejaculation, though the testicles had no appearance of any disqualification for their functions. It seems to me demonstrated, that, in these last, the true testicular semen came away without sensation. Those then who know the structure of the parts of generation, will easily bring themselves to believe, that the first case must be much more frequent than the last; but of the last they will also readily conceive the possibility of existence. The authors of the greatest exactness have called that the true gonorrhœa, in which they apprehended that the matter of the running was the genuine semen; the other they termed the spurious or catarrhal gonorrhœa.
The dangers of the genuine running are very considerable. In the beginning of the first Section, On the Symptoms, the description by Aretæus has been quoted. “How (says he, in the same place) can one avoid the being weakened, when that which is so essential to the vital forces is continually slipping away, in waste. It is in the seminal liquid alone that eminently resides the strength of man.”
Celsus, who lived before the times of Aretæus, says positively, “That the running of the seed without venereal sensation, brings on a consumption[151].”
John, son of Zacharias, more commonly known by the name of Actuarius, in a work which he composed for the service of the Ambassador whom the Emperor of Constantinople was sending to the North, is, upon this point, of the same opinion with the authors I have already quoted. “If (says he) the running of the seed, which proceeds without erection, and without sensation, sails for any time, it produces necessarily a consumption and death; for the most balsamic part of the humors and the animal spirits are thereby dissipated and lost[152].”
Some of the most modern authors agree also, on this head, with the antients. “The whole body (says Sennertus) becomes emaciated, and especially the back; the patients grow weaker and weaker; they languish; they have pains in the loins; they turn hollow-eyed[153].”
Boerhaave ranks this gonorrhœa among the causes of the palsy; and it may be remarked, that he admits in this place a gonorrhœa of pure seed. “The palsy (says he) which comes from a gonorrhœa, is incurable, because the body is exhausted[154].”
On this matter there may also, in an excellent dissertation of M. Koempf, be found some interesting observations[155].
This disorder may draw its origin from many remote causes. The proximate cause is always unitedly constituted of a defectiveness or depravity in the liquids, of which the running consists, they being too thin, and often too acrid; and of a great relaxation of the parts. The defect in the liquids denotes a want of elaboration, which is owing to a general weakness; this requires tonic remedies, which the weakness of the organs also indicates; the coincident circumstances determine the choice of them. It would be out of place to enter here on all the relative particulars, and upon which there may be found instructive lights in many medical writers, and especially in Sennertus, author of the best compendium of practical physic that we have.
The same remedies as are pointed out in the course of this work, against the other consequences of pollution, are applicable in this case; the cold-bath, the bark, martials, and corroboratives. Boerhaave says, that the hepatica (liverwort) produces excellent effects (egregios sane præstat usus) in the inveterate gonorrhœa, where it depends on the relaxation of the organs[156]. Sometimes, to direct the tendency which habit gives to humors towards the same part, it may not be amiss to begin by some laxatives: there are even some great Physicians, who have attributed to them an almost specific efficacy against this disorder; experience yet more than reason has proved to me the contrary. Those who will give themselves the trouble of reading the authors whom I have above quoted, will find that they prescribe nothing laxative. Actuarius directs “things that strengthen without heating[157].” Aretæus, who, in consideration of the urgency of the danger, recommends an immediate recourse to remedies, prescribes none but strengtheners, abstinence from the pleasures of love, and the cold-bath[158].
Celsus, of whose works both of them have availed themselves, orders frictions, and especially baths extremely cold, (natationesque quam frigidissimas;) he would have nothing eaten or drank but what is cold; that all aliments should be avoided which may engender crudities, wind, and augment the acridity of the seed. Fernelius orders nutritious aliments, and restorative electuaries[159].
If the promise of Langius, who said “he would venture to swear for the efficacy of purgatives and a diet in the cure of this disorder,” be at all true, it cannot, probably, be relied on, but in that case alone, where the disorder is produced by a bad diet, which should have given birth to obstructions in the hypogastrium, and made all the humors degenerate, without the solids having as yet received any considerable damage; and this case it is that he must only have had in view; for if the solids had received any material prejudice, the purgatives must necessarily be aided by corroboratives. Such was the gonorrhœa that Regis observed, and of which Craanen has preserved to us the particulars.
“A man (says he) of a pituitous constitution, having for along time used himself to a humid diet, was attacked with the running of a watery, crude, viscous humor, which came away without perceptible sensation. He was wasting away, his eyes grew hollow, and he felt a daily decay of his strength. Regis began with him by evacuating with purgatives those pituitous humor.” After which he gave him corroboratives, analeptics, and desiccative aliments; and if that should not be sufficient, he advised him a caustic for each leg[160].
But this method of purgatives can never be proper, when this disorder is the consequence of venereal excesses, and is owing, as Sennertus observes, “to that weakness which the vesiculæ seminales have contracted by the over-frequent vicissitudes of repletion and inanition.”
A particularisation of some cases will afford a clearer notion of the true method of cure.
Timæus furnishes us with one, which cannot be better placed than here.
“A young man, (says he,) a student of the Law, of a sanguine constitution, used to pollute himself manually twice or thrice a day, and sometimes oftener: he fell into a gonorrhœa, accompanied with a weakness of the whole body. I looked on the gonorrhœa as a consequence of a relaxation occasioned in the seminal vessels, and on his weakness as owing to his frequent effusions of seed, which had dissipated the natural heat, gathered crudities, damaged the nervous system, stupified the soul, and weakened the whole body.”
[He prescribed for him strengthening cordial wine, with the astringents and aromatics infused in a strong-bodied red wine, an electuary of the same nature, and an ointment composed of oil of roses, mastic, nitre, bol. armen. terra sigillata, balaustæ, and white-wax.]
“The patient was in about a month’s time cured of this shameful disorder; and I advised him to abstain in future from this infamous practice of debauchery, and to remember the threat from the Most High, of an exclusion of the effeminate from the kingdom of Heaven,” 1 Cor. vi.[161].
M. Zimmerman writes me as follows: “One of the best Physicians that we have in Switzerland, M. Wepfer, whose authority cannot be of too great weight, avers his having cured a continual flux of seed, the consequence of self-pollution, with the help of the Tinctur. Mart. Ludovici. M. Weslin of Zurzach has, on his own experience, confirmed to me the same thing. As for me (adds my friend) I cannot say that I have seen such good effects from it.”
The Professor M. Stehelin mentions a man of letters, who was afflicted with an involuntary efflux of seed, without any ideas of venery, and who was cured by the use of wine with the martials and the bark. The remedies, and among others the waters of Swalbach, the embrocating with cold water the pubis and the perinæum, had not the same success with a young man, who had brought upon himself this disorder by self-pollution. He adds, that M. de Bongars, a celebrated Practitioner of Physic at Maseck, had cured two persons attacked with a debility of the vesiculæ seminales, by making them take, three times a day, eight or ten drops of Sydenham’s liquid laudanum, in a glass of Pontac wine, and by a decoction of sarsaparilla. M. Stehelin remarks, that though the opium is contrary to the indications, it has been advised by Etmullerus against too quick an ejaculation, where owing to an over-spirituousness in the seed. Be it here allowed me to add, that on attentively examining the advice of this famous practitioner, and on comparing the nature of the disorder, in certain cases, with the effects of opium, it is not difficult to conceive, that this remedy may sometimes be useful, but not in the case for which he prescribes it. He distinguishes, with a great deal of accuracy, the different kinds of runnings, he assigns the causes and the curative method of each kind, and then passing on to the ejaculation which comes just on the beginning of an erection, too quick (nimis citam,) he lays down two causes for it; first, the relaxation of the vesiculæ seminales; secondly, too boiling, too spirituous, too redundant a seminal liquid; and in this case it is that he orders opium[162]. But on what foundation? Opium, the quality of which, as a provocative to venery, stands so well demonstrated, a quality which Etmullerus himself points out, both in his small treatise on this medicine, and in this very place where he gives this advice, cannot but augment the cause of the disorder, and consequently thereby aggravate its symptoms. But the cases in which it may be of service, are, on the contrary, where the humors are crude, thin, aqueous, and the nerves, at the same time, of an excessive mobility. It is then known to be a remedy for these different accidents, that it suspends the irritability, and that it stops all the evacuations except perspiration. It cannot then be too often inculcated, that the greatest attention must be had not to prescribe opium, or opiates, but where they are proper, otherwise they are capable of doing great mischief. M. Tralles, in his excellent work, furnishes us with an observation, and the like is to be met with in other authors, which ought to oblige us to use a great deal of circumspection as to that medicine.
“A man (says he) who from his youth upwards had had a strong passion for self-pollutions, which had rendered him extremely weak, never took opium, either to moderate a cough, or a diarrhœa, or with any other intention, without having, in the night, and to his great detriment, lascivious dreams, accompanied with a spermatic emission[163].”
Here may I have leave to state a reflexion which presents itself naturally? It is this: the error of Etmullerus evidently proves:
First, How great an influence an exact theory has over practice, which, without its help, cannot be but often false and erroneous.
Secondly, How great an advantage must a man, furnished with such a theory, united with practice, have over one, who has no guide but a few observations, or who delivers himself wholly up to a systematical theory?
Thirdly, How much may not the reading of even the best practical authors, but who were destitute of that exact theory which is due to our times, deceive such as, on the reading of them, can only have an implicit faith in them, and who are ignorant of those principles which ought to serve for a touch-stone, to discern, in physic, what is the good ore, or the base alloy?
I shall conclude with two cases which fell under my observation; a greater number would be superfluous.
A young man of twenty years old, who had had the misfortune of being addicted to self-pollution, had been, for two months, attacked with a continual mucous running, and now and then with nocturnal pollutions, attended with considerable wastings of his strength; he had frequent and violent pains of the stomach, he felt his breast extremely weak, and was apt to sweat much: I ordered him the following electuary: