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Hippocrates, the most antient and the most exact of all the observers of Nature, has already described the evils produced by excessive venery, under the name of the Dorsal Consumption, in Latin, Tabes dorsalis[4].—“This disease (says he) proceeds from the spinal marrow. It attacks young married folks, or those addicted to lustful excesses. They have no fever, and though they eat as much as usual, they turn lean, and waste away. They imagine they feel something, as it were like ants, descending from the head, and creeping down the back-bone. In their evacuations by stool or urine, they lose abundance of the seminal liquid much thinner than it naturally is. They are unfit for generation, and are often busied in the act of it, in their dreams. Walking, especially in any bad road, soon puts them out of breath, weakens them, brings on heavinesses of head; they have a kind of tingling in their ears; at length an acute fever (lypiria) terminates their days.”

Some Physicians have attributed to the same cause, a disease which Hippocrates describes elsewhere[5], and which has some affinity to the first: this last they call “the secondary tabes dorsalis.” But the continuance under it of the bodily strength, which he particularly specifies, appears to me a convincing proof, that this last disease does not acknowledge the same cause as the first. It seems rather a rheumatic affection. For example, Celsus, in his excellent book on the preservation of health, says, “the pleasures of coition are always pernicious to weak constitutions, and the frequent use of them enfeebles the strong.[6]”

Nothing can be conceived more dreadful than the description which Aretæus has left us of the evils produced by an over-abundant evacuation of that humor. “The young (says he) contract the looks and the infirmities of old age; they become pale, effeminate, torpid, inactive, stupid, and even drivellers; their bodies are bent, their legs refuse their office; they have a general distaste, and grow unfit for all the offices of life; many fall into a palsy[7].” In another place he sets down the pleasures of venery among the six causes that produce the palsy.

Galen has seen the same cause produce diseases of the brain and nerves, and destroy the vital force[8].

He says in another place, that a man who was not thoroughly recovered of a violent disorder, died on the same night that he acquitted himself of the nuptial function with his wife.[9]

Pliny the Naturalist tells us, that Cornelius Gallus, a Prætor advanced in years, and Titus Ætherius, died in the act itself of coition.[10]

“The stomach (says Ætius) is weakened; the transgressor falls into a paleness, leanness, dryness; his eyes are hollowed in his head[11].”

These attestations of the most authoritative among the antients, are confirmed by a crowd among the moderns.

Sanctorius, who has, with the greatest accuracy, examined all the causes that act upon the human body, has observed, that this one weakened the stomach, ruined the digestions, hindered the insensible perspiration, the interruptions or disorders of which are attended with such bad consequences, produced a heat in the liver and kidneys, disposed for the stone, diminished the natural heat, and commonly drew after it a weakness of the eyes[12].

Lommius, in his excellent Commentaries on the passage I have quoted from Celsus, seconds the testimonies of his author, with his own observations. “Too frequent emissions (says he) of the seminal liquid relax, drain, weaken, enervate, and produce a multitude of evils; apoplexies, lethargies, epilepsies, a dozingness, maladies of the eyes, loss of sight, tremors, palsies, convulsions, and of all the kinds of gout, the most painful one[13].”

There is no reading without horror, the description left us by Tulpius, that celebrated Burgomaster and Physician of Amsterdam. “Not only (says he) the spinal marrow wastes away, but both body and mind languish alike; the individual perishes miserably. Samuel Vespretius was attacked with the defluxion of an excessively acrid humor, which first seized the back part of his head and the nape of his neck: thence it passed to the spine, the loins, the haunches, and the joints of the thigh, occasioning to the unhappy patient such acute pains and tortures, that he became totally disfigured, and fell into a slow fever, that kept consuming him, but not so fast as he could have wished, his condition being so intolerable, that he frequently invoked death before it came to his deliverance from his sufferings[14].”

Nothing (says a celebrated Physician of Louvain) so much weakens the vital faculties, and abridges life[15].

Blancard had seen simple gonorrhœas, consumptions, and dropsies all acknowledging this cause[16].

Muys had seen a man as yet unbroken with age, attacked with a spontaneous gangrene in the foot, which he attributed to venereal excesses[17].

The Memoirs of curious Naturalists mention the circumstance of a loss of sight, the observation of which deserves a recital at large. “It is (says the author) unconceivable, what a sympathy the repositories of the seminal humor have with the whole body, but especially with the eyes. Salmuth saw a learned hypochondriac run raving mad, and another man, whose brain was so dried up, that it might be heard shaking as it were loose within the skull; both owing to their having abandoned themselves to excesses of venery. I myself saw a man of fifty-nine years of age, who, three weeks after marriage with a young woman, fell into sudden blindness, and died at the end of four months[18].”

The over-dissipation of the animal spirits weakens the stomach, palls the appetite, and nutrition no longer proceeding in its due course or degree, all the parts languish, and an epilepsy is sometimes the consequence[19].

We cannot, it is true, say that the animal spirits and the seminal humor are the same thing, but observation has taught us, as will be subsequently seen, that these two fluids have a great affinity.

M. Hoffman has seen the most dreadful accidents follow a waste of the seed.

“After a long course of nocturnal pollutions (says he) not only the strength diminishes, the body is emaciated, the face turns pale, but moreover the memory fails, a continual sensation of cold seizes all the limbs, the sight dims, the voice grows hoarse[20]; the whole body insensibly decays; the sleep, disturbed by uneasy dreams, brings with it no refreshment, and one feels pains like those which follow a severe beating[21].”

In his consultation for a young man, who, among other disorders, had brought upon himself a weakness in the eyes, by self-pollution: “I have (says he) seen many examples of persons, who, even in the age of full growth, that is to say, when the body is come to the plenary enjoyment of its vigor, had drawn upon themselves not only a redness and extreme pains in the eyes, but also so great a weakness of the sight, as to be no longer able to read or write. I have even seen two instances of a gutta serena produced by this cause[22].”

It will probably not be unpleasing here, the specifying the history of the disease which gave rise to the consultation precedently quoted.

“A young man having, from the age of fifteen, abandoned himself to the practice of self-pollution, had, by the frequency of that act till the age of twenty-three, brought upon himself such a disorder of the head, and especially such a weakness in the eyes, that they particularly were seized with violent convulsions at the time of the seminal emission. If he attempted to read, he felt a dizziness somewhat like that of drunkenness. The pupilla was extraordinarily dilated. He suffered extreme pains in the eye; his eyelids felt heavy, and glewed up every night; his eyes were always suffused with tears, and in the two corners of them, both very painful, there was constantly gathering a whitish matter. Though he ate his meals chearfully, he was reduced to extreme leanness, and as soon as he had eaten, he would fall into a kind of drunken stupor.”

The same author has preserved to us another observation on a case, of which he himself had been an ocular witness, and which deserves a place here. “A young man about eighteen years of age, having had an over-frequent intercourse with a servant-maid, fell all on a sudden into a great faintness, with a general tremor in all his limbs; his face flushed, and a very weak pulse. He was recovered out of this slate, in about an hour’s time, but he remained under a general languor. The same fit frequently returned, with an intolerable anguish, and in eight days time brought on a contraction and a tumor of the right arm, with a pain at his elbow, which redoubled at every fit. This disorder proceeded for some time augmenting, notwithstanding all the remedies that were used. However, M. Hoffman cured him at length[23].”

M. Boerhaave paints these disorders with that energy and exactness which characterise all his descriptions.

“An excessive profusion (says he) of the seminal humor produces lassitude, feebleness, immobility, convulsions, emaciation, desiccation, pains in the membranes of the brain; it obtunds the senses, and especially the sight; it brings on the tabes dorsalis, a general torpor, and various other diseases which have an affinity to those[24].”

It would not be right here to omit the observations which this great man communicated to his hearers, on his explaining this aphorism to them, and which turn upon the different means of evacuation.

“I have (says he) seen a patient, whose illness began by a languor and weakness all over his body, especially towards the loins; it was accompanied with such a motion of the tendons, such periodical convulsions, and wasting away, as were enough to destroy the whole body: he also felt a pain in the membranes of the brain, a pain which the patients call a dry burning heat, with which the noble parts are, in this case, continually affected.

“I have also seen a young man seized with a tabes dorsalis. He had been an extremely pretty figure, and though he had been often admonished against the over-indulgence of venery, he would still abandon himself to it, and became so deformed before his death, that all that muscular roundness, which appears over the spinal apophyses of the loins, was entirely sunk and flattened. In this case the brain seems to be consumed, and, in fact, the patients become stupid. The body loses all its suppleness to such a degree, that I never saw such immobility produced by any other cause. The eyes also contract a notable dimness, or difficulty of seeing[25].”

M. de Senac, in his first edition of his Essays, set forth the dangers of self-pollution, and denounced to the victims of this infamy all the infirmities of the most languishing old age, in the flower of their youth. In the following editions may be seen his reasons for the suppression of this passage, and of some others.

Mr. Ludwig, in his description of the evils attending over-abundant evacuations, does not forget the seminal one.

“The young (says he) of either sex, who abandon themselves to lasciviousness, ruin their health, by a dissipation of that strength which by nature was designed to bring their body to its greatest point of vigor. In short, they fall into a consumption[26].”

M. de Gorter enters into particulars of the most dreadful accidents deriving from this cause; but as it would be of too great a length to copy him, I refer to his work those who understand the language in which he wrote[27].

M. Van Swieten, after a recital of the above-quoted description of the tabes dorsalis by Hippocrates, adds:

“I have seen all these symptoms, besides many more, befall those who had abandoned themselves to the infamy of self-pollutions. During three years, I employed, in vain, all the aids of the medical art, for a young man, who, by this vile habit, had brought on himself erratic, surprizing, and general pains, with a sensation sometimes of heat, sometimes of a very irksome cold all over his body, but especially towards the loins. These pains having, afterwards, been a little diminished, he felt so great a cold in his thighs and legs, although those parts seemed to the touch to have preserved their natural warmth, that he was continually warming himself at the fire, even during the greatest heats of the summer. But what more particularly astonished me, was a continual motion of rotation in the testicles, and the patient complained grievously of a like motion which he felt in his loins[28].”

This narration does not inform us whether this wretched object terminated his life at the end of the three years, or, what is worse, yet continued to languish on, for some time longer; for there could hardly be a third issue.

M. Kloekoff, in a very good work on those distempers of the mind which depend on the body, confirms, by his observations, what has been here advanced on this subject.

“Too great a dissipation of the seminal humor weakens the springs of action in all the solids; thence arise weakness, laziness, listlessness, hectics, the tabes dorsalis, a torpor, and depravation of the senses, stupidity, madness, epilepsies, convulsions[29].”

M. Hoffman had already remarked, that young people who abandoned themselves to that shameful practice of self-pollution, “lost, little by little, the faculties of the understanding, especially the memory, and became intirely unapt for study[30].”

M. Lewis describes all these evils: but I shall only transcribe from his work, what relates to the detriment occasioned to the intellectual faculties.

“All the evils which arise from excesses committed with women, are also effected in early life, by that abominable practice in school-boys, a practice which I cannot describe in terms odious enough, pollutio sui, which, actuated more by vitiousness than by sense and reason, and ignorant of the mischievous consequences, they repeat, &c. &c.[31] ... So intimately are the mind and body blended together, that there cannot be any disease of the one which will not influence the other; but in none is the mind more deeply affected than in this. To add to his infelicity, a melancholy gloom attends the patient, and silence and solitude are anxiously sought after.—The chearful haunts of men no longer delight him; he is absent in company, and will have no part of the conversation. He is not happy even in his friend: a sense of his misfortune, and perhaps the aggravating circumstance of having brought it upon himself, for ever hang on his mind. The company of the female sex he loves indeed, but the apprehensions that he may be cut off from nuptial felicity, interrupts the fruition of their pleasing converse. Thus deeply dejected, he excludes himself from society, wanders in retirement, and it is well if he seeks not to destroy himself at last[32].”

Fresh observations, subsequently introduced, will confirm the truth of the preceding dreadful description. That one furnished by M. Storcke, in the valuable work which he has published on the history and cure of diseases, is not less terrible: but I refer the curious to the work itself, which no physician would wish to be without. The passage I allude to is in his Medicus annuus, T. ii. p. 215, &c. But before I terminate this Section, I shall here conclusively add a passage in that excellent work, with which M. Gaubius has lately enriched the medical art. He not only paints the evils, but points out the causes of them, with that force, that truth, that sagacity, that exactness, which can belong to none but so great a master. It is a most valuable extract; and that the coloring of it may appear in its true lustre, I subjoin to the translation the original of it, in the language of the author’s expression.

“An immoderate profusion of seed is pernicious, not only through the waste of that most useful humor, but also through the over-frequent repetition of that convulsive motion which is produced by the emission. For the highest pitch of that pleasure is immediately succeeded by so universal a relaxation of the animal strength, as cannot be borne often without a consequential enervity. The more frequent a draught there is on the secretory ducts of the body, the greater is the derivation of the respective humors of the secretions; so that in the case of the liquid being repeatedly attracted to the parts of generation, the rest of the secretions are depauperated: thence, from excesses of venery follow, weariness, weakness, immobility, a tottering gait, pains of the head, convulsions, a hebetation of all the senses, and especially of the sight, blindness, intellectual imbecillity, a feverish circulation, dryness, leanness, a phthisis, a tabes dorsalis, an effeminate habit of body. These evils are liable to augment and become incurable through that perpetual pruriency for venery which the mind does not less than the body at length contract; and from which it follows, that obscene imaginations haunt even the dreams of persons so affected, and that the parts prone to the libidinous turgescence are, on every occasion, impetuously sollicited, while the quantity of the repaired seminal fluid, were it never so small, occasions constantly a troublesome stimulation, and is ready to start from its relaxed repositories with any the least endeavour, or even without any endeavor at all. Whence it is clear why an excess of this nature is so capable of blasting the flower of youth[33].”