_The Author’s Observations._
The object of description occurring in my first observation is dreadful;
I was myself frighted at the first time of my seeing the unfortunate
sufferer, who is the subject of it. Then it was that I felt, more than I
had ever before done, the necessity of pointing put to young people, all
the horrors of that precipice down which they voluntarily cast themselves.
L. D——, a watchmaker, had been clear of vice, and enjoyed a good state
of health, till the age of seventeen, when he gave himself up to
self-pollution, which he repeated every day, and often thrice a day,
when the ejaculation was always preceded and accompanied by a slight
fainting fit, or privation of the senses, and a convulsive motion of the
exterior muscles of the head, which drew it strongly backward, while his
neck swelled prodigiously. There had not passed a whole year, before
he began to feel a great weakness after each act: this warning was not
sufficient to draw him out of the mire. His soul, wholly ingrossed by
the filth of this obscenity, was no longer capable of any other ideas,
and the reiterations of his crime became every day more frequent,
till he found himself in a condition, that gave him apprehensions of
death. Sensible of his danger too late, the mischief had made too great
a progress to admit of a cure. The parts of generation were become
so irritable, and so weak, that there did not need any fresh act on
the part of that wretched object, to make them let go the seed. The
slightest irritation procured, instantly, an imperfect erection, which
was immediately followed by an evacuation of that liquid, and this daily
augmented his weakness. That convulsion, which before he was not used
to experience but just at the time of the consummation of the act, and
which ceased at the same time, was become habitual, and often attacked
him without any apparent cause, with such violence too, that during
the time of the fit, which sometimes lasted fifteen hours, and never
less than eight, he suffered, in the nape of his neck, such violent
pains, that commonly his outcries sounded like piteous howlings, and
it was impossible for him, while the fit lasted, to swallow any thing
whatever, liquid or solid. He had contracted a hoarseness of voice, but
I did not observe it more so out of the fit than in it. He totally lost
his strength. Incapable of every thing, overwhelmed with misery, he
languished, almost without any assistence, for some months; being the
more to be pitied, for that some remains of memory, which however it was
not long till that was abolished, only served constantly to recall to
him the causes of his wretchedness, and to augment to him the horrors
of remorse. I was told his condition. I went to him, and found him less
a living creature than a cadaverous figure, lying upon straw, meagre,
pale, sallow, sending forth an infectious smell, and himself almost
incapable of any motion. He bled at the nose a pale and watery blood, and
was continually foaming at the mouth: attacked too with a diarrhœa, his
excrements came from him without his perceiving it; the flux of his seed
was continual; his eyes bleared, dim, or extinguished, had lost their
faculty of motion; his pulse was extremely low, yet quick and frequent;
his breathing very laborious, his leanness excessive, except just in
his feet, which began to be œdematous. The disorder of his mind was
not less than that of his body; without ideas, without memory, without
reflections, without anxiety about his fate, without any other sensation
but that of a pain which returned with every fit, at least once in three
days. A being much below that of a brute; a sight, of which there is no
conception can reach the horror. It was not easy to make out that he had
ever belonged to the human species. I procured for him quickly enough the
relief of destroying those violent convulsive fits, which recalled him
to the power of feeling, only by the pain they brought with them; but
satisfied with having mitigated his tortures, I discontinued remedies,
which could have no efficacy on the main of his disorder. He died at the
end of a few weeks, in June, 1757, œdematous all over his body.
Not all those who give themselves up to this odious and criminal habit,
are, it is true, so severely punished; but there are none that do not
suffer for it in a less or greater degree. The frequency of the act,
the difference of constitutions, many adventitious circumstances, may
occasion considerable differences.
The pernicious consequences that have fallen under my observation, are,
_first_, a total disorder of the stomach, which in some discovers
itself by loss of appetite, or by a depravation or irregularity of its
cravings; in others, by acute pains, especially in the time of digestion,
by habitual nauseas or vomitings, which resist all remedies, while the
cause, the bad practice, is continued. _Secondly_, A weakening of the
organs of respiration, whence frequently result dry husky coughs, almost
always a hoarseness, a failure of voice, and a shortness of breath, on
any little violence of motion. _Thirdly_, A total relaxation of the
nervous system.
It does not require a very deep knowledge of the animal œconomy, to be
sensible that the three prementioned causes are capable of producing all
the diseases of languor, and experience every day proves their producing
them. The first ill consequences of them, to such as are guilty of
self-pollution, besides those I have just pointed out, are a considerable
diminution of strength, a less or greater paleness, sometimes a slight
but continual jaundice, often pimples, which come and disappear only to
make room for fresh ones, and are constantly reproducing themselves all
over the face, but especially in the forehead, the temples, and about the
nose; a notable leanness; an astonishing sensibility to the changes of
weather, especially to cold; a languor in the eyes, a weakening of the
sight, a great impairment of the faculties, especially of the memory.
“I am sensible (a patient writes me) that this wretched practice has
diminished the strength of my intellectual faculties, and especially of
my memory[35].”
I beg leave to insert here the fragments of some letters, which, combined
together, will form a complete enough description of the natural
disorders produced by self-pollution. The language in which I wrote (the
Latin) hindered me from making use of them in the first edition of this
work.
“I had the misfortune (says the same person, who was by this time arrived
at the age of maturity,) like too many other young people, to suffer
myself to be carried away by the violence of a habit, as pernicious for
the body as for the soul. Age, indeed, assisted by reason, has, for some
time past, corrected this wretched inclination: but the ill is done.
The disorder and extraordinary sensibility of the nervous system, and
the accidents resulting therefrom, are accompanied with a weakness, a
restlessness, a _tædium vitæ_, a sense of distress, that all seem to vie
with each other to afflict me. I am consumed by an almost continued loss
of seed. My face is become as it were cadaverous, so pale, so livid.
The weakness of my body renders all my motions laborious: that of my
legs is often so great, that they can hardly support me, and that I
dare not go out of my room. My digestions are so ill performed, that my
aliments come from me, scarcely more altered, three or four hours after
I have taken them, than when I took them into my stomach. My breast
gets stuffed with phlegm, the load of which throws me into a state of
anguish, and my expectorations into a state of faintness. Here you have
a succinct account of my causes of complaint, which are still aggravated
by the melancholic certainty I have acquired, that every day will yet
be worse than the precedent ones. In a word, I cannot conceive that a
human creature can be afflicted with greater evils than I am. Without the
particular grace of Providence, I could hardly bear up under so heavy a
load.”
It was not without shuddering that I red, in another patient’s letter,
the following terrible expressions, which reminded me of some in the
(English) treatise of _Onania_.
“If religion did not restrain me, I should have already put an end to a
life, which is so much the more miserable for its being my own fault that
it is so.”
There cannot surely be in the world a more intolerable condition than
that of anguish: a state of pain is nothing in comparison with it; and
when it is superadded to a croud of other evils, it is not at all
strange that the sufferer should wish for death as his greatest good, and
regard life as a real misfortune, if the name of life can be given to so
deplorable a state.
_Vivere cum nequeam, sit mihi posse mori;_
_Dulce mori miseris, sed mors optata recedit._
M.
The following description is less long, and not quite so terrible as the
first one.
“I had the misfortune, in my tenderest youth, being, to the best of
my remembrance, not above eight or ten years of age, to contract
that pernicious habit of self-pollution, which very early ruined my
constitution; but especially, for some years past, I find myself under an
extraordinary oppression: my nerves are extremely weak, my hands without
strength, always shaking, and in a perpetual sweat. I have violent pains
in my stomach, arms, legs, sometimes in my loins, and in my breast.
I am often troubled with a cough; my eyes are always weak and dim; I
have a devouring appetite, and yet I grow very lean, and never but look
extremely ill.”
In the Section on the method of cure, will be seen the success of the
remedies in this case.
“Nature herself (says a third correspondent) opened my eyes to the cause
of that languor under which I found myself, and to the danger of that
abyss into which I was precipitating myself. Pimples or eruptions on the
part which was the instrument of my crime, and the faintness I felt in
the midst of the act itself, left me no room to doubt of the cause of my
suffering.”
I might add here a great number of cases of this nature, on which I have
been consulted since the second edition of this work, but they would be
useless repetitions. I shall only confine myself to two or three of the
most recent.
A man in the flower of his age wrote to me, but the other day, in the
following terms.
“In my early youth I contracted a most dreadful habit, which has ruined
my health. I am overwhelmed with stoppages and giddinesses of my head,
which give me room to apprehend an apoplexy. I have been bled for
them; but those who advised me, are sensible they were in the wrong of
it. I have a contraction of my breast, and consequently a difficulty
of breathing. I have frequently pains of the stomach, and I suffer
successively almost all over my body. In the day-time I am heavy,
inclined to doze, and restless; in the night my sleep is disturbed and
agitated, and does not refresh or repair me. I have often itchings; I am
pale, my eyes are weak and sore, my complexion is jaundiced, and I have
an offensive breath, &c.”
Another writes me thus: “I cannot walk two hundred paces without resting.
My weakness is extreme. I have continual pains all over my body, but
especially in my shoulders. I preserve my appetite, but that is rather a
misfortune to me, as I have pains of the stomach the moment I have eaten,
and throw up whatever I have got down. If I read a page or two, my eyes
water, and are sore. I often sigh involuntarily. _Filo xylino flaccidius
veretrum, omnisque erectionis impotens, semen quidem, manu sollicitum
effluere sinit, nequaquam vero ejaculat, adeo cæterum imminutum et
retractum, ut oculi de sexu vix judicare possint._”
The particulars of this case, with the success of my method of treatment
of it, will appear, in their place, in this work; and I furnish them
with the more reason, for that he was the most weakened and the most
governable of any patient I have seen.
A third, who had abandoned himself to this detestable practice, at
the age of twelve years, appeared to have suffered even more in his
intellectual faculties than in his bodily health. To the following
purpose was the account of himself: “I feel (says he) my warmth sensibly
diminish. My sensations are considerably dulled; the fire of my
imagination greatly slackened; the sense of my existence infinitely less
quick; every thing that passes at present before me appears to me like
a dream; I have difficulty of conception, and less presence of mind; in
short, I feel I am perishing, though I preserve my sleep, my appetite,
and am not much altered in my looks.”
A consequence, and not a rare one, of this practice, is the
Hypochondrialgia, and if those who are Hypochondriacs, from other
causes, abandon themselves to it, all the symptoms of that disorder
are exasperated by it, and it becomes incurable. I have seen the most
cruel inquietude, agitations, anxieties result from these two causes
united; and repeated observations have proved to me, that, in those
Hypochondriacs, who are subject sometimes to attacks of delirium, or
frenzy, self-pollution always hastens on the fits. The brain, weakened
by this double cause, successively loses its faculties, and the patients
fall at length into a state of an idiotism, which is never interrupted
but by some attacks of madness.
The _Memoirs of curious Naturalists_ mention a melancholic man, who,
in pursuance of Horace’s advice, used, sometimes, to seek in wine, a
diversion from his melancholy, and who, in the honey-moon of his second
marriage, having indulged excessively the pleasures of coition, fell into
so dreadful a frenzy, that it was necessary to chain him down[36].
JAKIN, in his Commentaries upon RHAZES, has preserved to us the
history of a melancholic man, whom excesses of that kind threw into a
consumption, attended with a frenzy, which made an end of him in a few
days[37].
It is well known that the epileptical paroxysms, accompanied with an
effusion of the seminal liquid, leave a greater faintness and stupor than
other fits, without that symptom. Coition will provoke and bring on the
fits of that disorder, in those who are subject to it; and it is to this
cause that M. VAN SWIETEN imputes the great faintness into which those
fall, who have frequent returns of those fits[38]. The late M. DIDIER
knew a merchant of Montpelier, who never performed the act of coition
without having immediately after it an attack of the epilepsy[39]. GALEN
makes the like observation[40]. The Observations of HENRICUS AB HEERS,
not to mention many others, attest the like effect[41].
M. VAN SWIETEN knew an epileptic patient, who was attacked with a fit on
his wedding night[42].
M. HOFFMAN knew a woman, who was very lewd, and who, for the most part,
had a fit of the epilepsy after every act of venery[43].
And here it may not be improper to introduce what M. BOERHAAVE says,
in his treatise on the Disorders of the Nerves, that in the venereal
ardor, all the nerves are affected, sometimes even to death. He mentions
the example of a woman, who, after every coition, fell constantly into
a pretty long fainting fit; and that of a man, who died in the act of
his first coition, the force of the spasm having instantaneously thrown
him into a total palsy. And I find in the excellent work with which M.
DE SAUVAGES has lately inriched the physical world, a most singular,
and perhaps before unheard of, case of a man, who, in the midst of the
act used to be attacked (and this disorder lasted twelve years) with a
spasm, which threw his whole body into a state of rigescence, with loss
of sense: _Ita ut illum præ oneris impotentia in alteram lecti partem
excutere cogeretur uxor, ut evacuatio spermatis lenta flaccidoque veretro
demum succedebat, remittente corporis rigiditate_[44].
I know several cases which have some affinity to this. M. DE HALLER
has specified a great many, in his remarks on the Institutes of
BOERHAAVE[45]; and there are numbers to be seen in the works of other
observers.
It has precedently been remarked, that self-pollution would produce this
dreadful disorder, and that happens oftener than is imagined: Can it then
be surprizing, that the acts of it should recall the fits, as I have more
than once seen it in persons subject to the epilepsy; or is it strange
that they should render it incurable?
This total rigescence or inflexibility of the body, of which M. BOERHAAVE
makes mention, is one of the most uncommon symptoms; I never saw it above
once, but then it was in the most consummate degree. The ill had begun
by a stiffness of the neck and spine, and successively spread to all the
limbs: this was the case of an unfortunate young man, whom I saw some
time before his death. Uncapable of lying on the bed in any other posture
but the supine one, and without power to move hand or foot, immoveable,
in short, and reduced to receive no aliments but as they were put into
his mouth; he languished a few weeks in this deplorable condition, and
died, or rather went out like a taper, almost without any indication of
pain.
I have since seen another terrible example of this total and mortal
rigescence, which will deserve a specification here.
On the 10th of February, 1760, I was called to visit, in the country, a
man of about forty years of age, who had been very strong and robust,
but who had been guilty of great excesses with women and wine, and who
had moreover often exercised himself at trials of bodily strength. It
was some months precedently that his disorder had begun by a weakness in
his legs which made him stagger as he walked, as if he had been drunk.
Sometimes he would actually fall down, though on the plainest ground. He
could not descend any steps without a great deal of trouble, and hardly
durst stir out of his apartment. His hands shook terribly; it was with
much difficulty he could write a few words, and those sadly scrawled.
But he could dictate readily enough, though his tongue, which had never
had any great volubility, began to have rather somewhat less. His memory
was good, and the only thing that could make any detriment to his
intellects to be suspected, was, that he was less attentive to the _game
of draughts_, and that his countenance was a good deal altered. He had
an appetite, and slept; but it was with difficulty he could turn himself
in his bed.
It appeared to me, that his excesses with women and wine were the
primary cause of his disorder, and I judged, that his straining in his
trials of bodily strength might be the reason why his muscles were
more particularly attacked. The season was rather unfavorable to the
employment of remedies, and yet it was requisite, in the mean while, to
stop the progress of the disease. I advised him frictions of the whole
body, with flannel, and other corroboratives; proposing to myself to
augment the doses with the adjunction of the cold-bath, in the beginning
of the summer. At the end of some weeks the tremors of his hand appeared
some what abated. In the month of April there was a conciliation held
on him, in which his disorder was imputed to an accident of his having,
about two years before, written, for some months, in a room newly
plaistered and damp. Upon this there were applied warm baths, unctuous
frictions, powders said to be diaphoretic and antispasmodic; but no
alteration for the better followed. In the month of June, a second
consultation decided for his going to the baths of Leuk, in Valais: he
went, and on his return he had more tremors, and a greater stiffness.
Since then (September, 1760) till the month of January 1764, I have not
seen him above three or four times.
In 1762, on the credit of some advertisement, he sent for, from
Frankfort, the medicines of the _Onania_, which did him no service.
Last year, he took others from some foreign physician, but with as
little success. His disorder had, from the beginning, made slow but
daily advances, and many months before his death, he could no longer
support himself on his legs, nor could he so much as move his hands or
arms. The embarrassment of his tongue increased, and his voice failed
him to such a degree, that there was no hearing easily what he said.
The extensor muscles of the head let it continually fall on the breast.
He had constantly an uneasiness in his back: his sleep and appetite
successively diminished: the last months of his life he could hardly
swallow any thing. Since Christmas an oppression came on him, with an
irregular fever. His eyes grew dim in a singular manner. When I saw him
again in the month of January, he used to pass the whole day, and a great
part of the night, in an elbow-chair, leaning backward, his feet extended
on a chair, his head falling down every instant on his breast, having
always a person standing near him, and constantly employed in changing
his attitude, lifting his head up to feed him, to give him snuff, to
blow his nose; and to make out, by listening attentively, what he said.
The last days of his life he was reduced to pronounce his words letter
by letter, which were taken down in writing just as he could articulate
them. Finding that I gave him no hopes, and that I only employed some
lenitives for his oppression and fever, urged, at length, by a desire of
living, he opened himself in, confidence to one of his friends, for his
immediately acquainting me of it, as the cause to which he imputed all
his illness, and which was his self-pollution, having begun that infamous
practice many years ago, and continued it as long as he could; adding,
that he had felt this disorder increase in proportion to his delivering
himself up to it. This confession he confirmed to me some days afterward,
and withal, that it was on this account that he had been determined to
send for the medicines of the _Onania_.
Excess of venery does not only produce the languors of chronical
diseases, but sometimes throws into acute ones, and always aggravates
any disorders that proceed from other causes; it easily produces
malignancies, which, in my opinion, are but a failure of the forces of
nature.
HIPPOCRATES, in his histories of epidemical diseases, has, of old, left
us his observation on a young man, who, after excesses of wine and
venery, was seized with a fever, accompanied by the most vexatious and
irregular symptoms, and which proved mortal[46].
All that M. HOFFMAN says on this head deserves a reference to it. After
having spoke of the danger of the pleasures of love, for wounded persons,
he examines that of such as, having a fever, will nevertheless venture
upon them. He begins by quoting an observation of FABRICIUS HILDANUS,
who says, that a man having had a commerce with a woman, the tenth day
of a pleurisy, which had had a favourable crisis from a profuse sweat,
was attacked with a violent fever and remarkable tremors, and died the
thirteenth day. He gives you afterwards the history of a man of fifty
years of age, gouty, and much addicted to venery and wine, who, in
the first days of his recovery from a false pleurisy, was attacked,
immediately after a coition, with a general tremor, an excessive flushing
in the face, a fever, and all the symptoms of the disorder from which he
was recovering, but much more violent than the first time, and was in a
much greater danger. He tells you too of a man, who never indulged any
venereal excesses without having, for many days afterwards, fits of an
intermittent fever. He concludes with a case from BARTHOLINUS, who saw
a new-married man attacked, on the next morning of his wedding night,
after conjugal excesses, with an acute fever, a great lowness of spirits,
faintnesses, nauseas of the stomach, an immoderate thirst, lightness of
head, want of sleep, and anxieties; but who was cured by rest and some
restoratives[47].
M. CHESNEAU saw a young married couple, attacked, the first week of their
wedding, with a violent continual fever, with a flushing in the face,
which was also considerably swelled: both of them had a great pain in the
small of their back, and both perished in a few days[48].
M. VANDERMONDE describes a fever produced by the same cause, a very
tedious fever, and attended with the most dreadful symptoms, but of
which the issue was more happy than in the case adduced by HIPPOCRATES.
I will not here recite the description of it, because of its length; but
I earnestly recommend to physicians the reading it in the work itself,
which is now easily to be come at any where. I shall subsequently and in
another place speak of the method of cure.
M. DE SAUVAGES describes this disorder under the title of the _burning
fever of the exhausted_: the pulse is sometimes strong and full, at
others weak and low. The urines are red, the skin dry and hot, the
thirst considerable. They have nauseas, and cannot sleep[49].
In 1761 and 1762 I saw two young men both very healthy, very strong, and
vigorous, who were attacked, the one on the next morning the other on the
next night of their respective weddings, with a violent fever, without
any shudder, their pulse quick and hard, lightness of head, many slight
convulsive motions, an intolerable restlessness, and the skin very dry.
The second was extremely thirsty, and made water with great difficulty.
I imagined, at first, that an excess of wine might have some share in
these accidents, but I was fully convinced to the contrary, at least
by the second. They were both of them cured in about two days time, a
circumstance, which, joined to the epoch of their disorder, and to its
symptoms, leaves no doubt about the cause of it.
Careful observations and sad experience have taught me, that acute
disorders were always very dangerous in persons accustomed to
self-pollution; their progress is commonly irregular, their symptoms
unaccountable, their periods interverted. The constitution affords no
resources; Art is obliged to do every thing, and as it never procures
perfect _Crises_, when, after a great deal of pains, the disease is
got under, the patient remains rather in a state of languor than of
recovery, which exacts a continuation of the most assiduous care, to
hinder him from falling into some chronical disorder.
I find that FONSECA has already stated this danger. “Many young persons
(says he) and those very robust ones, are either attacked, after excesses
with women, on the same night, with an acute fever that kills them, or
fall into grievous disorders, of which they find it a difficult matter
to be cured; for when the body is weakened by venereal excesses, if it
should be attacked with an acute distemper, there is no remedy[50].”
A young lad, not quite sixteen, had abandoned himself to self-pollution,
with such a rage, that, at length, instead of seed, he only brought
blood, of which the emission was soon followed by excessive pains, and by
an inflammation of all the organs of generation. Happening to be in the
country, I was consulted. I ordered extremely emollient cataplasms, which
produced the effect I expected from them: but I have since learnt, that
he died soon after of the small-pox; and do not in the least doubt of
the hurt he did his constitution by the fury of that infamous practice,
having much contributed to render that distemper mortal. What a warning
should not this be to young people!
All those who have sometimes occasion to have the venereal disorder under
their cure, know that it frequently becomes mortal, in such as have had
their constitution impaired or worn out by frequency of debauchery. I
have seen the most deplorable objects in that way.