_Consequences of self-pollution to the female sex._
The preceding observations appear, all of them (except that from Mr.
STEHELIN, which concludes the second Section,) to concern principally
the men: but it would be an essential imperfection, in a treatise on
this subject, to omit an admonition to the female sex, of their exposing
themselves to the same dangers, on their pursuing the same depraved
course. There are numerous examples of their having drawn upon themselves
all the evils I have set forth, and women but too often perish miserably
the victims of this detestable lewdness. The English treatise upon
_Onania_ is full of confessions of this kind, which there is no reading
without being seized with horror and compassion; the malignity of the
disorders occasioned by it, seems even to have a superior degree of
activity among the women, to what it has among the men.
Besides the symptoms which I have already described, the women are
particularly exposed to hysteric fits, or dreadful vaporous affections;
to incurable jaundices, to cruel cramps of the stomach and back; to
sharp prickings of the nose, to the _fluor albus_, of which the acridity
is a perpetual source of the most torturous pains; to the procidentia,
and ulcerations of the womb, and to all the infirmities which are the
consequences of these two disorders; to elongations of the clitoris, and
eruptions on it; to the _furor uterinus_, which, depriving them at once
of modesty and reason, puts them on a level with the most lascivious
brutes, till a desperate death delivers them from pain and infamy.
The face, that faithful mirror of the intellectual and bodily affections,
is the first to give outward signs of the inward disorders. Then that
plumpness, that fresh color, whose union constitutes that air of youth,
which alone can supply the place of beauty, and without which beauty
itself can produce no other impression than that of a cold unconcerned
admiration; that plumpness, I say, that fresh color, are the first to
fade away and disappear: leanness, a sallow complexion, a coarseness
of the skin succeed immediately to them; the eyes lose their lustre,
tarnish, and express, in their languor, that of the whole machine, the
lips lose their vermilion, the teeth their whiteness; in short, it is not
rare that the whole figure receives a considerable damage by the total
deformation of the shape.
The _Rickets_ is a disorder, as to which BOERHAAVE is mistaken, when
he says, it does not attack persons after the age of three years. It
is not uncommon to see young people of both sexes, but especially the
female, who, after their having been well-shaped to the age of eight,
ten, twelve, or fourteen, and even sixteen years, fall, little by little,
into a distortion of shape, through the curvature of the spine; and this
disorder sometimes becomes very considerable. It is not here the place
for entering into particulars of this ailment, nor into an enumeration of
the causes which produce it. HIPPOCRATES has pointed out two[51]. I shall
have, perhaps, occasion of communicating, in another work, what several
observations have taught me on that subject; but what I ought not to omit
here, is, that self-pollution holds the first rank among the causes that
produce it.
M. HOFFMAN having already observed, that young persons, who give
themselves up to the pleasures of venery before they have attained their
full growth, could not thrive, and must rather go back than advance in
their stature[52], I only add, that it is obvious to sense, that a cause
which can hinder growth, must, _a fortiori_, disturb the order, and
produce those irregularities in the course of it, which contribute to the
disorders of which I am treating.
One symptom common to both sexes, and which I place under this head,
because it is the most frequent among women, is that indifference which
this infamous habit leaves for the lawful pleasures of the marriage-bed,
even while the desires of sensuality, and strength are not yet
extinguished; an indifference, which does not only attach numbers to a
single life, but which often pursues even to the nuptial couch.
In the collection of cases made by Dr. BECKERS, a woman confesses, that
this vile habit had got such an ascendant over her senses, that she had
an aversion against the lawful means of satisfying the desires of nature,
in the natural way.
I myself know a man, who being taught these abominations by his tutor,
had the like distaste, on the first of his marriage; and his anguish at
this situation, joined to the faintness contracted by that habit, threw
him into a profound melancholy, which yielded, however, at length, to
the nervous and restorative remedies.
Here, before I proceed farther, let me entreat fathers and mothers to
make their own reflections on the occasion of the misfortune of this last
mentioned patient; and there are more examples than one of the like case.
If one may, to such a degree, be deceived in the choice of those to whom
the important care of forming the head and heart of young persons, what
ought one not to fear from those, who, being only designed to give the
corporal graces and talents of education, are less scrupulously examined
as to their morals? And what ought not one still more to fear from
servants, too often hired without any character of their morals at all.
The young boy, or rather merely a child, of whom I made mention from M.
RAST, was, as has been remarked, seduced into that vice by a maid-servant.
The English collection of cases of self-pollution is full of the like
examples; and I could produce many instances of young plants blasted
and lost through the villainy of the gardeners intrusted with their
cultivation: and, in that light, there are such gardeners of both sexes.
What remedy, will it be said, is there for such evils? The answer is out
of my sphere; I shall then make it a short one. The most scrupulous
attention ought to be given to the choice of a preceptor; nor ought the
care to end at that, but a watchful eye be kept over him and his pupil;
that sort of watchful eye, which belongs to a sensible and careful father
of a family, and which discovers the most hidden doings in every corner
of the house; that eye, I say, which discovers those antlers of the stag,
which escaped all other eyes, a penetrative vigilance, in short, from
which nothing can be concealed, and which it is possible to have, when
one is in earnest in it.
_Docuit enim fabula Dominum videre plurimum in rebus suis._
PHÆD.
Young persons ought never to be left alone with masters liable to any
suspicion; and all intercourse should be forbidden with the servants.
It is not long since that a girl of about eighteen years of age, who
had enjoyed a very good health, fell into an astonishing weakness; her
strength decayed daily; she was all the day stupified with a kind of
dozing, and all night tormented with a want of sleep, her appetite was
gone, and œdematous swellings spread over her whole body. She consulted
an able surgeon, who, having satisfied himself of there having been no
disorder in the menstrual flux, suspected self-pollution. The effect of
his first question confirmed to him the justness of his suspicion, and
the confession of the patient converted it to a certainty. He made her
sensible of the danger of this practice, a cessation of which, and some
remedies, stopped, in a few days, the progress of the evil, and even
produced some amendment of health.
Besides self-pollution, manual or instrumental, there is another
defilement, or contamination, which may be termed _clitoridian_, of which
the known origin is traced up to the second Sappho.
_Lesbiades, infamem quæ me fecistis, amatæ._
A vice too common among the Roman women, from that epoch at which the
general dissoluteness of morals began, and which was more than once the
object of the epigrams and satires of those times.
_Lenonum ancillas posita Laufella corona_
_Provocat, et tollit pendentis præmia coxæ._
_Ipsa Medullina frictum crissantis adorat._
_Palmam inter Dominas virtus natalibus æquat._[53]
Nature, in her sportive indulgence to variety, gives to some women a
degree of resemblance to men, which, for want of sufficient examination,
has, for ages, obtained a belief of that chimæra of Hermaphrodites.
The supernatural size of a part which is commonly a very small one of
the female organ of generation, and upon which M. TRONCHIN has given
a learned dissertation, constitutes the whole wonder, as the odious
abuse of that part does the whole ill. Vain, perhaps, of this sort of
resemblance, there have been some of these imperfect women, who have
usurped the functions of virility. The Greeks call them _Tribades_. They
are a sort of monstrous beings too frequent, and which seduce the young
of the fair sex with the more facility, for their having in their favor,
that reason for loving eunuchs, which Juvenal imputes to some women,
_Quod abortivo non est opus._
There are not those consequences to be dreaded, the impossibility of
hiding which betrays such as have had complaisances or weaknesses in
the natural way. Of this circumstance the _Tribad_ takes the advantage
to draw the young of her sex into the crime, without her innocent
accomplices even suspecting the danger: and yet it is not less in that
way than in other means of pollutions; the consequences are equally
pernicious. All these deviations from the course of nature lead to
weaknesses, languor, pain, and death. This last kind of lewdness deserves
the more attention, for that it is, in our days, grown frequent, and
that it would not be difficult to find more than one _Laufella_, more
than one _Medullina_, who, like those Roman heroines in obscenity, think
they should slight those extraordinary gifts of nature, if they did not
pervert them to the confusion of the arbitrary distinction of the sex
to which they were born. It is well known, that, some years ago, at
a certain court, a lady was so much in love with a young girl to her
taste, that she conceived a violent jealousy against a celebrated man of
Literature, who had conceived a liking for her.
But it is time to have done with these melancholic instances of the
depravity and turpitude of human nature; I am mortified and sick of
describing them. I will not here then accumulate a greater number of
facts: those which remain for me to specify, will naturally find their
place elsewhere. I shall next pass to an examination of the causes of the
evils proceeding from this practice, after first concluding this Section
with the following general observation.
It is this. Young people born with a weak constitution, have, on a parity
of crimes, much worse consequences to fear, than those who are naturally
vigorous. None escape punishment, but all do not experience it equally
severe. Those especially who have reason to apprehend any hereditary
diseases by the father’s or the mother’s side; such as are threatened
with the gout, the stone, the consumption, the king’s evil; those who
have any touches of a cough, of an asthma, of spitting of blood, of
head-achs, of the epilepsy; those who have any tendency to that kind
of rickets which I have precedently mentioned; all these unfortunates,
I say, ought to be intimately persuaded, that every act of this sort
of debauchery gives a severe blow to his constitution, most certainly
hastens the attack of the evils they dread, renders the fits infinitely
more vexatious, and will throw them, in the flower of their youth, into
all the infirmities of the most languishing old age.
_Tartareas vivum constat inire vias._
ARTICLE II.
_The CAUSES._