_An examination of the circumstances which accompany the emission._
There are several evacuations which are performed imperceptibly: all
the others, except one, are effected in a state of perfect health, with
a facility to which it is owing that they have no influence over the
rest of the machine: the slightest motion of the organ which contains
the matter of them, suffices for the expulsion. The excepted one is the
evacuation of the seed, towards which nothing less is required than a
general commotion, a convulsion of all the parts, an augmentation of
quickness in the course of all the humors, to dislodge and give it issue.
Can it be thought here too hazardous a conjecture to look on this
necessary concurrence of the whole animal system, as a sensible proof of
the influence it has over the whole body?
“Coition (says DEMOCRITUS) is a sort of epilepsy.”
“It is (says M. HALLER) a most violent action, bordering upon convulsion,
and which must therefore astonishingly weaken, being detrimental to the
nervous system.”
It has been seen, in an observation precedently set forth, that an
emission was preceded by actual convulsions, by a sort of epilepsy; and
the same observation furnishes evident proof of the influence which those
violent emotions had on the unhappy man who was subjected to them.
The immediateness of the faintness after the act has to many appeared,
and not without reason, a proof, that it could not be only the privation
of the seed that occasioned it; but what demonstratively proves how much
the spasm or convulsion must weaken, is the weakness incident to those
who are afflicted with convulsive disorders: that which follows the fits
of epilepsy is sometimes excessive.
It could be only to the spasm, or convulsion, that the singular effect
was to be imputed, which coition had on one whose name was AMMAN, and
whose history was preserved to us by PLATERUS. Being advanced in years he
had re-married, and being about to consummate his nuptials, he was seized
with so violent a suffocation, that he was obliged to discontinue the
attempt. The same accident returned every time that he renewed the trial.
He applied, upon this, to a number of quacks. One of them, who had made
him take a great many of his pretended remedies, assured him that he had
no longer any danger to fear. On the faith of his Æsculapius, he ventured
upon a fresh attempt. The same symptom was instantly the consequence:
however, full of confidence, he would persist, and died in the act
itself, in the arms of his wife[63].
Those violent palpitations which sometimes accompany that of coition,
are also a convulsive symptom. HIPPOCRATES speaks of a young man, to
whom excesses of venery and wine had occasioned, among other symptoms,
continual palpitations[64]. And DOLÆUS knew one, who, in the act itself,
was seized with so violent a palpitation, that he must have been
suffocated if he had persisted[65].
The case of the child, above quoted, is also a proof, (which did not
escape the sagacity of M. RAST,) of the power of the convulsive cause;
since at that age he could hardly evacuate any thing but the humor of the
prostates, and not genuine seed.
These remarks have fallen under the observation of a number of good
authors, who have written upon this matter. GALEN seems to have hit upon
them, where he says, “Pleasure itself weakens the vital forces.”
Mr. FLEMING has not omitted the cause, in his fine poem on the maladies
of the nerves:
_Quin etiam nervos frangit quæcunque voluptas_[66].
SANCTORIUS positively establishes his assertion, that the motions weaken
more than the emission of the seed: and it is surprising that M. DE
GORTER, his commentator, should have sought to persuade the contrary. The
reason which he gives, in his averment that these motions do not weaken
any more than any other motion, “_because they are not convulsive_,”[67]
will persuade no one. One example, could he produce it, would not pass
for a law of nature. LISTER, NOGUEZ, QUINCY, who had commented this work
before him, are not of his opinion; they attribute part of the danger to
the weakness that remains after the convulsions. “Coition (says NOGUEZ)
is itself a convulsion; it disposes the nerves to convulsive motions, and
the slightest occasion consequently produces them.”
J. A. BORELLI, one of the first creators of physiology, had not looked
upon them in the same light as M. GORTER. He is clearly positive upon
this article.
“This act (says he) is accompanied with a sort of convulsive pathos,
which carries with it the most sensible affections of the brain, and of
the whole nervous system[68].”
Mr. SENAC specifically imputes to the nerves the weakness which follows
coition.
“The most likely cause (says he) of the fainting fit which comes when
an abscess breaks in the interior of the abdomen, is the action of the
nerves then brought into play. This is confirmed by the ejection, or by
the fits of faintness which follow the effusion of seed; for it is only
to the nerves that this sinking can be imputed[69].”
M. LEWIS[70] attributes more to this cause than to the other, in which
he is of the opinion of SANCTORIUS. Where there is convulsion, the
nervous system is in a state of tension, or, to say more correctly, in
an extraordinary degree of action, of which the necessary consequence is
an excessive relaxation. Every organ, that has been wound up beyond its
natural pitch, falls beneath it; and from that very fall must necessarily
result a bad performance of the functions which depend on it; and as the
nerves have an influence over them all, there is not one of the functions
but what must be more or less disordered when the nerves are weakened.
One reason, too, that may contribute to the weakness of the nervous
system, is the augmentation of the quantity of blood in the brain,
during the venereal act; an augmentation well demonstrated, and which
has gone sometimes so far as to produce an apoplexy. Many examples of it
are furnished by observing practitioners, and HOFFMAN relates one of a
soldier, who, in the rage of lust with which he abandoned himself to this
act, died apoplectic in the very instant of fruition. On being opened,
the brain was found full of blood. It is by this augmentation of blood,
that the reason is explained of those excesses producing madness[71].
Such a quantity of blood distending the nerves, enfeebles them: they can
the less resist impressions, and thence their weakness.
On a reflection upon these two causes, the evacuation of the seed, and
the concomitancy of the convulsive motions, it is easy to explain the
disorder that must result from the excess of them to the animal œconomy.
They may be ranged under three heads.
The depravation of the digestions.
The weakening of the brain and of the nervous system.
The disordering of the perspiration.
We shall see that there is no chronical disease that may not be deduced
from this triple cause.
“The relaxation proceeding from these excesses, disorders the functions
of all the organs,” says one of the authors who has written the
most sensibly on the dietetic branch of physic; and the digestion,
the concoction, the perspiration, and the other evacuations become
respectively faulty: thence results a sensible diminution of strength, of
memory, and even of the understanding; a dimness of the eye-sight, all
the disaffections of the nerves, all kinds of the gout and rheumatism,
an amazing weakness of the back, the consumption, a feebleness of the
organs of generation, bloody urines, head-achs, and a multitude of other
disorders superfluous to specify here; in short, nothing so much abridges
life as the abuse of the pleasures of venery[72].
The stomach is the part the first affected by all the causes of weakness:
this is owing to its being the part of which the functions require the
greatest perfection in the organ. The others are, for the most part
of them, as much passive as active; the stomach is almost intirely
active; so that as soon as its strength diminishes, its functions grow
disordered; an observable truth, which combined with the variety of the
first impressions, often vexatious ones, produced upon this instrument
of digestion by what is taken in at the mouth, combined too, I say, with
the immediately following observation, will account for the frequency,
the oddity, the obstinacy of its ailments. It is of all the parts of the
body that which receives the greatest number of nerves, and in which
therefore, by that very means, there must be distributed the greatest
quantity of animal spirits. Whatever then weakens the action of the one,
and diminishes the quantity or depraves the quality of the other, must
in course more diminish the strength of the stomach than of any other
intestine; and this is what happens in excesses of venery. The importance
of the function to which it is destinated, is the cause, that when it is
ill or deficiently performed, all the others feel it, and are the worse
for it.
_Hujus enim validus firmat tenor omnia membra;_
_At contra, ejusdem franguntur cuncta dolore._[73]
From the moment that the digestions are imperfectly performed, the
humors assume a character of crudity, which disqualifies them for all
their destinations, but which, above all, hinders nutrition, upon which
depends the reparation of the vital forces. To be assured of the general
influence of the stomach, there needs only to observe the state of a
person under the complaint of a laborious digestion; his strength fails
in a few minutes; a general uneasiness renders that weakness still harder
to be indured; the organs of sensation grow obtuse; the soul itself
cannot exercise its faculties but imperfectly; the memory, and especially
the imagination, seem annihilated; nothing, in short, makes a man of
sense so nearly resemble a fool, as a painful or defective digestion.
A very curious observation, specified by M. PAYVA, a Portuguese
physician, who resided in Rome, throws a great light on the prodigious
weakness into which an excessive indulgence of venery will throw those
who are guilty of it.
“When (says he) the desires of the sensual joy are, in young people,
risen to the greatest height, they feel a kind of agreeable sensation at
the orifice of the stomach; but if they satisfy these desires with too
great an impetuosity, and beyond their strength, they feel, in the same
place, an extremely disgustful sensation, with something of a bitterness
in it they cannot express; they pay dearly besides for their excesses,
by the leanness and marasmus, &c. into which they fall[74].”
ARETÆUS had, before him, taken notice of this truth[75], and BOERHAAVE
employs the same expressions as PAYVA, with this addition, that that
sense of pain goes off in proportion as they recover their strength[76].
He informs, in another place, the same thing, joining thereto a very
useful practical rule, which is, that on the coming on of epileptic fits,
after venereal excesses, care should be taken to strengthen the nerves of
the stomach[77].
Secondly, The weakness of the nervous system, which disposes to all
the paralytic and spasmodic accidents, is produced, as I have before
observed, by the convulsive motions which accompany the emission, and,
in the second place, by the disorder of the digestions: when these are
faulty, the nerves suffer by it, and suffer the more, for that the
fluid with which they are imbibed, being the very ultimate elaboration
of coction, and that which requires the greatest perfection of that
elaboration; when, I say, that coction is faulty, it is of all the animal
fluids that which is thereby the most sensibly affected, and upon which
the crudity of the rest of the humors has the most influence. In short,
what augments this weakness, is an evacuation of a humor that has great
affinity to the animal spirits, and which, by reason of that affinity,
cannot be evacuated without diminishing the strength of the nervous
system, which I cannot help attributing to those spirits, notwithstanding
the modest doubts of some great men, who dare not affirm any thing, in
natural philosophy, the truth of which does not fall under the senses,
and notwithstanding the objections of some subaltern or systematical
physiologists.
Besides: independently of the damage resulting from this evacuation,
relatively to the quantity of the animal spirits, it hurts, by its
depriving the vessels of that gentle stimulation produced by the absorbed
seed, and which contributes so much to the coction of those spirits.
It is pernicious, then, both by its drawing off a part of the animal
spirits, or, at least, of a very pretious humor, and by diminishing the
coction, without which those spirits can, at best, be only imperfectly
and insufficiently prepared.
There is between the diseases of the stomach to those of the nerves,
and from those of the nerves again to those of the stomach, a vitious
circle. The first beget the second, and these, once formed, contribute
infinitely to augment them. If daily observation were not to prove it,
the bare anatomical inspection of the stomach would carry sufficient
conviction with it. The quantity of nerves distributed through it, is
abundantly a demonstration how necessary they are to its functions, and
how, consequently, those functions must be disordered when the nerves are
not in good condition.
Thirdly, Perspiration does not proceed kindly in that case. SANCTORIUS
has even determined the quantity diminished by it; and this evacuation,
the most considerable of all the others, cannot be suppressed without
there resulting from it a croud of different symptoms.
It is easily then conceivable that there can be no disorder which may not
be produced by this triple cause. I will not enter into the explanation
of all the particular symptoms; such a particularization would too much
expand this little work, and could not interest the physicians to whom
it would be superfluous. What M. DE GORTER has said upon it, is worth
consulting[78].
M. CLIFTON WINTRINGHAM has very sensibly particularised the dangers of
this evacuation with respect to the gouty, and his explanation merits
attention[79].
The late M. GUNZIUS, snatched from the medical career in the flower of
his age, has given a very ingenious mechanical explanation[80] of the
inconveniences resulting from this excess to the faculty of respiration.
He speaks, on this occasion, of a man who had thereby brought upon
himself a continual cough; a symptom which I myself observed in a young
man who died a victim of self-pollution.
He was come to Montpelier, to pursue there his studies. His excesses in
that infamous practice had thrown him into a consumption, and I recollect
that his cough was so strong and so continual, that it disturbed all
his neighbours. He was frequently blooded, which must have been, I
supposed, by way of making the quicker dispatch of his sufferings. A
consultation on his case, prescribed his going home, and living there
upon turtle-broth. His residence was, if I am not mistaken, in Dauphiny.
The persons consulted promised him a complete cure; but he died two hours
after the consultation. How curious an one! and what physicians must
they have been who were consulted!
But what is the least easy to conceive, or rather, what is beyond all
comprehension, is, that of its prodigious weakening of the faculties of
the soul.
The solution of this problem is connected with the question
undeterminable by us, of the mutual influence of the two substances
upon each other, upon which we are reduced to the observation of these
phenomenons, without being able to account for them. We are ignorant of
the nature both of the spirit and of the body; but we know that they are
so intimately united, that all the changes that the one undergoes are
felt by the other: a circulation a little more or less quick, the blood
a little more or less thick, some ounces more or less of aliments, the
same quantity of one aliment rather than of another, a dish of coffee
instead of a glass of wine, a sleep more or less long or tranquil, a
stool a little more or less copious, a perspiration too profuse or too
languid, will totally change our manner of seeing or judging of objects:
From one hour to another, the revolutions of the machine bring with them
different sensations, different thoughts, and, arbitrarily, form to us
new principles of vices and of virtues; so just is the idea of the poet
who first wrote Satires in France.
_Tout, suivant l’intellect, change d’ordre et de rang:_
_Ainsi, c’est la nature et l’humeur des personnes,_
_Et non la qualité, qui rend les choses bonnes,_
_C’est un mal bien etrange au cerveau des humains._[81]
So exact is the description which LUCRETIUS has furnished of this
intimate union:
——_Gigni pariter cum corpore, et una_
_Crescere sentimus, pariterq; senescere mentem._
_Nam velut infirmo pueri teneroque vagantur_
_Corpore; sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis:_
_Inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus ætas,_
_Consilium quoque majus, et auctior est animi vis:_
_Post ubi jam validis quassatu’st viribus ævi_
_Corpus; et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus._
_Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque, mensque:_
_Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt;_
_Quin etiam morbis in corporis avius errat_
_Sæpe animus, dementit enim, deliraque fatur._[82]
Observation also teaches us, that of all the diseases there is not one
that affects more quickly the soul, than those of the nervous system: of
this the epileptics, who, at the end of a certain number of years, most
commonly fall into a state of imbecillity, furnish a melancholy proof,
which may, at the same time, give us to understand, that it is not at all
surprising that those acts, which, as has been precedently remarked, are
always in a small degree epileptic, should produce such a weakening of
the brain, and, consequentially, of the vital faculties.
The weakening of the brain, and of the nervous system, is followed by
that of the senses, which is nothing but natural.
SANCTORIUS, HOFFMAN, and some others, have endeavoured at explaining why
the sight more especially suffers; but their reasons, however founded
on truth, do not appear to me sufficient. The principal ones, and which
are drawn from qualities particular to this organ, are, the multitude of
parts that constitute the eye, and which being, all of them, susceptible
of different ailments, render it infinitely more subject than the others,
to disorders. In the next place the nerves serve here for various uses,
and are very numerous. In short, the afflux of humors to that part,
during the time of the act, an afflux of which the sparkling perceived
in the eyes of animals, at that juncture, forms a sensible proof,
produces in the vessels of the eye, at first a weakness, and afterwards
obstructions, of which a loss of sight is the necessary consequence.
Nor is it actually difficult to answer the question above proposed, why
it is that Eunuchs, who have no seed, are not exposed to the disorders we
have precedently described?
Of this there are two very sufficient reasons.
The _first_ is, that if Eunuchs do not actually draw from this liquid
those advantages which are produced by its being prepared and resorbed;
on the other hand, they lose nothing of that precious part of the blood
which is destined to become seed. It is true, they do not experience
those changes which are owing to the preparation of the seed, and which
have been above set forth; but then again, they cannot be exposed to the
evils which proceed from a privation of this non-prepared humor. The
seed, if I could have leave to employ terms of metaphysic, is either seed
imperfect, and _in fieri_, or seed _in potentia_; which is that precious
part of the humors separated by the testicles, and seed actually made, or
_in actu_. If the first is not separated, the animal machine is deprived
of the advantages it draws from the seed prepared, and does not undergo
the changes which depend on it, but then it is not depauperated: it does
not gain, indeed, neither does it lose; the body remains in a sort of
state of puerility. When the seed is separated and evacuated, it is then
a privation, a real impoverishment.
The _second_ reason is, that the Eunuchs escape that kind of spasm or
convulsion, to which I have imputed a great part of the evils which are
the consequence of excesses in this way.
The accidents which, on the like account, befall the women, are to be
accounted for in the like manner with those of the men. The humor which
they lose being less precious, less elaborate, than the seed of the
man, the loss of it does not perhaps so quickly produce a weakness; but
when they go to excesses, the nervous system being, in them, weaker,
and naturally more disposed to spasm or convulsion, the fits are more
violent. Sudden excesses will throw them into fits somewhat a-kin to
those of the young man whom I mentioned at the end of the fourth section.
I have also seen a melancholic instance of this kind.
In 1746 a girl of the age of about twenty three years challenged, to the
combat of venery, six Spanish dragoons, and bore their assaults for a
whole night in a house at the gates of Montpellier. In the morning she
was brought into the town, dying, and weltering in her own blood, which
issued from the womb. It would have afforded matter of instruction, to
have been satisfied whether that effusion of blood was the consequence of
some hurt, or whether it depended on the dilatation of the vessels, by
the augmentation of the action of the womb.