_Causes of the dangers particular to self-pollution._
It has been precedently observed, that self-pollution is more pernicious
than excesses with women. Those who, on every occasion, bring a
particular Providence into play, will assign for a reason, that it is the
special will of God, in punishment of this crime. Persuaded as I am, that
bodies have been, primordially from their creation, subjected to laws,
which necessarily regulate all their motions, and of which the Deity does
not probably change the œconomy, unless in a small number of reserved
cases, I should not chuse to have recourse to miraculous causes, but
when there is found a manifest opposition to natural ones. This is not
the case here: every thing may be very well explained by the laws of the
mechanism of the body, and by those of its union with the soul.
This common custom of a recourse to supernatural causes, has been
anciently combated by HIPPOCRATES, who speaking of a disease which the
Scythians imputed to its being a particular punishment inflicted by God,
makes this fine reflexion:
“It is true (says he) that this disease comes from God; but not, in any
other sense, than as all other diseases come from him: one does not
come from him more than another; because all of them follow his laws of
nature, by which every thing is governed[83].”
SANCTORIUS, in his Observations, furnishes us with one primary cause of
this particular danger:
“Moderate coition (says he) is rather of service, when it is sollicited
by nature: when it is sollicited by the imagination, it weakens all the
faculties of the soul, and especially the memory[84].”
It is not difficult to explain the cause of this. Nature, in a state of
health, does not inspire with desires, but when the seminal vesicules
are full of a quantity of liquor, which has acquired a degree of
inspissation, that renders the resorption of it the more difficult;
which is a sign that the evacuation of it will not sensibly weaken the
body. But such is the organisation of the parts of generation, that
their action, and the desires consequential thereto, are not only put
into play, by the presence of a redundancy of seminal humor, but the
imagination has also a great influence over those parts. Imagination can,
by laying itself out for the excital of desires, and by busying itself
with objects present, or of its own formation, put the parts into a state
which produces those desires, and those desires impell to an action, so
much the more pernicious for its being the less necessary.
It is, with regard to this organ of a natural necessity, as it is with
regard to all the others, who are never beneficially brought into play,
but when they are so by nature herself. Hunger and thirst point out the
need of a recourse to meat and drink; but if more is taken of them than
these sensations require, the surplusage hurts and weakens the body.
The need of going to stool or urine are equally limited to certain
natural conditions; but a bad habit may so far pervert or deprave the
constitution of those organs, that the necessity of evacuation will
cease to depend on the quantity of matters to be evacuated. Men subject
themselves to false wants, and such is the case of those addicted to
self-pollution. It is imagination and habit that sollicit them; it is not
nature. They rob nature of what is necessary to her, and of which, for
that very reason, she is so chary, and loath to part with it.
In short, in consequence of this law of the animal œconomy, that humors
will tend to where there is an irritation, so it will happen, that,
after a certain time, there will be a continual afflux of humors to
the irritated parts of generation: that case will come into existence,
which HIPPOCRATES has already observed, “When a man exercises the act of
coition, the seminal veins dilate, and attract the seed[85].”
It may be remarked here, that there is in self-pollution particularly
a danger for children before they arrive to the age of puberty. It is
happily not common to find such monsters, of either sex, as to debauch
children before that epoch; but it is but too common for children of that
age to debauch themselves. A great number of circumstances may concur to
keep a lewd commerce with others at a distance from them, or at least to
moderate it; but a solitary lewdness meets with no obstacle, and knows no
bounds.
A second cause is, the tyranny which this odious practice gains over
the senses, and which the author of the _English Onania_ describes very
justly.
“This impurity has no sooner subdued the heart, than it pursues the
criminal every where: it takes hold of him, and engrosses his thoughts
at all times and in all places: in the midst of the most serious
occupations, even in acts of devotion, he is in prey to sensual desires
and to lascivious ideas, which never leave him free[86].”
Nothing can be more infeebling than this continual stretch of the mind,
ingrossed by the same object. The self-pollutor, perpetually abandoned
to his obscene meditations, is, in this regard, something in the case
of the man of letters, who fixes all his attention on one point, and it
is rare that such an excess is not pernicious. That part of the brain
which is then in action, makes an effort, which may be compared to that
of a muscle long and violently on the stretch: thence results, either
such a mobility, that there is no stopping the activity of the part,
which is notably the case of self-pollution, or an incapacity of action.
Exhausted, at length, by a continual fatigue, these wretched beings fall
into all the diseases of the brain; melancholy, catalepsy, epilepsy,
imbecillity, loss of sense, weakness of the nervous system, and a croud
of the like evils[87].
This cause of disorder does an infinite mischief to a number of young
people, in that, when even their faculties are not as yet extinct, the
use of them is perverted. To whatever vocation they devote themselves,
there is no making a proficiency in any thing, without a degree of
application, of which this pernicious habit renders them incapable. Among
even those who dedicate themselves to nothing, and the class of these is
but too numerous, there are some, whom that vacuity more than commonly
misbecomes; an air of absence, of embarrassment, of giddiness, adds to
the circumstance of their being good for nothing, that of their being
disgustfully so.
I could point out some, whom this incapacity of fixing themselves to any
thing, combined with the diminution of their faculties, disables from
ever being of any use or value in society. Melancholic condition! which
sinks the man beneath the brute, and, very justly renders an object
rather of contempt than of pity to his fellow-creatures!
From these two causes there necessarily results a third; and that is the
frequency itself of the act. As soon as the habit has gained a little
strength, both body and soul concur in sollicitation to this crime.
The soul, immersed in obscene ideas, is almost constantly exciting to
lascivious acts, and if ever she is, for some moments, interrupted
by other thoughts, the acrid humors, which irritate the organs of
generation, soon recall her attention, and drag her back again to her
mire.
How fit would these truths, collected from observation, be to check
youth, if they could but foresee that in this case one false step would
bring on another; that they will become slaves to the temptation; that
in proportion as the motives of their seduction increase, that reason of
theirs, which ought to restrain them, will grow weaker and weaker; and
that they will, in a little time, find themselves cast away in a sea of
misery, without, perhaps, the aid of any the least plank, to bring them
to the shore again.
If sometimes their beginning infirmities give them strong and salutary
advice, if the danger terrifies them for some moments, their rage of
debauchery replunges them again, so that it may well be said of them,
_Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta._
PERS.
In the mean while the danger is actual, the destruction so imminent, that
short indeed is the time of opportunity for amendment.
——_cinis et manes et fabula fies:_
_Vive memor lethi: fugit hora: hoc quod loquor inde est._
PERS.
While I studied in Geneva, a time, of which the remembrance will be dear
to me for the rest of my life, one of my condisciples was come to that
state of horror, that he was not master enough of himself to abstain
from these abominations, even during the time of the lessons. He did not
wait long for his punishment: and perished miserably of a consumption,
in about two years time. A similar case to this may be found in the
_Onania_.[88]
The ingenious author, who, from the Latin edition of this work, furnished
the extract in the excellent Latin Journal of Literature, which, about a
twelvemonth, made its first appearance at Berne, tells you, with regard
to this observation, that a whole college had recourse to this filthy
practice, by way of an amusement, to avoid falling asleep, at the lessons
of scholastic metaphysics, which a very old professor used to teach them,
as he nodded between sleeping and waking[89]. But this little story seems
to me less fit to prove what I have been physically advancing, than the
actual horrid dissoluteness into which the contagion of example may
plunge a number of young people. The same author has recently published
a work, which I have not as yet had the advantage of perusing, but to
which an excellent judge assigns a rank among the best productions of
this age. There he mentions, that, in a certain town, there was some
years ago discovered a whole society of wicked boys, from fourteen to
fifteen years old, who met to practise this vice, and that a whole school
was to this moment infected with it.[90]
The health of a young Prince was daily declining, without any one’s
being able to discover the cause of it. At length his surgeon suspected
it, watched him, and surprized him in the fact. He confessed, that one
of his _valets de chambre_ had taught him the practice, and that he had
been often guilty of it. The habit was so strong upon him, that the most
pressing considerations, and the most strenuously inforced, could not
break him of it. The evil was constantly gaining ground; his strength was
daily wasting; and there was no such thing as saving him, but by keeping
guard over him, so as not to let him be a moment out of sight, for above
eight months.
A patient, in one of his letters, gave me a lively description of the
difficulties of his victory.
“There are great efforts (these are his terms) required to conquer a
habit, that is every instant urging its recalls to us. I own to you,
with blushes, that the bare sight of a female, no matter what she is,
is enough to excite my desires. I do not even need that provocative; my
polluted imagination is but too ready to present constantly to me objects
of concupiscence. It is true that this passion never rekindles in me
without my remembring, at the same time, your good advice: I struggle
with myself; but even that struggle fatigues and exhausts me. If you
could but find and suggest to me the means of diverting my thoughts from
such objects, I believe my cure would be soon effected.”
It has been seen, in my extract from the English _Onania_, that a
frequent repetition had produced in a woman the _furor uterinus_. The
habit of being ingrossed by one idea renders one incapable of having any
others; it usurps the sole dominion of the mind, and reigns despotically.
The organs constantly irritated contract a morbific disposition, which
becomes an ever present goad, independent of all external cause. There
are disorders of the urinary passages which give a constant tendency
to make water; the reiterated irritation of the organs of generation
produces a disorder, in its way, analogous to that. It is therefore not
surprizing if the concurrence of these two causes, moral and natural,
combined, should throw one into that horrid disorder: and how powerful
ought this idea to be, for inspiring a salutary terror to all in any
danger of being in this case, and who have as yet any traces of reason or
shame left!
A fourth cause to self-pollutors of their waste of strength, is, that
independently of their frequency of emissions of seed, that frequency
of their erections, though imperfect ones, of which they complain,
considerably exhausts them. Every part, that is in a state of tension,
produces an expence of the vital forces, and they have none to spare:
the animal spirits croud thither in the greater abundance, and dissipate
themselves. This is a great cause of weakness: they are proportionably
deficient in the other functions, which are, in course, thereby
imperfectly executed; and the concurrence of these two causes has the
most dangerous consequences.
Another mischief, to which this fourth cause subjects self-pollutors,
is a sort of paralytical affection of the organs of generation, whence
follow impotency, incapacity of erection, and the simple gonorrhœa; for,
the relaxed parts suffer the true seminal liquid to come from them as
fast as it arrives, and the humor separated by the prostates to keep
continually oozing, and, in short, all the internal membrane of the
urethra acquires a catarrhous disposition to furnish a gleet, much of
the same nature as the _fluor albus_ in women: a catarrhous disposition,
which, let me here somewhat digressively remark, is less rare and more
general to the parts of the human body than is commonly imagined; not
being confined to the membrane that invests the nostrils, the throat,
the lungs, but which often attacks all the cavities of the intestines,
where the disease is not discerned, because not suspected, and must, for
want of that knowledge, be improperly prescribed for: nor would it be
difficult to collect, from various medical observations, examples of this
disorder having been mistaken for some other, and attempted to be cured
accordingly.
An able surgeon, once, mentioned to me a man, who, from a singularity of
taste, used to indulge his debauchery with the lowest street-walkers, and
being accustomed to satisfy his desires with them, in a standing posture,
against some wall or bulk, fell into a wasting, accompanied with the
most cruel pains of his loins, and with an atrophy or shrivelling of his
thighs and legs, combined with a palsy in those parts, which seemed to
be a consequence of the attitude in which he used to indulge his dirty
amours. After having kept his bed about a month, he died in a condition
equally fit to inspire compassion and terror.
But does not this observation furnish also a fifth cause of the dangers
particular to self-pollution?
When one loses one’s strength by two means at once, the weakness must be
considerably augmented. A person who is standing upright, or sitting, has
need for the supporting himself in those postures, and especially in the
first, of putting into action a great number of the muscular parts; and
this action dissipates the animal spirits. Weak persons, who cannot keep,
for an instant, in a standing posture, without feeling a weakness, and
the sick, that cannot sit up without the like uneasiness, very evidently
prove this. But in lying down, or in the being extended at full length,
there is not required the same strain on the vital strength. Thence it
is clear enough, that the same act, performed in the one or in the other
attitude, will produce a much greater weakening in the first than in the
last case.
SANCTORIUS has not failed to point out the danger of this attitude:
“_Usus coïtus stando, lædit, nam musculos et eorum utilem perspirationem
diminuit._”
Other observations, well examined, afford a sixth cause, which may,
at the first superficial view, appear of the slightest, but which no
intelligent naturalist will readily pronounce null.
All living bodies perspire. Every instant there exhales through, perhaps,
one half of the pores of our skin, a humor of extreme tenuity, and which
is a great deal more considerable than all our other evacuations: at
the same time, another kind of pores admit a part of the fluids which
surround us, and convey them into the vessels. These are _the invisible
torrents_ (to use M. SENAC’s happy expression) that have their egress and
regress into our body[91]. It stands demonstrated, that, in some cases,
this insorption is enormous. The strong and healthy perspire the most:
the weak, who have hardly any atmosphere of their own, inhale more. Now
the miasms, or perspired matter of healthy persons, contains something
nutritious and corroborative, which inhaled by another, contributes to
give him vigor. These are observations, which explain why the _young
virgin_, selected to cherish DAVID, by lying in his bosom, gave him
strength; why the same experiment has succeeded with other old men, to
whom it had been prescribed; why that process weakens the young person,
who loses, without receiving anything; or rather receives, in return,
faint, sickly, corrupt, putrid exhalations, which cannot but be noxious.
Now, in the time of coition, people perspire more than at any other, the
force of the circulation being augmented. This perspiration is also,
probably, more active, more spirituous, than at any other time: it is a
real loss that is, on that occasion, sustained, and which takes place, in
whatever manner the emission of the seed is made, as it depends on the
agitation that accompanies it. In coition it is reciprocal, and then, the
one inhales what the other perspires. This exchange stands unquestionably
proved by sure observations. I saw myself, not long ago, one, who having
no gonorrhœa, no cutaneous symptom of the _lues_, had given the venereal
distemper to a woman, who, at that instant was giving him the itch in
exchange. In coition, then, there is a sort of mutual compensation of
loss on both sides. But in the case of self-pollution, the person guilty
of it loses, and in lieu of his loss, receives nothing.
An observation of the effect of the passions discovers a seventh cause
of evil, in the difference between those who indulge themselves with
women, and the self-pollutors; a difference which is intirely to the
disadvantage of these last.
That joy which is allied to the soul, and which it is so very right
essentially to distinguish from that merely corporal pleasure, in
which the man shares but with the brute, and from which it is totally
different; that joy, I say, aids the digestions, animates circulation,
favors all the functions, restores the vital forces, cherishes, and
supports them. Where it is found combined or united with the pleasures
of love, it contributes to repair that strength which those pleasures
may have diminished or exhausted. This stands proved by observation.
SANCTORIUS has remarked it.
“A man (says he) after an excessive coition with a woman he loves, and
has passionately desired, does not feel that fatigue of weakness which
one would naturally suppose would be the consequence of such an excess;
because the joy of the soul augments the power of the heart, favors the
functions, and repairs the losses.”
It is upon this principle that VENETTE, in whose work there may be seen
a good chapter on the dangers of pushing the pleasures of love to an
excess, establishes it as a maxim, that an union with a beautiful woman
is less apt to exhaust the strength, than with a homely one.
“Beauty (says he) has charms which dilate the heart, and multiply the
vital spirits, that proceed from it. We may very well believe, with St.
CHRYSOSTOM, that to excite one’s self repugnantly to the laws of nature,
is, in that respect, a much greater crime than the other.”
And, in fact, can there be a doubt of Nature’s not having annexed more
joy to the pleasures procured by the means which are in her appointed
course, than by any which are out of it?
An eighth and last cause which augments the dangers of self-pollution, is
the regrets, the horrors, which cannot fail of being the consequence of
it, when once one’s eyes come to be opened on the crime and its dangers.
_Miseri quorum gaudia crimen habent!_
_Wretched are those joys which are obnoxious to remorse!_
And, surely, if there are any human beings in this case, the
self-pollutors must be among them.
When the veil is drawn, the representation of their conduct appears to
them in all its most hideous colors and aspects. They find themselves
guilty of a crime, of which divine justice would not postpone the
punishment, but punished it immediately with death; a crime reputed a
very great one even by the heathens themselves.
_Hoc nihil esse putas! scelus est; mihi crede, sed ingens_
_Quantum, vix, animo concipis ipse tuo._
MART.
The shame that pursues them infinitely augments their misery. Such, it
is true, is the dissoluteness in some places, that debauches with women
are hardly looked upon there, but as matter of custom; the guilty of
them make no mystery of it, and have no notion of their being the more
contemptible for it: But where is the self-pollutor that dares avow his
infamy? Ought not this necessity of wrapping himself up in the shades of
secrecy, appear, in his own eyes, a proof of the criminality of this act?
What numbers have not perished for their never having dared to reveal the
cause of their evils?
It appears a natural sentiment in several letters of the _Onania_, “_I
would rather die than appear before you, after such a confession._”
And indeed one cannot help being infinitely more ready to excuse a man,
who being seduced by that inclination which Nature has ingraved on all
hearts, and of which she makes use for the preservation of the species,
is in no wrong but that of not respecting the boundaries set by the
laws, and by health. He is one carried away by his passions, and who is
wanting to himself. We are much more willing to absolve such an one, than
him who in his sin violates all the laws of Nature, perverting all her
sentiments, and disappoints all her ends. Sensible of how great a horror
he must be in to society, if his crime was known, that idea alone must
incessantly torment him.
“It seems to me (says one of these criminals, a fragment of whose letter
I have above quoted) as if every one could read in my face, the infamous
cause of my ailments, and this idea renders company insupportable to me.”
They fall into melancholy and despair; of which examples may have been
seen in the fourth Section of this work, and they labor under all the
evils that are brought on by a continuity of dejection or sadness,
without having, and this is dreadful indeed for a criminal, any pretext
of justification, any motive of comfort. And what are the effects of such
a melancholy? A relaxation of the fibres, a lentor of the circulation,
imperfection of the digestions, a deficient nutrition, obstructions
occasioned by those shrinkings or contractions which most particularly
seem the effect of sadness or melancholy: [“the strainers of the liver,
says SENAC, close themselves, and the bilious overflow spreads over the
whole body:”] spasms, convulsions, palsies, pains, increase of anguish
_ad infinitum_; with all the train of evils consequential to these.
It would be superfluous to enlarge more here on the dangers particular to
self-pollution: they are but too real, and too self-evident: I proceed to
the last part of this work, the methods of cure.
ARTICLE III.
CURATIVE INDICATION.