_Nocturnal Pollutions._
I have shown the dangers of an over-abundant evacuation of the seminal
liquid, by excesses of venery, and by self-pollution: I have also
observed, in the beginning of this work, that it was to be lost both
by nocturnal pollutions through libidinous dreams, and by that running
called the simple _gonorrhœa_. I shall briefly examine these two
disorders.
Such are the laws that unite the soul to the body, that even when
the senses are locked up by sleep, the soul is taken up with ideas
transmitted to it in the day.
_Res, quæ in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident,_
_Quæque aiunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt_
_Minus mirum est._
ACC.
Another law of this union is, that without disturbing this imprisonment
of the other senses; or, that I may express myself less equivocally than
in metaphor, without restoring to them their sensibility to external
impressions, the soul can, during sleep, beget the motions necessary
to the execution of those acts of the will, which the ideas on which
she busies herself suggests to her. Taken up with ideas relative to the
pleasures of love, delivered up to lascivious dreams, those objects which
she paints to herself, produce upon the organs of generation the same
motions that they would have produced in the time of being awake, and the
act naturally consummates itself in reality, if it is consummated in the
imagination. The accident to HORACE in one of the places of repose on his
journey to Brundusium, is well known.
_Hic ego mendacem stultissimus usque puellam,_
_Ad mediam noctem expecto: somnus tamen aufert_
_Intentum veneri: tum immundo somnia visu_
_Nocturnam maculant vestem, ventremque supinum._
The organs of generation, on the other hand, when they are the first
irritated, sometimes excite nothing but the imagination, and bring
on dreams, which terminate as the precedently mentioned ones. These
principles serve to explain the different kinds of these nocturnal
pollutions.
The first is that which proceeds from an over-abundance of the seminal
liquid; it is what persons in the vigor of life, who are sanguine,
hearty, and continent, are liable to. The heat of the bed coming to
rarefy the humors, and the seminal liquid being more susceptible of
rarefaction than any other, the irritated _vesiculæ_ hurry away the
imagination, which, being destitute of the helps that would discover the
illusion to her, delivers herself wholly up to it; the idea of coition
produces the ultimate effect of it, the ejaculation. In this case, this
evacuation is not a disease; it is rather a favorable crisis, that
disembarrasses from a humor, which, in too great an abundance, or too
long retained, might be rather hurtful: and though some Physicians, who
have no faith but in what they themselves have seen, have denied it, it
is not the less true that this liquid may, by its over-abundance, produce
disorders different from the priapism or the _furor uterinus_. I hope I
may be allowed a short digression on this question; it is not a foreign
one to my subject.
GALEN has preserved to us the history of a man and woman to whom the
excess of the seminal liquid was the cause of bad health, and who were
both of them cured by renouncing that continency to which they had taxed
themselves[133]; and he looks on the retention of this humor as capable
of producing very bad effects. I had, at Montpelier, occasion to make an
observation, in every point similar to that great man’s. A widow, of a
healthy vigorous habit of body, of near forty years of age, who had for
a long time been accustomed to the enjoyments of the nuptial bed, and
had been for some years deprived of them, used, from time to time, to
fall into such violent hysteric fits, that she lost the use of her senses
by them: no remedy could dissipate those fits; there was no way to make
her come out of them but by strong frictions of the genital parts, which
procuring to her a convulsive tremor, followed by a copious ejaculation,
she, that instant, recovered her senses.
ZACUTUS LUSITANUS relates a case very similar to this. “A girl (says
he) was in a very violent convulsive paroxysm, so as to be on the point
of suffocation by it; without feeling, without sense, a general tremor
over her whole body, her eyes set; having tried all other remedies in
vain, I ordered an acrid irritative pessary to be applied, which produced
a copious spermatic evacuation, and she immediately recovered her
senses[134].”
M. HOFFMAN has also preserved to us the history of a nun, who could not
be recovered out of an hysterical paroxysm but by the excital of that
evacuation. And ZACUTUS, in the same work I have just quoted, speaks of
two men, to whose health the suppression of the pleasures of love was a
detriment. The one was attacked with a swelling at the navel which no
remedy could diminish, and which was dissipated on his marrying: the
other, weakened by his debauches in that way, quitted them all on a
sudden; six months afterwards he had vertigos, and soon afterwards some
attacks of a real epilepsy, which were imputed to some disorders of his
stomach. Accordingly they gave him stomachics, which exasperated his
disorder, and he died in a violent fit of the epilepsy. On being opened,
every thing was found in proper order, except the _vesiculæ seminales_
and the _vasa deferentia_, which were found full of a sperm, green, and
in some places ulcerous[135].
A Physician, respectable for his skill and for his age, and who long
attended the Austrian armies in Italy, told me, he had remarked, that
those German soldiers who were not married, and who lived chastely,
were often attacked with fits of epilepsy, priapisms, or nocturnal
pollutions; accidents which proceeded from an over-abundant secretion of
the seminal liquid; which perhaps too had the more stimulative acridity
from the heat of the country, where the diet is also more rich.
We have from the same Dr. JAQUES, whom I have quoted in the second
Article of this work, a thesis[136], of which M. DE LA METTRIE has
given a translation[137], in which he adduces many examples of diseases
produced by a privation of the pleasures of venery; and M. DE LA METTRIE
mentions another work upon cloistered virginity, of which the object is
the same.
M. ZINDEL published at Basle, about fifteen years ago, a dissertation, in
which he has collected together, scattered observations on the diseases
produced by too rigid a chastity[138]. And here may be placed what M.
DE SAUVAGES says of the dangers of a rigorous chastity to those women
with whose constitutions it does not agree; they are so much the more
the victims of the warmth of it, the more careful they are to conceal
it; they pine, and fall into melancholy, disrelish of life, emaciation,
and pollutions. He adds a case, which furnishes perhaps an example of
the severest trial to which a conflict of constitution and virtue could
expose the party distracted between them: it is that of a young girl,
who, devoured with a raging fire, and yet preserving her soul pure, with
an astonishing fortitude was subject to pollutions even in those moments
in which she was deploring her misfortune at the feet of her confessor, a
decrepid, loathsome old man.[139]
“A young girl, who marries an old husband” (said a new married woman
to her female friend) “had better throw herself into the river, with a
mill-stone about her neck.”
In short, not to mention many others, M. GAUBIUS places excessive
continency in the class of causes of diseases. “It is rare, indeed, (he
says,) that it produces any evils, and yet it has been known so to do,
in some men, born with a warm constitution, and who breed a great deal
of the seminal liquid, and in some women[140].” And he proceeds to an
enumeration of those disorders. The existence then of them is not to
be denied; but the rarity of them may at the same time be affirmed,
especially in the present age, which seems to be the age of sensuality:
and, in truth, we see every day that gross mistake committed, of
attributing indistinctly to this cause, that is to say, to a need of
employment for the organs of generation, all the diseases which attack
marriageable persons of both sexes, and in advising marriage to them as
the only remedy; a remedy often misjudged, often even noxious, because
it cannot destroy the complaints which proceed from other causes of
disorder, and may add to such evils, those which pregnancy and lying-in
commonly produce in persons of a languishing state of health. I return to
the subject of pollutions.
I have shown, that the first kind of them, produced by that
over-abundance of the seminal liquid, which it lessens by evacuation, is
not of itself an evil; but it may become one by recurring too frequently,
and at times when the over-abundance no longer exists. I have also
already observed, that one evacuation disposed for a second, and so
on, so great is the force of habit, which consists in this, that the
reiteration of the same motions gives them the greater facility, insomuch
that they reproduce themselves on the slightest cause; an observation
of great use towards the understanding the animal œconomy, upon which
GALEN, and especially M. MATY[141], have said some excellent things; and
still it has not been treated of to the bottom. From the habit then there
results this inconveniency, that these evacuations become a consequence
of it, independently of the want, and when it no longer exists. Then
they are extremely pernicious, and have all the dangers of an excessive
evacuation procured by other means. SATYRUS surnamed GRAGROPILEX,
residing at Thasus, had had, from the age of twenty-five, frequent
nocturnal pollutions: nay, sometimes the liquid would come from him in
the day time. He died of a consumption in his thirtieth year[142].
M. ZIMMERMAN told me of a man of a remarkably fine genius, to whom
pollutions had caused the loss of all the activity of his understanding,
and whose body was exactly in that condition described by BOERHAAVE
(Section I.) In that Section too may be seen the evils which HOFFMAN
observed consequential to pollutions. The most common symptoms, when
the disorder has not as yet made any great progress, are, a continual
oppression, most considerable in the morning, and acute pains of the
loins. Some months ago I was consulted about a laborer in the vines,
aged about fifty years, before that time very robust, but whom frequent
pollutions had, for three or four months, so prodigiously weakened,
that he could not work but a few hours a day. Often he was even totally
debarred from it by pains in his loins, which confined him to his bed,
and he every day grew leaner. I gave him some advice, of which I could
not learn the execution or effect.
I knew a man who had become deaf for some weeks on his neglecting a cold,
and who, on his having a nocturnal pollution, was, the next day, much
deafer than ordinary, with great restlessness and anxiety; and another,
whose weakness was owing to many causes, and who, after a pollution,
wakes under the greatest oppression, and with so general a numbness, that
he is for an hour like a paralytic, and remains the whole day after under
a great dejection.
In this first class may be put the pollutions of those, who, having been
accustomed to frequent emissions, suddenly suspend them. Such were those
of a woman whom GALEN makes mention; she had been, for some time, in the
state of widow-hood, and the retention of the spermatic liquid brought
upon her disorders of the _uterus_. In her sleep she had convulsive
motions of her loins, arms, and legs, which were accompanied with an
abundant emission of a thick matter, with the same sensations as in the
act of coition[143]. A female dancer had received accidentally a slight
hurt near her left breast; her surgeon prescribed to her rather a strict
diet, and especially forbad her those pleasures to which she was pretty
much accustomed. The third night of the privation, to which she had
submitted without minding the injunctions of diet, she had a pollution,
which returning several times the following nights, made her visibly fall
away, and caused to her violent pains of the loins. Her wound, however,
did not fail of healing, in a great measure, and would have been quite
so, if she had been observant of the surgeon’s rules of diet, who, firm
in the principles of his art, continued his prohibition of venery, and
bled and purged her. Wearied out, at length, and weakened, she left off
his remedies, and, resuming her usual course of life, her weakness and
her pains quickly went off.
But do not let any one, by any means, from this last mentioned
observation, conclude against the utility of the precepts of the
most skillful masters in the art of surgery, who, grounding it on
other observations, strictly forbid coition to the wounded; there
is no practitioner that might not easily have convinced himself how
pernicious it must be to them. I shall only adduce one example, in which
self-pollution was mortal, and of which G. FABRI de Hilden has preserved
to us the history.
COSMUS SLOTAN had amputated the hand of a young man, that was shattered
by a gun-shot wound. As he knew him to be of a very hot constitution,
he had strictly forbid him any commerce with his wife, whom he likewise
apprized of the danger. But when all fear of the worst accidents was
dissipated, and the cure was proceeding in a fair way, the patient
finding desires come upon him, for which his wife refused to have the
complaisance he wanted of her, he, without coition, procured to himself
an emission of the _semen_, which was immediately followed by a fever, by
a delirium, by convulsions, and other violent symptoms, of which he died
in four days time[144].
I knew a young married man, who, having inconsiderately thrown himself
out of the seat of a _cabriolet_, (a chaise,) fell on his side; the
hind-wheel went over his foot, between the heel and the ancle-bone; there
was neither fracture nor luxation, but a considerable contusion: finding
himself recovered at the end of five days, he proceeded with his bride
as if he had had no such accident. Two hours afterwards his leg swelled,
with the most unsufferable torture, and he had a strong fever, which
lasted thirty hours.
But return we to the point. It is of great importance early to prevent
the progress of habit; and whatever may be the first cause of the
pollutions, not to suffer them to grow upon one. When they have been a
long while upon one, they are very hard to cure. “There is no disorder
(says HOFFMAN) that more torments the patients, nor gives more trouble to
physicians, than nocturnal pollutions, when they have lasted a long time,
and become habitual, especially if they return every night. The very best
remedies are almost always in vain employed; they even often do more harm
than good[145].”
All the Physicians who have written on this distemper have asserted,
that the cure of it is extremely difficult; and all the Physicians who
occasionally have had it under their cure, have themselves found it so;
nor is there any room for being surprized at it. Unless one either
restore to the organs their strength, and diminish their irritability
during the time that passes between two pollutions, which is impossible;
or on a sudden prevent the return of lascivious dreams, which it is not
easy to do, one may be sure that the pollution will return, and destroy
almost all the good that may have been operated by the small quantity of
remedy applied since the last: so that from the term of one pollution to
that of another, the ground that may have been gained must be infinitely
little, and a great number of remedies must be accumulated before any
sensible good effect can be obtained.
COELIUS AURELIANUS has collected together the best things that the
antients have said on the management in this case.
_First_, He would have the patient avoid, as much as possible, all
libidinous ideas.
_Secondly_, That he should lie on a bed of a hard and refreshing matter;
that he should apply to his loins a thin plate of lead, and to all the
parts which are the seat of the disorder, spunges soaked in water and
vinegar, and cooling things, as the _balaustæ_, _acacia_, _hypocist_, the
_psillium_.
_Thirdly_, That he should use no diet but of cooling and yet not laxative
articles of meat and drink.
_Fourthly_, He advises restoratives, or analeptics.
_Fifthly_, The use of the cold-bath.
_Sixthly_, Not to sleep on one’s back, but on one side, or prone.
All this advice is full of sensible things; but let us examine more
distinctly the indication that presents itself. It is to diminish the
quantity of the seminal liquid, and to prevent those lascivious dreams.
Now generally speaking, the diet and the regimen are much more proper
to obtain these ends, than medicines. The fittest aliments are those
which are procured from the vegetable kingdom, pulse, herbs, grain, and
fruits. Among the meats, those which contain the least substance. In both
the one and the other class, the choice should fall on those which have
the least acridity. It has been precedently remarked, what an influence
this regimen has on the tranquillity of sleep; it cannot be too much
recommended to persons afflicted with nocturnal pollutions, to whom that
tranquillity is so necessary. They ought especially to renounce suppers,
or at least never sup but lightly: this single attention contributes more
to operate a cure than all the medicines.
Some years ago I knew a young man, who had almost every night a nocturnal
pollution, and who had before had some fits of the _night-mare_. A
barber-surgeon had ordered him to drink every night, at his lying down,
some glasses of warm water; which, without diminishing the pollutions,
augmented the other complaint. Both these evils then united, and returned
every night. The dream of the _night-mare_ was the phantom of a female,
which caused at the same time his pollution. Weakened by the double
disorder, and by the privation of a tranquil sleep, he was going fast
into a consumption. I prescribed his taking nothing for supper but a
little bread and some raw fruits, and, as he went to bed, to drink a
glass of cold water, with fifteen drops of the anodine mineral liquor of
HOFFMAN. It was not long before he regained his tranquillity of sleep;
his two disorders left him intirely, and he soon recovered his strength.
Heavy, indigest meats, game or venison, especially at night, are a
perfect poison for this disorder; and, I repeat it, without leaving
off suppers, and especially of animal food, all the other remedies
can be of no service. Wine, spirituous liquors, coffee, are, in many
lights, hurtful. The best drink is that of pure water; or there may, to
advantage, in each bottle of it be dissolved a drachm of nitre.
The precept that COELIUS gives for avoiding soft beds, is of the greatest
importance. There should be no feathers suffered in it: straw is
preferable to horse-hair, and I have known some patients receive benefit
from covering the mattrass with leather.
The advice against not lying on one’s back, is especially necessary;
this posture, in the night, contributing to render the sleep the more
agitated, and to heat more the parts of generation.
In short, as habit has, in this case, a very great influence, and that
to break it is the capital point, the following observation may furnish
a means of succeeding. I owe it to an Italian gentleman, respectable
for his virtues, and one of the worthiest characters I ever remember to
have known. He consulted me upon a disorder of a very different kind;
but in order to give me the clearer notions of his present case, he let
me into the history of his health. He had five years before then been
troubled with frequent pollutions, which totally exhausted him. Upon
this he took, over-night, a firm resolution to wake of himself the first
moment that the appearance of a female should strike his imagination;
and, before he fell asleep, he took care to dwell fixedly and strongly on
this idea. This remedy was attended with the happiest success; the idea
of the danger, and his resolution of waking of himself, being closely,
over-night, linked with the idea of a woman, reproduced themselves, in
the midst of his sleep, at the same time, and jointly with this last:
he waked at the time, and this precaution, repeated for some nights,
dissipated the disorder.
But I would not have those two last instances inspire too much security:
there are cases against which the best remedies must fail; that which
HOFFMAN relates[146] is an example; and it would be right to give
before-hand to patients the advice which he gave to his; it is this; that
without a long perseverance in the use of proper remedies, there is no
efficacy to be hoped for from them; or rather, that in such a case, as
that the regimen is the great essential, it is often only by means of a
long observance of it, that any perceptible relief can be obtained. If
remedies are employed, they ought to be regulated by the same indications
as the regimen. It is not long since I knew a copious bleeding carry
off this disorder. Nitrous powders, lemonades, acid spirits, almond
emulsions, may be of service.
M. HOFFMAN prescribed for the self-pollutor, who, after having renounced
his infamous practices, had fallen under the disorder of nocturnal
pollutions, the following powder:
℞. _C. C. pphicè ppati. Ossis sepiæ ana unc. ss. Succini cum
instillat. Olei tartar. per deliquium ppat. dr._ ii. _Cascar.
dr._ i.
Of which he took one drachm over-night, with black cherry-water; and
in the morning the Seltzer waters with milk; his drink, a ptisan of
_santal_; the China-root, _cichoreum_, _scorzonera_, and _cinnamon_. With
these helps, and a proper diet, the patient got well in a few weeks.
M. ZIMMERMAN, by means of the same powder, has cured “very frequent
pollutions, attended with the common languor in that case, and which
had lasted for several years, in a young man of twenty.” It is not easy
to explain how this powder, which is but a simple absorbent, can do any
good; but I have seen good effects from camphire.
Another sort of pollutions is such as are incident to Hypochondriacs. The
circulation proceeds in them but slowly, especially in the veins of the
Hypogastrium, which is specifically the reason why the parts from which
those veins bring back the blood are often obstructed; the nerves are
easily put into motion; the humors have a character of acridity extremely
fit to irritate; their sleep is commonly disturbed with dreams: here
you have many causes of pollution, and indeed they are much subject to
them. “The imagination (says M. BOERHAAVE) often, during sleep, produces
emissions of the seed. The most sedentary of the men of letters, and the
splenetic, are liable to this accident; and the efflux of the seed is
often so considerable, as to cause them to fall into an atrophy[147].”
This disorder has for them so much the more vexatious consequences, for
that they never give a loose to any excesses of this kind, without being
extremely incommoded, as M. FLEMING has happily expressed it:
_Non Veneri crebro licet unquam impune litare._
For them there is but one method of cure, which is, to attack the
principal disorder. The removal of the obstructions is the first thing
to be done; after which the cold-bath should be used, and that salutary
bark which God preserve to us. Then is truly the case of recourse to
those two powerful remedies, with which martials may be allied. If
an attention to the choice of aliments is necessary in all cases, it
is particularly so in this. The Hypochondriacs, in general, perform
their digestions very ill; the ill-digested aliments produce flatulent
turgescences, which disturbing the circulation, dispose to pollutions
in two ways; first, by obstructing the return of the blood in the veins
of the genitals; secondly, by disturbing the tranquillity of sleep, and
thereby consequently disposing to dreams. Thence sensibly appears the
reason why PYTHAGORAS forbad his disciples the eating flatulent aliments,
which he, wisely, considered as detrimental both to the clearness and
strength of the intellectual functions, and to corporal chastity. Besides
the two reasons which I have given, I might venture to point out a third,
which I have strongly had room to suspect in two patients; and that is,
the expansion of the air, disengaged from the fluids in the _corpus
cavernosum_, which produced an erection, together with the venereal
pruriency. It is now well known that all our liquids are impregnated
with this fluid, but that so long as they are in perfect health, that
fluid is, as it were, imprisoned, and deprived of all elasticity. Great
Naturalists have been of opinion, that there were but two ways of
restoring to it its elasticity; the one, a considerably greater degree of
heat than is observed in the animal body; and the other, putrefaction.
But a multitude of observations of disorders produced by the air so
dilated, have proved, that, independently of these two causes, there were
other alterations in the fluids, which would have the same effect, and
these alterations appear the most frequent in Hypochondriacs: so that
it is not wonderful that the cavernous parts should be the seat of the
expansion of this diseased air: on the contrary, there is no part which
appears more likely to be exposed to it; and if attention has not thereto
been given before now, it is probably rather for want of observers than
of observableness. Observations, however, clearly evince the necessity
of avoiding those aliments which, abounding more than others in air, are
the more hurtful, both by that which separates from them in the first
passages, and by that which they convey into the blood. Who does not know
that new beer, which is extremely flatulent, occasions violent erections?
Since my last edition of this work, I have seen that M. THIERRY, one of
the most learned Physicians, and of the most celebrated practitioners of
France, has taken notice of these flatulent erections.
And here may be added, as bearing some affinity to this last kind
of pollution, and principally attacking such as are melancholically
affected, a disease that might be called a _furor genitalis_. It differs
from a Priapism, and from the Satyriasis. I shall describe it by an
observation already published in the first Latin edition of this work,
and omitted in the French one.
A man about fifty years of age had labored under it for twenty-four
years, and in all that long term could not pass twenty-four hours without
recourse to women, or to that horrid supplement, self-pollution; and
commonly he would reiterate the act several times a day. The seed was
thin, acrid, unprolific, and the evacuation very quick. His nerves were
excessively weakened: he had violent fits of melancholy, and vapors; his
faculties were stupified, his hearing very indifferent or slow, his eyes
extremely weak; in short, he died in the most wretched condition. I had
never prescribed any thing for him; but he had taken a great number of
remedies. Many of them had done him no service; all those that were of a
hot nature had been prejudicial to him. Only bark, infused in wine, by
order of M. ALBINUS, had relieved him: and the authority of this great
Physician is a fresh, and, surely, a respectable testimony, in favor of
that remedy.
Among the Consultations of M. HOFFMAN may be seen a case nearly similar
to this; the pruriency was almost continual, and body and soul equally
enervated[148].