Of the temperaments of the testicles, the hot is lustful, apt to
generate, particularly males, and at an early age has the genital parts
covered with thick hairs, which extend to the surrounding part. The cold
is the reverse. In the humid, the semen is copious and watery. In the
dry, it is scanty and thick. A temperament which is moderately hot and
dry has very thick semen, is most prolific, and rouses the person to
early indulgence. Such persons have, at a very early period, thick hairs
on their genital organs, and on the surrounding parts, as high up as the
navel, and as low down as the middle of the thighs. Such a temperament
is prone to venery, but is soon satiated, and readily hurt if compelled.
When humidity combines with heat, such persons have thick hair, and much
semen; yet they have not greater desires than others, but they can bear
much venery without injury; and if both the moist and the hot combine
properly together, they cannot safely abstain from venery. Those whose
testicles are of the humid and cold temperament have no hair on the
neighbouring parts; they are slow in beginning to copulate, and not much
prone to the exertion. Their semen is watery, thin, without strength,
and fit only for begetting females. The dry and the cold temperament
together, resembles the former in every other respect, except that the
semen is thicker, and altogether scanty.
* * * * *
COMMENTARY. The testicles were described by the ancient anatomists
as being bodies composed of white glandular flesh, and surrounded by
coats which they knew to be processes of the peritoneum. The semen they
considered as a white frothy fluid, elaborated from the blood, by passing
through the convolutions of the spermatic vessels. Aristotle held it
to be a superfluity collected from all parts of the system. His theory
of generation is similar to that of Buffon. For the hypothesis of the
Epicureans, see Lucretius (de R. N. iv.) They taught that the fœtus is
the joint production of the male semen, and something analogous secreted
by the ovaria of the female.
Galen has very ingenious ideas respecting the first organization of the
fœtus, which he ascribes to a certain power in the semen, like that which
Blumenbach calls a _nisus formativus_. (De Form. Fœtus.)