SECT. XXXVIII.—ON REDUNDANCE OF SEMEN.
Some persons collect much semen of a warm nature, and then proceeding to coition and discharging it, render the body weak, and the stomach languid, and so become emaciated and dried: or, if they abstain from venery, they are seized with heaviness of the head, and become feverish; after which they have libidinous dreams, and the same thing takes place. They must therefore avoid those things which engender semen, and take such kinds of food and medicines as consume it. After the bath they ought to have their loins rubbed with the oil of roses, or that of apples, or of unripe olives; and it is better to make them thick by mixing a little wax with them, and the juice of some cooling herb, such as the house-leek, nightshade, the navelwort, or fleawort. In summer these may be used, but at other seasons, salt and the juice of the lettuce and linseed boiled in water, for it also furnishes a cooling juice. And a plate of lead applied to the loins will prevent libidinous dreams; and herbs of a cooling nature, as rue and the tender tops of the chaste tree, if strewed under one in bed, will have the same effect. For this purpose, also, the seed of the chaste tree and of rue may be eaten. Care, however, must be taken that the loins be not too much cooled, lest the kidneys be hurt.
Commentary. This Section, is taken, with a very few slight alterations, from Galen. (De Sanitate tuendâ, vi, 14.) The same treatment is recommended by Avicenna (iii, 20, l, 35); and by Rhases (ad Mansor. v, 67.) Alsaharavius recommends bleeding, and various cooling and astringent remedies, both internally and externally. (Pract. xxii, 9.)
Hippocrates says that the strychnos cures impure dreams. (De Diæta, ii.) Serapion states that the lettuce possesses “virtus contraria spermati.” (De Simpl. ex Plantis.)
We may remark here, once for all, that by the juice (χυλὸς) of herbs, the Greek medical authors generally mean the decoction. Thus, according to Dr. Coray, by χυλὸς τῶν ἐρεβίνθων, Hippocrates understood ἀφέψημα τ. ε. (Xenocrat. de Alim. ex Aquat. p. 219.) In like manner, by “the juice of ptisan,” was meant strained ptisan, as Hippocrates himself has distinctly stated in his treatise on ‘Regimen in Acute Diseases.’