In the case of man's impotency it often happens, on the contrary, that, with organs to all appearance perfectly formed, he is, nevertheless, impotent.
If the woman be organized for receiving, the man is formed for imparting; now, in the majority, of cases, his impotency is such that, although he seems to be provided with abundant stores he is precluded from offering them.
... "Si Coneris, jacet exiguus cum ramice nervus Et quamvis tota palpetur nocte, jacebit."[43]
Such, in fact, is the great difficulty of those individuals who have abused their organs and destroyed their sensibility. The erectile tissue whose turgescence is indispensable, no longer admits into its vascular plexus or network, a quantity of fluid sufficient to give the organ the power of penetrating—jacet exiguus—and, although it may be supposed that the seminal glands perform their functions perfectly well, and secrete abundantly the fluid peculiar to them, the copulative organ remains paralyzed. This is the impotence which is brought on by old age, and which Ariosto has so forcibly described in the following lines, wherein he relates the futile attempts made upon Angelica by the hermit:
Egli l'abbraccia, ed a piacer la tocca: Ed ella dorme, e non più fare ischermo: Or le baccia il bel petto, ora la bocca, Non è, ch'l veggia, in quel loco aspro ed ermo. Ma nel incontro, it suo destrier trabocca Che al desio non risponde, it corpo infirmo: ......... ......... ......... Tutte le vie, tutti i modi tenta, Ma quel pigre rozzo non però salta Indarno el fren gli scoute e li tormenta E non può far che tenga la testa alta.[44]
At other times the impotency of the man is independent of the secretion of the fecundating fluid and even of the erection, both of which are regular. In such case it is caused either by the gland not being properly perforated, or by a contraction of the urethral canal, which contraction arrests the seminal fluid at the moment of expulsion, causing it to flow back towards the bladder, or else intercepting the continuous stream and allowing it to run by dribblets only. The former of these imperfections technically called Hypospadias is a vice of conformation in which the penis, instead of being perforated at the summit of the gland, presents its opening at a greater or less distance from the gland, at the lower part of the urethra or at the perinæum.
As might be expected, impotency when precocious, influences, in no small degree, the moral character. Cabanis knew three men who, in the vigour of age, had suddenly became impotent, although in other respects they were in good health, much engaged in business, and had but little reason to be affected by the loss of pleasures in which they indulged but very rarely and with great moderation, yet their character became gloomy and irascible, and their mental powers appeared to diminish daily.[45] The celebrated Ribeiro Sanchez, a pupil of Boerhaave, observes in his "Traité des maladies Vénériennes chroniques," that these diseases particularly dispose those subject to them to superstitious terrors.
Impotency may, however, equally proceed from moral as from physical causes. In this case it consists in the total privation of the sensibility peculiar to the reproductive organs. This insensibility is by no means infrequent in persons whose mental powers are continually in action, as the following case will shew:—
A celebrated mathematician of a very robust constitution, having married a young and pretty woman, lived several years with her, but had not the happiness of becoming a father. Far from being insensible to the charms of his fair wife, he, on the contrary, felt frequently impelled to gratifying his passion, but the conjugal act, complete in every other respect, was never crowned by the emission of the seminal fluid. The interval of time which occurred between the commencement of his labour of love and the end was always sufficiently long to allow his mind, which had been for a moment abstracted by his pleasure, to be brought back to the constant objects of his meditation—that is, to geometrical problems or algebraical formula. At the very moment even of the orgasm, the intellectual powers resumed their empire and all genital sensation vanished. Peirible, his medical adviser, recommended Madame —— never to suffer the attentions of her husband until he was half-seas-over, this appearing to him the only practicable means of withdrawing her learned spouse from influence of the divine Urania and subjecting him more immediately to that of the seductive goddess of Paphos. The advice proved judicious. Monsieur —— became the father of several fine and healthy boys and girls, thus furnishing another proof of the truth of the maxim, "Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus."