But the impotency arising from the predominance of the intellect is the least formidable of all. The one most to be dreaded is that which results from the excessive and premature exercise of the reproductive functions, for, as has been well observed, "the too frequent indulgence of a natural propensity at first increases the concomitant desire and makes its gratification a part of the periodical circle of action; but by degrees the over excitement of the organs, abating their tone and vitality, unfits them for the discharge of their office, the accompanying pleasures are blunted, and give place to satiety and disgust."[46]
Such unfortunate persons as are the victims of this kind of anaphrodisia become old long before their natural time, and have all their generative apparatus blasted with impotency. Their testicles withered and dried up secrete nothing but a serous fluid void of all virtue; the erectile tissue no longer admits into its plexus the quantum of blood necessary for turgescence, the principal organ of the reproductive act remains in a state of flaccidity, insensible to the reiterated and most stimulating solicitations; the muscles destined to favour erection are stricken with paralysis, and the violence of their desires, joined to the want of power to gratify them, drives the unhappy victim to acts of the most revolting lubricity and thence to despair.
An instance of this kind occurred in the case of a young man, the son of an opulent family. He had arrived at puberty, but from the early age of ten had been accustomed to indulge in indecent familiarities with young girls, who had gratified him by lascivious manipulations; the consequence was an entire loss of the erectile power. Travelling being recommended, he proceeded to France, where he consulted, but without avail, several celebrated physicians. He then went to the waters of Spa, and there his case was attentively and anxiously considered by Van-Hers.
The sensibility and weakness of the genital member were so great that on the slightest touch, and without any sensation or desire to sexual intercourse the young man emitted a fluid similar to whey. This secretion continued night and day, every time that he made water, or upon the slightest friction of his linen. After various remedies being proposed, without any beneficial results, Van-Hers considered the disease as incurable; but, as the patient would not coincide in his opinion and was very rich, he continued his travels in Italy, France, and Germany, in the hope of recovering his powers of virility. He failed not, as usual, to meet with physicians who, from mercenary motives, held out to him the most illusory prospects of a perfect cure. At length, after six years passed in travelling and in vain attempts to regain the generative faculty, he returned to the candid and able physician from whom he had the truth, and whose opinion he was now convinced was but too well founded. As may be supposed, Van-Hers perceived no new circumstance to justify an alteration in his view of the case, and the unfortunate young man returned home, deeply deploring the advantages of a fortune which had made him the victim of the precocious abuse of pleasures to which he must now bid adieu for ever.[47] Too great warmth of passion may not only defeat its own object, but also produce a temporary impotency. A lover, after having, with all the ardour of affections, longed for the enjoyment of his mistress, finds himself at the moment of fruition incapable of consummating his happiness. The only remedy for this misfortune is to allay the over-excitement and to restrain the exuberance of the imagination. It would be madness to persist in endeavouring to obtain a victory which must be certain, as soon as the heat of the animal spirits being abated, a portion of them proceeds to animate the agents of voluptuous passion. The following are cases of this description.
"A young man whose wife's relations had promised him a considerable estate as soon as she proved to be pregnant, fatigued himself to no purpose by continued devotions at the shrine of love; his over anxiety defeating the very object he so ardently desired to accomplish. In despair at the failure of his repeated efforts, he was, at length, on the point of believing his wife barren, when, following the advice of a judicious physician, he absented himself from home for a fortnight, and upon his return proved by the success which attended his amorous labours, that absence is sometimes the best doctor."
"A noble Venetian, aged twenty years, was married to a very handsome lady, with whom he cohabited with a good deal of vigour, but never could emit semen in the coition, whereas in his dreams he could discharge very freely. This misfortune very much afflicted him and his family; and as no remedy could be found at home, the Venetian ambassadors residing at the different courts of Europe were desired to consult some of the most eminent physicians in the cities where they resided, to account for the causes, and to find a cure for this extraordinary complaint of the difference of the states when in sleep and when actually in coition.
"I was of opinion that it consisted altogether in the urethra being closely shut by the vigour of the erection in coition which found so great a resistance that the powers that throw the seed out of the vesiculæ seminals could not overcome it; whereas, in dreams, the pressure on the urethra being much less, an evacuation was affected."
The method of cure was not less successful than obvious from the foregoing account: for gentle evacuations and a slender diet brought about and fully completed their desires.[48]
Cabanis is of opinion that debility of the stomach almost always produces a similar state in the organs of generation. "L'énergie ou la débilité de l'éstomac produit, presque toujours, un état analogue dans ceux de la génération. J'ai soigné un jeune homme chez qui la paralysie accidentelle de ces derniers avait été produit par certains vices de la digestion stomachique; et qui reprit la vigueur de son âge, aussitôt qu'il eût récouvré la puissance de digérer."[49]