The renowned Tamerlane, the mighty conqueror of Asia, required a like stimulus,[176] the more so perhaps from the circumstance of his being a monorchis.[177]
The Abbé Boileau, in his well known and entertaining "Histoire des Flagellants," partly attributes the gross licentiousness of that period to the strange practice then in vogue of doing penance by being scourged in public; and his brother the celebrated poet and critic, defending the Abbé against the animadversions of the Jesuits, remarks very forcibly:
"Non, le livre des Flagellans N'a jamais condamné, lisez le bien, mes pères, Ces rigidités salutaires Qui, pour ravir le Ciel, saintement violens, Exercent sur leurs corps, tant de Chrétiens austères; Il blâme seulement ces abus odieux D'étaler et d'offrir aux yeux Ce que leur doit toujours cacher la bienveillance, Et combat vivement la fausse piété, Qui sous couleur d'eteindre en nous la volupté Par l'austérité méme, et par la pénitence Sait allumer le feu de la lubricité.[178]"
Flagellation, indeed, as well as the custom of wearing the hair-shirt, so common with the monks, and even with religious lay catholics, was, by the stimulus it imparted to the skin, and hence to the internal viscera, much more likely to increase the energy of the physiological functions, and thus excite the commission of the very acts they are intended to suppress.
The Abbé Chuppe d'Auteroche, member of the Académie des Sciences, and who died in California a few days after the observation of the Transit of Venus in 1760, remarks that the stripes given to persons frequenting the vapour baths in Russia impart activity to the fluids and elasticity to the organs and gives additional stimulus to the venereal appetite.[179]
M. Serrurier records the following curious case. "One of my schoolfellows, who found an indescribable pleasure in being flogged, purposely and wilfully neglected his duty in order to draw upon himself the correction, which never failed to produce an emission of semen. As may easily be imagined he soon began the practice of masturbation, in which he indulged to so frightful an extent that rapid consumption ensued, and he died, a most horrible and disgusting object, affording a melancholy example of that fatal vice."[180]
The case of Jean Jacques Rousseau is well known. When a child he was by no means displeased with the corrections administered to him by a lady considerably his elder, he even frequently sought for a whipping at her hands, especially after he perceived that the flagellation developed in him the manifest token of virility. But he must be allowed to give his own account of it. "Assez long temps," says he, "Madame Lambercier s'entint à la menace, et cette menace d'un châtiment tout nouveau pour moi me semblait très effrayante, mais après l'exécution, je la trouvai moins terrible à l'épreuve que l'attente ne l'avait été, et ce qu'il y a de plus bizarre est qui ce châtiment m'affectionna davantage d'elle qui me l'avoit imposé. Il fallait même toute la vérité de cette affection et toute ma douceur naturelle pour m'empêcher de chercher le retour du même traitement en le méritant, car j'avais trouvé dans la douleur, dans la honte même, un mélange de sensualité qui m'avait laissé plus de désir que de crainte de l'éprouver derechef, par la même main. Il est vrai que comme il se mêlait, sans doute, à cela quelque instinct précoce du sexe, le même châtiment reçu de son frère, ne m'eut point du tout, parut plaisant."[180]
As flagellation is practised by striking the skin with a rod formed of twigs, until the heat and redness become more intense, so if the twigs be replaced by fresh nettles, the operation will become,—urtication.
The employment of urtication is of great antiquity, for Celsus as well as Aretæus mentions the use of it, it being in those times, a popular remedy. That the Romans had frequent recourse to it in order to arouse the sexual appetite, is proved by the following passage from Petronius Arbiter, which for obvious reasons, we shall content ourselves with giving in the original only. "Oenothea semiebria ad me respiciens;—Perficienda sunt, inquit, mysteria ut recipas nervos.
"Simulque profert scorteum fascinum quod, ut olio et minuto pipere, atque urticæ trito circumdedit semine, paulatim cœpit inserere ano meo. Hoc crudelissima anus spargit subinde femina mea Nasturcii[182] succum cum abrotono miscet, perfusis que inguinibus meis, viridis urticæ fascem comprehendit omnes que infra umbilicum cœpit lenta manu cædere."[183]