Another description of fakirs were formerly to be seen in India, and, especially, in its southern peninsula, whose custom it was to traverse the country in a state of nudity, and who had been rendered impotent by the following regimen. The children destined for this penitential state are taken away from their parents at the age of six or seven years, and made to eat, daily, a quantity of the young leaves of a tree called Mairkousie. At first, the dose given them is not larger than a filbert. This regimen must be persisted in until the party reaches the age of five-and-twenty years, the dose being increased till, at the maximum, it is as large as a duck's egg. During all this time, the devotee is subjected to no other regimen, except a light purge, once in six months, by means of Kadoukaie, or the black mirobolan. Although rendered completely impotent by this mode of treatment, so far from their physical strength and beauty of form being diminished or deteriorated thereby, they are, on the contrary, improved by it; the enjoyment of constant good health is likewise almost an invariable consequence.
Infibulation is not confined to the male sex exclusively, for it is practised on girls and women in India, Persia, and the East, generally, and most commonly consists in joining together the female sexual organ, or closing the labia of the vagina by a suture made with waxed thread, a small aperture being left for the egress of the urine and the menstrua.
Linschet witnessed the operation at Pegu, as did also Schultz, Brown saw it performed, at Darfour, on females from eleven to twelve years of age.[216] At the time of marriage, a cut of the bistouri dissevers the parts which have been closed by the effects of the suture. Sometimes jealousy contents itself by passing a ring through the parts. Women, as well as girls, are subjected to this disgusting operation, the only difference being that the ring of the latter cannot be removed, while that of the former has a kind of lock, the key of which is in the husband's possession. Pallas informs us that the beautiful nation of the Tcherkesses, or Circassians carefully preserve the virginity of their girls by means of a leathern girdle, or rather corslet made of skin, and sewn immediately upon the naked body. The husband alone has the right of severing this corslet, which he does, on the nuptial night.
When the violation of virgin chastity and conjugal fidelity became more frequent, fathers and husbands had recourse, even in Europe, to a mechanical contrivance for the purpose of preserving intact the honour of the family. This was a kind of padlock, which shut up all access to the seat of voluptuousness. The invention is attributed to one Francesco di Carrera, an imperial judge of Padua, who lived about the close of the 15th century. The machine itself was called the Girdle of Chastity. Francesco's acts of cruelty brought him to the scaffold, where he was strangled in 1405, by a decree of the Senate of Venice. One of the principal accusations brought against him was the employment of the Girdle of Chastity, for his mistresses, and it is said by Misson[217] that a box filled with these articles was for a long time preserved in the palace of St. Mark, at Venice. Rabelais speaks of these girdles, which he calls Ceintures á la Bergamasque, "Nay," says he, Pantagruel, "may that Nick in the dark cellar, who hath no white in his eye, carry me quiet away with him, if, in that case, whenever I go abroad from the palace of my domestic residence, I do not, with as much circumspection as they use to ring mares in our country, to keep them from being saillied by stoned horses, clap a Bergamesco lock upon my wife." Brantome has the following notice of these chastity preservers. "Des temps du roi Henri il yeut un certain Quinquallier qui apporte une douzaine de certains engins à la foire de St. Germain pour brider le cas des femmes. Ces sortes de cadenas estoient en usage à Venise dès devant l'année 1522, estoient faites de fer et centuroient comme une ceinture, et venoient à se prendre par le bas, et se fermer à clef, si subtilement faites, qu'il n'estoit pas possible que la femme en estant bridée und fois, s'en peust jamais prévaloir pour ce doux plaisir, n'ayant que quelques petits trous menus pour servir à pisser."[218]
An endeavour was made to introduce these Bernasco padlocks into France during the reign of Henry II., and a shop was opened by an Italian at the fair of St. Germain, where they were publicly sold, and in such numbers, that the French gallants, becoming alarmed, threatened to throw the vendor into the Seine, if he did not pack up his merchandise and decamp, which he immediately did for fear that the menace might be put in execution.
Voltaire describes the Cadenas as originating with Pluto, who, jealous of his wife Proserpine, was advised:
Qu'un cadenas, de la structure nouvelle Fut le garant de sa fidélité, A la vertu par la force asservie, Plus ne sera l'amant favorisé. En un moment, feux, enclumes, fourneaux Sont préparés aux gouffres infernaux; Tisiphone, de ces lieux, serrurière, Au cadenas met la main, la première, Elle l'achève et des mains de Pluton Proserpine reçut ce triste don, Or ce secret aux enfers inventé Chez les humains tôt après fut porté Et depuis ce temps dans Venise et dans Rome Il n'est pédant, bourgeois, ou gentilhomme Qui pour garder l'honneur de sa maison De cadenas n'ait sa provision.[219]
This sage advice, a loud applause From all the damned assembly draws; And straight, by order of the State, Was registered on brass by fate; That moment, in the shades below, They anvils beat and bellows blow. Tisiphoned, the blacksmith's trade Well understood; the locks she made: Proserpina, from Pluto's hand Receiving, wore it by command. This lock, which hell could frame alone, Soon to the human race was known; In Venice, Rome, and all about it, No gentlemen or cit's without it.[220]
We shall close this our third essay with the amusing summary of anti-aphrodisiacal remedies, as given by Rabelais.
"You say," said the physician Rondibilis to Panurge, "that you feel in you the pricking stings of sensuality, by which you are stirred up to venery. I find in our faculty of medicine, and we have founded our opinion therein upon the deliberate resolution and final decision of the ancient Platonics, that carnal concupiscence is cooled and quelled five several ways:—
"Firstly. By the means of wine. I shall easily believe that quoth Friar John, for when I am well whittled with the juice of the grape, I care for nothing else, so I may sleep. When I say, quoth Rondibilis, that wine abateth lust, my meaning is, wine immoderately taken; for by intemperance, proceeding from the excessive drinking of strong liquor, there is brought upon the body of such a swill-down bouser, a chillness in the blood, a slackening in the sinews, a dissipation of the generative seed, a numbness and hebetation of the senses, with a perversive wryness and convulsion of the muscles, all which are great lets and impediments to the act of generation. Hence it is that Bacchus, the god of bibbers, tipplers, and drunkards, is most commonly painted beardless and clad in a woman's habit, as a person altogether effeminate, or like a libbed eunuch. Wine, nevertheless, taken moderately worketh quite contrary effects, as is implied by the old proverb, which saith,—That Venus taketh cold, when not accompanied by Ceres and Bacchus.[221] This opinion is of great antiquity as appeareth by the testimony of Diodorus the Sicilian, and confirmed by Pausanias, and it is usually held among the Lampsacians, that Don Priapus was the son of Bacchus and Venus.
"Secondly. The fervency of lust is abated by certain drugs, plants herbs and roots, which make the taker cold, maleficiated, unfit for, and unable to perform the act of generation; as hath often been experimented by the water-lily, Heraclea, Agnus-Castus, willow-twigs, hemp-stalks, woodbine, honeysuckle, tamarisk, chastetree, mandrake, bennet keebugloss, the skin of a hippopotamus, and many other such, which, by convenient doses proportioned to the peccant humour and constitution of the patient, being duly and seasonably received within the body—what by their elementary virtues on the one side, and peculiar properties on the other, do either benumb, mortify and beclumpse with cold, the prolific semence, or scatter and disperse the spirits which ought to have gone along with, and conducted the sperm to the places destined and appointed for its reception,—or lastly, shut up, stop and obstruct the way, passages, and conduits, through which the seed should have expelled, evacuated, and ejected. We have, nevertheless, of those ingredients, which, being of a contrary operation, heat the blood, bind the nerves, unite the spirits, quicken the senses, strengthen the muscles, and thereby rouse up, provoke, excite and enable a man to the vigorous accomplishment of the feat of amorous dalliance. I have no need of those, quoth Panurge, God be thanked and you, my good master. Howsoever, I pray you, take no exception or offence at these my words; for what I have said was not out of any ill-will I did hear to you, the Lord, he knows.
Thirdly. The ardour of lechery is very much subdued and mated by frequent labour and continual toiling. For by painful exercises and laborous working so great a dissolution is brought upon the whole body, that the blood which runneth alongst the channels of the vein thereof for the nourishment and alimentation of each of its members, had neither time, leisure, nor power to afford the seminal resudation or superfluity of the third concoction, which nature most carefully reserves for the conservation of the individual, whose preservation she more heedfully regardeth than the propagation of the species and the multiplication of human kind. Whence it is that Diana is said to be chaste, because she is never idle, but always busied about hunting. For the same reason was a camp, or leaguer of old called—Castrum,[222] as if they would have said—Castum; because the soldiers, wrestlers, runners, throwers of the bar, and other such like athletic champions, as are usually seen in a military circumvallation, do incessantly travail and turmoil, and are in a perpetual stir and agitation. To this purpose, also, Hippocrates writeth in his book, De Aere, Aqua et Locis:—That in his time there were people in Scythia as impotent as eunuchs in the discharge of a venerean exploit; because that, without any cessation, pause or respite, they were never from off horseback, or otherwise, assiduously employed in some troublesome and molesting drudgery.
On the other part, in opposition and repugnancy hereto, the philosophers say, that idleness is the mother of luxury. When it was asked Ovid, why Ægisthus became an adulterer? he made no other answer than this, Because he was idle.[223] Who were able to rid the world of loitering and idleness might easily disappoint Cupid[224] of all his designes, aims, engines and devices and so disable and appal him, that his bow, quiver, and darts should from thenceforth be a mere needless load and burthen to him; for that it could not then lie in his power to strike or wound any of either sex with all the arms he had. He is not, I believe so expert an archer as that he can hit the cranes flying in the air, or yet the young stags skipping through the thicket, as the Parthians knew well how to do; that is to say, people moiling, stirring, and hurrying up and down, restless and without repose. He must have those hushed, still, quiet, lying at a stay, lither and full of ease, whom he is able to pierce with all his arrows. In conformation thereof, Theophrastus being asked on a time, What kind of beast or thing he judged a toyish, wanton love to be? he made answer, That it was a passion of idle and sluggish spirits.[224] From which pretty description of tickling-tricks, that of Diogenes, the Cynic, was not very discrepant when he defined lechery—The occupation of folk destitute of all other occupation. For this cause the Sicyonian sculptor Canachus,[225] being desirous to give us to understand that slowth, drowsiness, negligence, and laziness, were the prime guardians and governesses of ribaldry, made the statue of Venus, not standing, as other stone-cutters had used to do, but sitting.
Fourthly. The tickling pricks of incontinency are blunted by an eager study; for from thence proceedeth an incredible resolution of the spirits, that oftentimes there do not remain so many behind as may suffice to push and thrust forwards the generative resudation to the places thereto appropriated, and therewithal inflate the cavernous nerve, whose office is to ejaculate the moisture for the propagation of human progeny. Lest you should think it is not so, be pleased but to contemplate a little the form, fashion, and carriage of a man exceeding earnestly set upon some learned meditation and deeply plunged therein, and you shall see how all the arteries of his brains are stretched forth, and bent like the string of a cross-bow, the more promptly, dexterously and copiously to suppeditate, furnish and supply him with store of spirits, sufficient to replenish and fill up the ventricles, seats, tunnels, mansions, receptacles and cellules of common sense—of the imagination apprehension, and fancy—of the ratiocination, arguing, and resolution—as likewise, of the memory, recordation, and remembrance; and with great alacrity, nimbleness, and agility, to run, pass and course from one to the other, through those pipes, windings, and conduits, which to skilful anatomists are perceivable at the end of the wonderful net, where all the arteries close in a terminating point; which arteries taking their rise and origin from the left capsule of the heart, bring, through several circuits, ambages, and anfractuosities, the vital spirits, to subtilize and refine them in the ætherial purity of animal spirits. Nay, in such a studiously meditating, musing person, you may espy so extravagant raptures of one, as it were out of himself, that all his natural faculties for that time will seem to lie suspended from each their proper charge and office, and his exterior senses to be at a stand. In a word, you cannot choose than think, that he is by an extraordinary ecstasy quite transported out of what he was or should be; and that Socrates did not speak improperly when he said, That philosophy was nothing else but a meditation upon death. This possibly is the reason why Democritus[226] deprived himself of the sense of seeing, prizing, at a much lower rate, the loss of his sight, than the diminution of his contemplation which he had frequently found disturbed by the vagrant flying-out strayings of his unsettled and roving eyes.[227] Therefore is it that Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, tutoress and guardianess of such as are diligently studious and painfully industrious, is and hath been still accounted a virgin. The Muses upon the same consideration are esteemed perpetual maids: and the Graces, for the same reason, have been held to continue in a sempiternal pudicity.
I remember to have read that Cupid,[227] on a time, being asked by his mother Venus, why he did not assault and set upon the Muses, his answer was, that he found them so fair, so neat, so wise, so learned, so modest, so discreet, so courteous, so virtuous, and so continually busied and employed,—one in the speculation of the stars,—another in the supputation of numbers,—the third in the dimension of geometrical quantities,—the fourth in the composition of heroic poems,—the fifth in the jovial interludes of a comic strain,—the sixth in the stately gravity of the tragic vein,—the seventh in the melodious disposition of musical airs,—the eighth in the completest manner of writing histories and books on all sorts of subjects, and—the ninth in the mysteries, secrets, and curiosities of all sciences, faculties, disciplines and arts whatsoever, whether liberal or mechanic,—that approaching near unto them he unbent his bow, shut his quiver, and extinguished his torch, through mere shame and fear that by mischance he might do them any hurt or prejudice. Which done, he thereafter put off the fillet wherewith his eyes were bound, to look them in the face, and to hear their melody and poetic odes. There took he the greatest pleasure in the world, that many times he was transported with their beauty and pretty behaviour, and charmed asleep by their harmony, so far was he from assaulting them or interrupting their studies. Under this article may be comprised what Hippocrates wrote in the afore-cited treatise concerning the Scythians, as also that in a book of his intituled, Of Breeding and Production, where he hath affirmed all such men to be unfit for generation as have their parotid arteries cut—whose situation is behind the ears—for the reason given already, when I was speaking of the resolution of the spirits, and of that spiritual blood, whereof the arteries are the sole and proper receptacles; and that likewise he doth maintain a large portion of the parastatic liquor to issue and descend from the brains and backbone.
Fifthly. By the too frequent reiteration of the act of venery. There did I wait for you, quoth Panurge, and shall willingly apply it to myself, whilst any one that pleaseth may, for me, make use of any of the four preceding. That is the very same thing, quoth Friar John, which Father Scyllion,[228] Prior of St. Victor, at Marseilles, calleth maceration and taming of the flesh. I am of the same opinion, and so was the hermit of Saint Radegonde, a little above Chinon; for, quoth he, the hermits of Thebaïde can no way more aptly or expediently macerate and bring down the pride of their bodies, daunt and mortify their lecherous sensuality, or depress and overcome the stubbornness and rebellion of the flesh, than by dufling and fanfreluching five and twenty or thirty times a day."