Influence which the act of venery may have, when coincident either with the action of other causes of disease, or with alterations in the constitution and health. When an individual suddenly changes his mode of living, and the influences to which he has been exposed, and becomes a subject to new influences, his health most generally suffers to a certain extent. This is seen in the young man who comes directly from the pure air of the country into the confined atmosphere of the city, and in those who remove from the temperate to the torrid zone. The action of powerful causes of disease, of excessive heat, of deleterious exhalations, often adds to the simple change of habit. Thus all authors who have written on the diseases of warm countries, consider the act of venery, as one of the most active occasional causes of yellow fever, of malignant fevers, of cholera morbus, and generally of the severe diseases contracted by Europeans. A similar disposition may be seen in young men, who pass many hours in the infected atmosphere of hospitals, and particularly in dissecting-rooms, if they indulge with females or in onanism: typhus fevers have been caused by it. The individual who lives in a filthy neighbourhood, who experiences privations, who indulges to excess in wine or spirituous liquors, who labors hard either corporeally or mentally, who is deprived of sleep, who is affected with sadness, &c., bears the act of venery badly; it adds to the enervation already felt, and generally robs the individuals of health. Venereal pleasures should be abstained from, during the prevalence of epidemics: every person is then disposed to the prevailing disease, and a single act of coition may produce it.
The influence of the act of venery is much more injurious, when the causes which we have mentioned, and generally all those which may impair the constitution, have affected it to a greater or less degree. Diseases of long duration, if badly treated, excesses and the causes mentioned above may bring the system to such a state, that enjoyments even if seldom indulged in, may produce great suffering and disease. Venereal excesses may also create predispositions and change them as well as those which have a different origin into other morbid affections.
It is well known that the venereal desires do not generally exist, except the person be in a state of health. The same may be said too of the generative power, if we may judge from Haller’s remark that the spermatic animalculæ disappear during disease. It is ascertained that the number of conceptions is in a direct ratio with the degree of health enjoyed by a people; they increase in a healthy season, and diminish in an unhealthy season. This fact is established by the researches of Villermé in regard to the births and deaths in France, Italy, England and Belgium, and also in regard to the marshy parts of France at different periods of the year, (Ann. d’hyg. publ., January, 1831.) Thus then the genital sense, like that of hunger, and probably the power of procreating, like that of digesting, is most generally suspended during disease. Is not this one of the many warnings of the organization, as to the preservative power?
It is true however that individuals indulge in coition and masturbation although even in an advanced state of disease. This is most frequently seen in onanists. “I have seen,” says Pinel, “a person affected with a dynamic fever who was entirely exhausted, and yet his passion for onanism was so powerful, that on the sixth day of the disease he still attempted to excite his organs, although death was coming upon him.” Similar cases have been witnessed by every practitioner, which we shall mention in the course of this work. Thus then even a severe disease does not entirely prevent the act of venery. Let us now inquire what is the effect when such people indulge. It must be admitted that this indulgence is at least useless, except in very rare cases, where continence is the cause of sickness. Strictly speaking, this may be the case in certain chronic affections and in some few individuals, but it is rare. The power of the act of venery is so great, and the diseased organs are generally so sensitive to the impressions made on the economy, that if there are apparently some diseases which seem unaffected by this act, it is because the modification which they experience escapes observation. We may then state as a general rule that if the act of venery be indulged in by sick people, it is injurious and generally to a great degree. How great is the injury when the disease is caused by venereal indulgences.
It often happens that diseases resist to an unaccountable extent all remedial agents: suspicion is excited and finally we find that the patient, an onanist before he was taken sick, has continued to abuse himself through his sickness: and again, the symptoms of the disease under treatment gradually disappear: but the strength does not return, nor does the patient become convalescent. Debility increases instead of diminishing: the patient becomes thinner and the fever continues: finally the sick person falls into a consumption and the fatal habit is at last discovered. In others the disease seems to be terminated, but is suddenly re-excited, the patient being too hasty to indulge in masturbation or coition. This happened to a man fifty years old, who was gouty, and much addicted to the pleasures of the table, and whose case is related by Hoffman. Having indulged in coition soon after he was convalescent from pleurisy, this man had a relapse which was much more dangerous than the original illness. The same author states a similar case, where the imprudence was followed by death. Scrofula, rickets, gout, and stone are says M. Marc, diseases, which on arriving at a certain point, are aggravated by coition. The same remark applies to all other maladies. M. Falret mentions a female affected with melancholy at the hospital Salpetrière, whose mental affection has several times been re-excited by onanism, after she was thought to be cured. Cutaneous diseases in particular may give an idea of the influence exercised by the act of venery on those maladies which are deeply situated. Alibert mentions the history of an herpetic disease which was always more intense after the patient had indulged in onanism: this unfortunate individual was then tormented by a severe itching.
The irregularity and singularity of the symptoms of those sick people who indulge in onanism, are particularly remarkable. The nervous system evidently feels an influence in addition to that of the disease, or is disposed to be particularly affected by all those which occur. This fact, established by Tissot and Georget, should always be remembered by physicians. We may form an idea of the derangement caused by the act of venery in the progress and appearance of diseases by the severe symptoms which it produces in wounds and particularly those of the head. Tetanus, delirium, and other nervous symptoms have often been caused by it. Fabricius de Hilden states the case of a young man whose hand was amputated, and whose physician forbid having any intercourse with his wife, who was also informed of the danger. But when all the symptoms disappeared, and the cure was progressing rapidly, the patient feeling desires to which his wife could not respond, procured a seminal emission without coition; it was immediately followed by fever, delirium, convulsions and other symptoms, and in four days the patient died.
Death also often follows coition in patients affected with diseases of the heart and large vessels. This was seen in the case of Corroy, a servant at the hospital la Chardité. One evening while intoxicated he met a courtezan with whom he proposed spending the night, but in the midst of his transports he suddenly died. On examining his body it was found that he had an aneurism near the commencement of the arch of the aorta. The rupture of this tumor was evidently the cause of his sudden death. Probably also a similar occurrence happened in the case mentioned by Felix Plater. The patient having married a second time, experienced, while consummating the marriage, such a violent degree of suffocation that he was forced to suspend his efforts: the same symptom re-appeared whenever he again attempted it. Having consulted a charlatan, he was recommended to persevere: he did so, and died. Examples of sudden death during coition are not rare. Death generally arises from aneurism or apoplexy. Pliny the naturalist mentions two cases, and Tabourdot in his Bigarrures, has preserved the epitaphs of several who have perished in this manner.
CHAPTER III.
SYMPTOMS AND DISEASES CAUSED BY VENEREAL EXCESSES.
The genital organs when they are abused are precisely in the same state as if they were diseased. In this case in fact, they are not in their normal state for they are in action when the health demands that they should rest. Hence when we consider them either specially or as to their action on the rest of the body, we see that they resemble organs in a morbid state; they are, as it were affected with an intermittent malady, having distinct periods of access, which are repeated more or less frequently, according to the acts of the onanist. The local condition of these organs is at first that which they present during the act of venery, but at a later period they may present different alterations, which continue after the periods of access, in the same manner as the tissues are modified, if the cause which renders them diseased continues to act on them. The general state of onanists is also perfectly analogous to that observed in diseases. In them, the genital organs are the seat of different symptoms, and the focus of numerous diseases. The symptoms appear first only during the periods of access, or for a few hours afterward: then they continue longer and the intermissions become shorter and afterward are only remissions: finally the disease is perfectly continued. This is the usual course of the symptoms of this affection which may be called the genital disease. Frequently however, one of the derangements of the reproductive system, assumes, on account of its individual peculiarities a more determined character than the others, and becomes as it were independent of them. This disorder is then no longer a symptom but becomes a disease which is in one phthisis, in another myelitis, epilepsy, amaurosis &c. So too with a wound; this which at first caused only fever and other symptoms intimately connected with it, becomes afterward gastroenteritis, tetanus, or some other disease which has its regular place in systems of nosology. Voluntary pollution, when it becomes injurious must then be considered as an affection having its symptoms, and also as a cause of disease. We shall proceed to consider it in these two relations in two different sections. The first will be devoted to the symptoms arising from this pollution, the second, to the diseases caused by it.