He proves afterwards, by various examples, that a small cause often produces great effects, and at length concludes thus: “Needs it be any wonder that the testicles furnish a liquid of a nature to diffuse fresh vigor over the whole body, when the brain produces motion and sensation, and the heart gives pulse to the arteries!”
I shall wind up this Section with what one of the greatest men of the age (M. Haller) says on the seminal humor.
“The seed is kept in the seminal vesicules till the man makes use of it, or that nocturnal pollutions deprive him of it. During all that time, the quantity there is of it excites the animal system to the venereal act; but the greatest quantity of this seed, the most volatile, the most odorous, that which has the most strength, is repumped into the blood, and produces, at its entrance into it, the most surprising changes; the beard, the hair, calluses; it alters the voice and manner: for it is not age that produces in animals this change; it is the seed alone that operates them, and they are never remarked in eunuchs[61].”
How does the seed operate these effects? Ay, that is a problem of which the solution is not perhaps as yet mature. But this however may, with great probability, be said, that this liquid is a stimulative, a goad, that irritates the parts with which it is in contact: its strong odor, and the palpable irritation it exercises on the organs of generation, leave, as to that, no doubt; nor is it unconceivable that these acrid particles, being continually resorbed and removed with the humors, should, slightly at least, but continually, stimulate the vessels, which, by that very means, contract themselves with the more force; their action upon the fluids is then the more efficacious, the circulation the more animated, the more lively, the nutrition the more exact, and all the other functions executed in the more perfect manner for it: whereas, when this aid is denied or failed, several functions never display themselves, or take place, which is the case in eunuchs[62]; and all are defectively performed, and the worse for that want.
Here then occurs a natural enough question; it is this: How comes it that Eunuchs are not afflicted with the same evils as those who exhaust themselves by excesses of venery?
It is hardly possible to answer this question, satisfactorily, till the end of the following Section.
SECTION VII.
An examination of the circumstances which accompany the emission.
There are several evacuations which are performed imperceptibly: all the others, except one, are effected in a state of perfect health, with a facility to which it is owing that they have no influence over the rest of the machine: the slightest motion of the organ which contains the matter of them, suffices for the expulsion. The excepted one is the evacuation of the seed, towards which nothing less is required than a general commotion, a convulsion of all the parts, an augmentation of quickness in the course of all the humors, to dislodge and give it issue.