From the moment that the digestions are imperfectly performed, the humors assume a character of crudity, which disqualifies them for all their destinations, but which, above all, hinders nutrition, upon which depends the reparation of the vital forces. To be assured of the general influence of the stomach, there needs only to observe the state of a person under the complaint of a laborious digestion; his strength fails in a few minutes; a general uneasiness renders that weakness still harder to be indured; the organs of sensation grow obtuse; the soul itself cannot exercise its faculties but imperfectly; the memory, and especially the imagination, seem annihilated; nothing, in short, makes a man of sense so nearly resemble a fool, as a painful or defective digestion.
A very curious observation, specified by M. Payva, a Portuguese physician, who resided in Rome, throws a great light on the prodigious weakness into which an excessive indulgence of venery will throw those who are guilty of it.
“When (says he) the desires of the sensual joy are, in young people, risen to the greatest height, they feel a kind of agreeable sensation at the orifice of the stomach; but if they satisfy these desires with too great an impetuosity, and beyond their strength, they feel, in the same place, an extremely disgustful sensation, with something of a bitterness in it they cannot express; they pay dearly besides for their excesses, by the leanness and marasmus, &c. into which they fall[74].”
Aretæus had, before him, taken notice of this truth[75], and Boerhaave employs the same expressions as Payva, with this addition, that that sense of pain goes off in proportion as they recover their strength[76]. He informs, in another place, the same thing, joining thereto a very useful practical rule, which is, that on the coming on of epileptic fits, after venereal excesses, care should be taken to strengthen the nerves of the stomach[77].
Secondly, The weakness of the nervous system, which disposes to all the paralytic and spasmodic accidents, is produced, as I have before observed, by the convulsive motions which accompany the emission, and, in the second place, by the disorder of the digestions: when these are faulty, the nerves suffer by it, and suffer the more, for that the fluid with which they are imbibed, being the very ultimate elaboration of coction, and that which requires the greatest perfection of that elaboration; when, I say, that coction is faulty, it is of all the animal fluids that which is thereby the most sensibly affected, and upon which the crudity of the rest of the humors has the most influence. In short, what augments this weakness, is an evacuation of a humor that has great affinity to the animal spirits, and which, by reason of that affinity, cannot be evacuated without diminishing the strength of the nervous system, which I cannot help attributing to those spirits, notwithstanding the modest doubts of some great men, who dare not affirm any thing, in natural philosophy, the truth of which does not fall under the senses, and notwithstanding the objections of some subaltern or systematical physiologists.
Besides: independently of the damage resulting from this evacuation, relatively to the quantity of the animal spirits, it hurts, by its depriving the vessels of that gentle stimulation produced by the absorbed seed, and which contributes so much to the coction of those spirits. It is pernicious, then, both by its drawing off a part of the animal spirits, or, at least, of a very pretious humor, and by diminishing the coction, without which those spirits can, at best, be only imperfectly and insufficiently prepared.
There is between the diseases of the stomach to those of the nerves, and from those of the nerves again to those of the stomach, a vitious circle. The first beget the second, and these, once formed, contribute infinitely to augment them. If daily observation were not to prove it, the bare anatomical inspection of the stomach would carry sufficient conviction with it. The quantity of nerves distributed through it, is abundantly a demonstration how necessary they are to its functions, and how, consequently, those functions must be disordered when the nerves are not in good condition.
Thirdly, Perspiration does not proceed kindly in that case. Sanctorius has even determined the quantity diminished by it; and this evacuation, the most considerable of all the others, cannot be suppressed without there resulting from it a croud of different symptoms.
It is easily then conceivable that there can be no disorder which may not be produced by this triple cause. I will not enter into the explanation of all the particular symptoms; such a particularization would too much expand this little work, and could not interest the physicians to whom it would be superfluous. What M. de Gorter has said upon it, is worth consulting[78].