M. Clifton Wintringham has very sensibly particularised the dangers of this evacuation with respect to the gouty, and his explanation merits attention[79].
The late M. Gunzius, snatched from the medical career in the flower of his age, has given a very ingenious mechanical explanation[80] of the inconveniences resulting from this excess to the faculty of respiration. He speaks, on this occasion, of a man who had thereby brought upon himself a continual cough; a symptom which I myself observed in a young man who died a victim of self-pollution.
He was come to Montpelier, to pursue there his studies. His excesses in that infamous practice had thrown him into a consumption, and I recollect that his cough was so strong and so continual, that it disturbed all his neighbours. He was frequently blooded, which must have been, I supposed, by way of making the quicker dispatch of his sufferings. A consultation on his case, prescribed his going home, and living there upon turtle-broth. His residence was, if I am not mistaken, in Dauphiny. The persons consulted promised him a complete cure; but he died two hours after the consultation. How curious an one! and what physicians must they have been who were consulted!
But what is the least easy to conceive, or rather, what is beyond all comprehension, is, that of its prodigious weakening of the faculties of the soul.
The solution of this problem is connected with the question undeterminable by us, of the mutual influence of the two substances upon each other, upon which we are reduced to the observation of these phenomenons, without being able to account for them. We are ignorant of the nature both of the spirit and of the body; but we know that they are so intimately united, that all the changes that the one undergoes are felt by the other: a circulation a little more or less quick, the blood a little more or less thick, some ounces more or less of aliments, the same quantity of one aliment rather than of another, a dish of coffee instead of a glass of wine, a sleep more or less long or tranquil, a stool a little more or less copious, a perspiration too profuse or too languid, will totally change our manner of seeing or judging of objects: From one hour to another, the revolutions of the machine bring with them different sensations, different thoughts, and, arbitrarily, form to us new principles of vices and of virtues; so just is the idea of the poet who first wrote Satires in France.
Tout, suivant l’intellect, change d’ordre et de rang:
Ainsi, c’est la nature et l’humeur des personnes,
Et non la qualité, qui rend les choses bonnes,