While I studied in Geneva, a time, of which the remembrance will be dear to me for the rest of my life, one of my condisciples was come to that state of horror, that he was not master enough of himself to abstain from these abominations, even during the time of the lessons. He did not wait long for his punishment: and perished miserably of a consumption, in about two years time. A similar case to this may be found in the Onania.[88]
The ingenious author, who, from the Latin edition of this work, furnished the extract in the excellent Latin Journal of Literature, which, about a twelvemonth, made its first appearance at Berne, tells you, with regard to this observation, that a whole college had recourse to this filthy practice, by way of an amusement, to avoid falling asleep, at the lessons of scholastic metaphysics, which a very old professor used to teach them, as he nodded between sleeping and waking[89]. But this little story seems to me less fit to prove what I have been physically advancing, than the actual horrid dissoluteness into which the contagion of example may plunge a number of young people. The same author has recently published a work, which I have not as yet had the advantage of perusing, but to which an excellent judge assigns a rank among the best productions of this age. There he mentions, that, in a certain town, there was some years ago discovered a whole society of wicked boys, from fourteen to fifteen years old, who met to practise this vice, and that a whole school was to this moment infected with it.[90]
The health of a young Prince was daily declining, without any one’s being able to discover the cause of it. At length his surgeon suspected it, watched him, and surprized him in the fact. He confessed, that one of his valets de chambre had taught him the practice, and that he had been often guilty of it. The habit was so strong upon him, that the most pressing considerations, and the most strenuously inforced, could not break him of it. The evil was constantly gaining ground; his strength was daily wasting; and there was no such thing as saving him, but by keeping guard over him, so as not to let him be a moment out of sight, for above eight months.
A patient, in one of his letters, gave me a lively description of the difficulties of his victory.
“There are great efforts (these are his terms) required to conquer a habit, that is every instant urging its recalls to us. I own to you, with blushes, that the bare sight of a female, no matter what she is, is enough to excite my desires. I do not even need that provocative; my polluted imagination is but too ready to present constantly to me objects of concupiscence. It is true that this passion never rekindles in me without my remembring, at the same time, your good advice: I struggle with myself; but even that struggle fatigues and exhausts me. If you could but find and suggest to me the means of diverting my thoughts from such objects, I believe my cure would be soon effected.”
It has been seen, in my extract from the English Onania, that a frequent repetition had produced in a woman the furor uterinus. The habit of being ingrossed by one idea renders one incapable of having any others; it usurps the sole dominion of the mind, and reigns despotically. The organs constantly irritated contract a morbific disposition, which becomes an ever present goad, independent of all external cause. There are disorders of the urinary passages which give a constant tendency to make water; the reiterated irritation of the organs of generation produces a disorder, in its way, analogous to that. It is therefore not surprizing if the concurrence of these two causes, moral and natural, combined, should throw one into that horrid disorder: and how powerful ought this idea to be, for inspiring a salutary terror to all in any danger of being in this case, and who have as yet any traces of reason or shame left!
A fourth cause to self-pollutors of their waste of strength, is, that independently of their frequency of emissions of seed, that frequency of their erections, though imperfect ones, of which they complain, considerably exhausts them. Every part, that is in a state of tension, produces an expence of the vital forces, and they have none to spare: the animal spirits croud thither in the greater abundance, and dissipate themselves. This is a great cause of weakness: they are proportionably deficient in the other functions, which are, in course, thereby imperfectly executed; and the concurrence of these two causes has the most dangerous consequences.
Another mischief, to which this fourth cause subjects self-pollutors, is a sort of paralytical affection of the organs of generation, whence follow impotency, incapacity of erection, and the simple gonorrhœa; for, the relaxed parts suffer the true seminal liquid to come from them as fast as it arrives, and the humor separated by the prostates to keep continually oozing, and, in short, all the internal membrane of the urethra acquires a catarrhous disposition to furnish a gleet, much of the same nature as the fluor albus in women: a catarrhous disposition, which, let me here somewhat digressively remark, is less rare and more general to the parts of the human body than is commonly imagined; not being confined to the membrane that invests the nostrils, the throat, the lungs, but which often attacks all the cavities of the intestines, where the disease is not discerned, because not suspected, and must, for want of that knowledge, be improperly prescribed for: nor would it be difficult to collect, from various medical observations, examples of this disorder having been mistaken for some other, and attempted to be cured accordingly.