An able surgeon, once, mentioned to me a man, who, from a singularity of taste, used to indulge his debauchery with the lowest street-walkers, and being accustomed to satisfy his desires with them, in a standing posture, against some wall or bulk, fell into a wasting, accompanied with the most cruel pains of his loins, and with an atrophy or shrivelling of his thighs and legs, combined with a palsy in those parts, which seemed to be a consequence of the attitude in which he used to indulge his dirty amours. After having kept his bed about a month, he died in a condition equally fit to inspire compassion and terror.
But does not this observation furnish also a fifth cause of the dangers particular to self-pollution?
When one loses one’s strength by two means at once, the weakness must be considerably augmented. A person who is standing upright, or sitting, has need for the supporting himself in those postures, and especially in the first, of putting into action a great number of the muscular parts; and this action dissipates the animal spirits. Weak persons, who cannot keep, for an instant, in a standing posture, without feeling a weakness, and the sick, that cannot sit up without the like uneasiness, very evidently prove this. But in lying down, or in the being extended at full length, there is not required the same strain on the vital strength. Thence it is clear enough, that the same act, performed in the one or in the other attitude, will produce a much greater weakening in the first than in the last case.
Sanctorius has not failed to point out the danger of this attitude: “Usus coïtus stando, lædit, nam musculos et eorum utilem perspirationem diminuit.”
Other observations, well examined, afford a sixth cause, which may, at the first superficial view, appear of the slightest, but which no intelligent naturalist will readily pronounce null.
All living bodies perspire. Every instant there exhales through, perhaps, one half of the pores of our skin, a humor of extreme tenuity, and which is a great deal more considerable than all our other evacuations: at the same time, another kind of pores admit a part of the fluids which surround us, and convey them into the vessels. These are the invisible torrents (to use M. Senac’s happy expression) that have their egress and regress into our body[91]. It stands demonstrated, that, in some cases, this insorption is enormous. The strong and healthy perspire the most: the weak, who have hardly any atmosphere of their own, inhale more. Now the miasms, or perspired matter of healthy persons, contains something nutritious and corroborative, which inhaled by another, contributes to give him vigor. These are observations, which explain why the young virgin, selected to cherish David, by lying in his bosom, gave him strength; why the same experiment has succeeded with other old men, to whom it had been prescribed; why that process weakens the young person, who loses, without receiving anything; or rather receives, in return, faint, sickly, corrupt, putrid exhalations, which cannot but be noxious.
Now, in the time of coition, people perspire more than at any other, the force of the circulation being augmented. This perspiration is also, probably, more active, more spirituous, than at any other time: it is a real loss that is, on that occasion, sustained, and which takes place, in whatever manner the emission of the seed is made, as it depends on the agitation that accompanies it. In coition it is reciprocal, and then, the one inhales what the other perspires. This exchange stands unquestionably proved by sure observations. I saw myself, not long ago, one, who having no gonorrhœa, no cutaneous symptom of the lues, had given the venereal distemper to a woman, who, at that instant was giving him the itch in exchange. In coition, then, there is a sort of mutual compensation of loss on both sides. But in the case of self-pollution, the person guilty of it loses, and in lieu of his loss, receives nothing.
An observation of the effect of the passions discovers a seventh cause of evil, in the difference between those who indulge themselves with women, and the self-pollutors; a difference which is intirely to the disadvantage of these last.
That joy which is allied to the soul, and which it is so very right essentially to distinguish from that merely corporal pleasure, in which the man shares but with the brute, and from which it is totally different; that joy, I say, aids the digestions, animates circulation, favors all the functions, restores the vital forces, cherishes, and supports them. Where it is found combined or united with the pleasures of love, it contributes to repair that strength which those pleasures may have diminished or exhausted. This stands proved by observation. Sanctorius has remarked it.
“A man (says he) after an excessive coition with a woman he loves, and has passionately desired, does not feel that fatigue of weakness which one would naturally suppose would be the consequence of such an excess; because the joy of the soul augments the power of the heart, favors the functions, and repairs the losses.”