There appears then nothing more for me to say, before I terminate this part, but to add the preservative cautions. I was sensible that this article was wanting to the first edition of this work, and that it was an unjustifiable defect, from the importance of the matter. A gentleman, celebrated in the Republic of Literature for his works, and yet more respectable for his talents, his knowledge, and his personal qualities, than for his name, and for the employments of which he so worthily acquits himself, in one of the first towns in Switzerland, M. Iselin, (I hope he will forgive my naming him,) made me sensible of that my omission in a very polite manner. I shall quote here an extract of his letter with the more pleasure, for its pointing out exactly what there remained for me to do.
“I could wish (says he) to see a work from your hand, in which you would explain the means the most secure and the least dangerous, by which parents, during the time of education, and young persons, when they are left to their own conduct, might the best preserve themselves from that violence of desires which urges them to those excesses, whence arise such dreadful diseases, or to disorders that disturb the happiness of society and their own. I do not doubt of there being a diet that particularly favors continency. I should think that a work that should teach it us, combined with a description of the diseases produced by impurity, would be equivalent to the best treatises of morality on this subject.”
M. Iselin is doubtless in the right; nothing would be more important than the combination of the two points he desires; but then nothing would be more difficult than the detaching them from the other parts not only of moral but medicinal education. To treat of this article apart, that is to say, to treat of it well, it would be necessary to establish a great number of principles, which would swell too much this little work, and which would, besides, be very foreign to it. Some general precepts, unconnected with the necessary principles and divisions, would not only be of little use, but might even become dangerous; so that it is better to refer such a treatise to the making part of a more considerable one, upon the means of forming a good constitution, and of giving a youth a firmly established health; a matter which, though it has been handled by very able authors, is, hitherto, far, very far from being exhausted; and upon which there remain a multitude of extremely important things to be added, as well as upon the disorders incident to that season of life. So that, though it be against my inclination, I will not here touch upon this article. All that I can say is, that idleness, inactivity, too long lying a-bed, too soft a bed, a rich, aromatic, salt, or vinous diet, dangerous or suspicious acquaintance, licentious works, being the likeliest causes of seduction into those excesses, they cannot be too carefully avoided. Diet especially is of extreme importance, and there is not attention enough had to that particular. Those who educate youth, ought to have ever present to them that pathetic observation of St. Jerom: “The forges of Vulcan, the internals of the Vesuvius and the Mount Olympus do not burn with more flames, than youth pampered with high meats, and drenched with wines.”
Menjot, one of Lewis the XIVth’s Physicians, from about the middle to the end of the last century, mentions women, that an excess of hippocras (spiced wine) threw into a venereal extasy. The use of wine and flesh-meats is so much the more pernicious, for that while they augment the force of the stimulations of loose desires, they weaken at the same time that of reason, which ought to resist them. “Wine and animal food dull the soul,” says Plutarch, in his treatise On the eating of flesh-meats, a work which ought to be generally perused. The most ancient Physicians had already known the influence of regimen over the morals; they had the idea of a moral medicinal-course; and Galen has left us upon that matter a small work, which is, perhaps, the best upon that subject hitherto extant. Conviction of the reality of his promise cannot but follow its perusal.
“Let those (says he) who deny that the difference of aliments can render some temperate, others dissolute; some chaste, others incontinent; some courageous, others cowardly; some meek, others quarrelsome; some modest, others overbearing; let those, I say, who deny this truth, come to me; let them follow my counsels as to eating and drinking, and I promise them, that they will find great helps therefrom towards moral philosophy; they will especially feel the faculties of their soul gather greater strength; they will improve their natural genius, they will acquire more memory, more prudence, more diligence. I will also tell them what kind of liquors, what winds, what state of the air, what climates they ought to shun or chuse[130].”
Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, had already left us some very good things on this important matter, and among the works which remain to us of the Pythagorean Porphyry, that zealous anti-christian of the third century, there is one, upon the abstinence of the animal food, in which he reproaches Firmus Castricius, to whom he addresses it, for his having quitted the vegetable diet, though he himself had owned it was the fittest to preserve health, and to facilitate the study of philosophy; and he adds, “Since you have taken to the eating of flesh-meat, your own experience has taught you, that that confession of yours was well grounded.” There are some very good things in that work.
The most efficacious preservative, the most infallible one is, doubtless, that which is pointed out by that great man, who, of all men has the best known his fellow creatures, and all their ways; who has not only seen what they actually are, but what they have been, what they ought to be, and what they are capable of becoming; who has the most truly loved them; who has made the greatest efforts in their favor, and who has been the most cruelly persecuted by them. “Watch with care (says he) over the young man. Do not leave him alone either by day or by night. Sleep, at least, in the same room with him. From the instant that he shall have contracted that habit, the most fatal one that a young man can inslave himself to, he will carry to the grave the melancholic effects of it. He will have his body and his heart for ever enervated by it.” I refer to the work itself for a perusal of all the excellent things he has said on this matter[131].
The description of the danger, upon the abandoning one’s self to such vitious practices, is perhaps one of the most powerful motives of correcting one’s self of them: it is a dreadful picture, and fit to make one start back with horror and affright. Let us assemble in one point of view the principal features of it. A general wasting of the whole machine; an enfeeblement of all the corporal senses and of all the faculties of the soul; loss of imagination and memory; imbecillity; contempt; shame; the ignominy such viciousness drags after it; all the functions of life disturbed, suspended, or painfully executed; long, vexatious, unaccountable, disgustful diseases; acute and constantly regenerating pains; all the infirmities or evils of old age, in the age of youth and vigor; an unaptitude for all those occupations for which man is born; the vile character to act of being an useless burthen to the earth; the mortifications to which such a character is daily exposed; a distaste for all worthy pleasures; a dull melancholy; an aversion for society and consequently for one’s self; a horror of life, the dread of temptations every moment to suicide; an anguish worse than pain; a remorse worse than anguish, a remorse which daily increasing, and which doubtless taking a new force, when the soul is no longer weakened by its ties to the body, will perhaps serve for a torment to all eternity, for an unextinguishable fire. See here the sketch of the fate reserved for those who proceed as if they had not it to dread!
Before I quit this article of the method of cure, I ought to observe to the patients, and it is an observation equally extensible to all who labor under chronical disorders, especially when they are accompanied with weakness; that they ought not to hope that, in a few days, those evils can be repaired or removed, which are the produce of the errors of years. They must lay their account with being obliged to endure the tediousness of a long cure, and to confine themselves scrupulously to all the rules laid down for their regimen. If sometimes they appear trifling or minute to them, it is because they themselves are not fit judges of the degree of their importance; it would be better for them constantly to repeat to themselves, that the irksome tediousness of the most rigid method of cure is still preferable to a state of any the slightest disease. Be it allowed me to observe, that for one disorder that remains uncured through improper treatment, there are a number, which the indocility of the patients renders incurable, notwithstanding the most well judged assistance given on the part of the physician.
For the securing success, Hippocrates required that the patient, the physician, the attendants, should all equally do their duty; if this concurrence was less rare, the happy issues of disorders would be more frequent. “Let the patient (says Aridæus) have a good heart, and join forces with the physician against the disease[132].” I have seen the most stubborn ones yield to the establishment of this harmony; and recent observations have demonstrated to me, that the virulence of even cancerous disorders has submitted to methods of cure, directed perhaps with some skill, but especially executed with a docility and a regularity of which the successes constituted the best praise.