This disorder may draw its origin from many remote causes. The proximate cause is always unitedly constituted of a defectiveness or depravity in the liquids, of which the running consists, they being too thin, and often too acrid; and of a great relaxation of the parts. The defect in the liquids denotes a want of elaboration, which is owing to a general weakness; this requires tonic remedies, which the weakness of the organs also indicates; the coincident circumstances determine the choice of them. It would be out of place to enter here on all the relative particulars, and upon which there may be found instructive lights in many medical writers, and especially in Sennertus, author of the best compendium of practical physic that we have.
The same remedies as are pointed out in the course of this work, against the other consequences of pollution, are applicable in this case; the cold-bath, the bark, martials, and corroboratives. Boerhaave says, that the hepatica (liverwort) produces excellent effects (egregios sane præstat usus) in the inveterate gonorrhœa, where it depends on the relaxation of the organs[156]. Sometimes, to direct the tendency which habit gives to humors towards the same part, it may not be amiss to begin by some laxatives: there are even some great Physicians, who have attributed to them an almost specific efficacy against this disorder; experience yet more than reason has proved to me the contrary. Those who will give themselves the trouble of reading the authors whom I have above quoted, will find that they prescribe nothing laxative. Actuarius directs “things that strengthen without heating[157].” Aretæus, who, in consideration of the urgency of the danger, recommends an immediate recourse to remedies, prescribes none but strengtheners, abstinence from the pleasures of love, and the cold-bath[158].
Celsus, of whose works both of them have availed themselves, orders frictions, and especially baths extremely cold, (natationesque quam frigidissimas;) he would have nothing eaten or drank but what is cold; that all aliments should be avoided which may engender crudities, wind, and augment the acridity of the seed. Fernelius orders nutritious aliments, and restorative electuaries[159].
If the promise of Langius, who said “he would venture to swear for the efficacy of purgatives and a diet in the cure of this disorder,” be at all true, it cannot, probably, be relied on, but in that case alone, where the disorder is produced by a bad diet, which should have given birth to obstructions in the hypogastrium, and made all the humors degenerate, without the solids having as yet received any considerable damage; and this case it is that he must only have had in view; for if the solids had received any material prejudice, the purgatives must necessarily be aided by corroboratives. Such was the gonorrhœa that Regis observed, and of which Craanen has preserved to us the particulars.
“A man (says he) of a pituitous constitution, having for along time used himself to a humid diet, was attacked with the running of a watery, crude, viscous humor, which came away without perceptible sensation. He was wasting away, his eyes grew hollow, and he felt a daily decay of his strength. Regis began with him by evacuating with purgatives those pituitous humor.” After which he gave him corroboratives, analeptics, and desiccative aliments; and if that should not be sufficient, he advised him a caustic for each leg[160].
But this method of purgatives can never be proper, when this disorder is the consequence of venereal excesses, and is owing, as Sennertus observes, “to that weakness which the vesiculæ seminales have contracted by the over-frequent vicissitudes of repletion and inanition.”
A particularisation of some cases will afford a clearer notion of the true method of cure.
Timæus furnishes us with one, which cannot be better placed than here.
“A young man, (says he,) a student of the Law, of a sanguine constitution, used to pollute himself manually twice or thrice a day, and sometimes oftener: he fell into a gonorrhœa, accompanied with a weakness of the whole body. I looked on the gonorrhœa as a consequence of a relaxation occasioned in the seminal vessels, and on his weakness as owing to his frequent effusions of seed, which had dissipated the natural heat, gathered crudities, damaged the nervous system, stupified the soul, and weakened the whole body.”
[He prescribed for him strengthening cordial wine, with the astringents and aromatics infused in a strong-bodied red wine, an electuary of the same nature, and an ointment composed of oil of roses, mastic, nitre, bol. armen. terra sigillata, balaustæ, and white-wax.]