M. Hoffman has seen the most dreadful accidents follow a waste of the seed.
“After a long course of nocturnal pollutions (says he) not only the strength diminishes, the body is emaciated, the face turns pale, but moreover the memory fails, a continual sensation of cold seizes all the limbs, the sight dims, the voice grows hoarse[20]; the whole body insensibly decays; the sleep, disturbed by uneasy dreams, brings with it no refreshment, and one feels pains like those which follow a severe beating[21].”
In his consultation for a young man, who, among other disorders, had brought upon himself a weakness in the eyes, by self-pollution: “I have (says he) seen many examples of persons, who, even in the age of full growth, that is to say, when the body is come to the plenary enjoyment of its vigor, had drawn upon themselves not only a redness and extreme pains in the eyes, but also so great a weakness of the sight, as to be no longer able to read or write. I have even seen two instances of a gutta serena produced by this cause[22].”
It will probably not be unpleasing here, the specifying the history of the disease which gave rise to the consultation precedently quoted.
“A young man having, from the age of fifteen, abandoned himself to the practice of self-pollution, had, by the frequency of that act till the age of twenty-three, brought upon himself such a disorder of the head, and especially such a weakness in the eyes, that they particularly were seized with violent convulsions at the time of the seminal emission. If he attempted to read, he felt a dizziness somewhat like that of drunkenness. The pupilla was extraordinarily dilated. He suffered extreme pains in the eye; his eyelids felt heavy, and glewed up every night; his eyes were always suffused with tears, and in the two corners of them, both very painful, there was constantly gathering a whitish matter. Though he ate his meals chearfully, he was reduced to extreme leanness, and as soon as he had eaten, he would fall into a kind of drunken stupor.”
The same author has preserved to us another observation on a case, of which he himself had been an ocular witness, and which deserves a place here. “A young man about eighteen years of age, having had an over-frequent intercourse with a servant-maid, fell all on a sudden into a great faintness, with a general tremor in all his limbs; his face flushed, and a very weak pulse. He was recovered out of this slate, in about an hour’s time, but he remained under a general languor. The same fit frequently returned, with an intolerable anguish, and in eight days time brought on a contraction and a tumor of the right arm, with a pain at his elbow, which redoubled at every fit. This disorder proceeded for some time augmenting, notwithstanding all the remedies that were used. However, M. Hoffman cured him at length[23].”
M. Boerhaave paints these disorders with that energy and exactness which characterise all his descriptions.
“An excessive profusion (says he) of the seminal humor produces lassitude, feebleness, immobility, convulsions, emaciation, desiccation, pains in the membranes of the brain; it obtunds the senses, and especially the sight; it brings on the tabes dorsalis, a general torpor, and various other diseases which have an affinity to those[24].”
It would not be right here to omit the observations which this great man communicated to his hearers, on his explaining this aphorism to them, and which turn upon the different means of evacuation.
“I have (says he) seen a patient, whose illness began by a languor and weakness all over his body, especially towards the loins; it was accompanied with such a motion of the tendons, such periodical convulsions, and wasting away, as were enough to destroy the whole body: he also felt a pain in the membranes of the brain, a pain which the patients call a dry burning heat, with which the noble parts are, in this case, continually affected.