Part 6

It has been precedently observed, that self-pollution is more pernicious than excesses with women. Those who, on every occasion, bring a particular Providence into play, will assign for a reason, that it is the special will of God, in punishment of this crime. Persuaded as I am, that bodies have been, primordially from their creation, subjected to laws, which necessarily regulate all their motions, and of which the Deity does not probably change the œconomy, unless in a small number of reserved cases, I should not chuse to have recourse to miraculous causes, but when there is found a manifest opposition to natural ones. This is not the case here: every thing may be very well explained by the laws of the mechanism of the body, and by those of its union with the soul.

This common custom of a recourse to supernatural causes, has been anciently combated by HIPPOCRATES, who speaking of a disease which the Scythians imputed to its being a particular punishment inflicted by God, makes this fine reflexion:

“It is true (says he) that this disease comes from God; but not, in any other sense, than as all other diseases come from him: one does not come from him more than another; because all of them follow his laws of nature, by which every thing is governed[83].”

SANCTORIUS, in his Observations, furnishes us with one primary cause of this particular danger:

“Moderate coition (says he) is rather of service, when it is sollicited by nature: when it is sollicited by the imagination, it weakens all the faculties of the soul, and especially the memory[84].”

It is not difficult to explain the cause of this. Nature, in a state of health, does not inspire with desires, but when the seminal vesicules are full of a quantity of liquor, which has acquired a degree of inspissation, that renders the resorption of it the more difficult; which is a sign that the evacuation of it will not sensibly weaken the body. But such is the organisation of the parts of generation, that their action, and the desires consequential thereto, are not only put into play, by the presence of a redundancy of seminal humor, but the imagination has also a great influence over those parts. Imagination can, by laying itself out for the excital of desires, and by busying itself with objects present, or of its own formation, put the parts into a state which produces those desires, and those desires impell to an action, so much the more pernicious for its being the less necessary.

It is, with regard to this organ of a natural necessity, as it is with regard to all the others, who are never beneficially brought into play, but when they are so by nature herself. Hunger and thirst point out the need of a recourse to meat and drink; but if more is taken of them than these sensations require, the surplusage hurts and weakens the body. The need of going to stool or urine are equally limited to certain natural conditions; but a bad habit may so far pervert or deprave the constitution of those organs, that the necessity of evacuation will cease to depend on the quantity of matters to be evacuated. Men subject themselves to false wants, and such is the case of those addicted to self-pollution. It is imagination and habit that sollicit them; it is not nature. They rob nature of what is necessary to her, and of which, for that very reason, she is so chary, and loath to part with it.

In short, in consequence of this law of the animal œconomy, that humors will tend to where there is an irritation, so it will happen, that, after a certain time, there will be a continual afflux of humors to the irritated parts of generation: that case will come into existence, which HIPPOCRATES has already observed, “When a man exercises the act of coition, the seminal veins dilate, and attract the seed[85].”

It may be remarked here, that there is in self-pollution particularly a danger for children before they arrive to the age of puberty. It is happily not common to find such monsters, of either sex, as to debauch children before that epoch; but it is but too common for children of that age to debauch themselves. A great number of circumstances may concur to keep a lewd commerce with others at a distance from them, or at least to moderate it; but a solitary lewdness meets with no obstacle, and knows no bounds.

A second cause is, the tyranny which this odious practice gains over the senses, and which the author of the _English Onania_ describes very justly.

“This impurity has no sooner subdued the heart, than it pursues the criminal every where: it takes hold of him, and engrosses his thoughts at all times and in all places: in the midst of the most serious occupations, even in acts of devotion, he is in prey to sensual desires and to lascivious ideas, which never leave him free[86].”

Nothing can be more infeebling than this continual stretch of the mind, ingrossed by the same object. The self-pollutor, perpetually abandoned to his obscene meditations, is, in this regard, something in the case of the man of letters, who fixes all his attention on one point, and it is rare that such an excess is not pernicious. That part of the brain which is then in action, makes an effort, which may be compared to that of a muscle long and violently on the stretch: thence results, either such a mobility, that there is no stopping the activity of the part, which is notably the case of self-pollution, or an incapacity of action. Exhausted, at length, by a continual fatigue, these wretched beings fall into all the diseases of the brain; melancholy, catalepsy, epilepsy, imbecillity, loss of sense, weakness of the nervous system, and a croud of the like evils[87].

This cause of disorder does an infinite mischief to a number of young people, in that, when even their faculties are not as yet extinct, the use of them is perverted. To whatever vocation they devote themselves, there is no making a proficiency in any thing, without a degree of application, of which this pernicious habit renders them incapable. Among even those who dedicate themselves to nothing, and the class of these is but too numerous, there are some, whom that vacuity more than commonly misbecomes; an air of absence, of embarrassment, of giddiness, adds to the circumstance of their being good for nothing, that of their being disgustfully so.

I could point out some, whom this incapacity of fixing themselves to any thing, combined with the diminution of their faculties, disables from ever being of any use or value in society. Melancholic condition! which sinks the man beneath the brute, and, very justly renders an object rather of contempt than of pity to his fellow-creatures!

From these two causes there necessarily results a third; and that is the frequency itself of the act. As soon as the habit has gained a little strength, both body and soul concur in sollicitation to this crime. The soul, immersed in obscene ideas, is almost constantly exciting to lascivious acts, and if ever she is, for some moments, interrupted by other thoughts, the acrid humors, which irritate the organs of generation, soon recall her attention, and drag her back again to her mire.

How fit would these truths, collected from observation, be to check youth, if they could but foresee that in this case one false step would bring on another; that they will become slaves to the temptation; that in proportion as the motives of their seduction increase, that reason of theirs, which ought to restrain them, will grow weaker and weaker; and that they will, in a little time, find themselves cast away in a sea of misery, without, perhaps, the aid of any the least plank, to bring them to the shore again.

If sometimes their beginning infirmities give them strong and salutary advice, if the danger terrifies them for some moments, their rage of debauchery replunges them again, so that it may well be said of them,

_Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta._ PERS.

In the mean while the danger is actual, the destruction so imminent, that short indeed is the time of opportunity for amendment.

——_cinis et manes et fabula fies:_ _Vive memor lethi: fugit hora: hoc quod loquor inde est._ PERS.

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.

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.”

It is upon this principle that VENETTE, in whose work there may be seen a good chapter on the dangers of pushing the pleasures of love to an excess, establishes it as a maxim, that an union with a beautiful woman is less apt to exhaust the strength, than with a homely one.

“Beauty (says he) has charms which dilate the heart, and multiply the vital spirits, that proceed from it. We may very well believe, with St. CHRYSOSTOM, that to excite one’s self repugnantly to the laws of nature, is, in that respect, a much greater crime than the other.”

And, in fact, can there be a doubt of Nature’s not having annexed more joy to the pleasures procured by the means which are in her appointed course, than by any which are out of it?

An eighth and last cause which augments the dangers of self-pollution, is the regrets, the horrors, which cannot fail of being the consequence of it, when once one’s eyes come to be opened on the crime and its dangers.

_Miseri quorum gaudia crimen habent!_

_Wretched are those joys which are obnoxious to remorse!_

And, surely, if there are any human beings in this case, the self-pollutors must be among them.

When the veil is drawn, the representation of their conduct appears to them in all its most hideous colors and aspects. They find themselves guilty of a crime, of which divine justice would not postpone the punishment, but punished it immediately with death; a crime reputed a very great one even by the heathens themselves.

_Hoc nihil esse putas! scelus est; mihi crede, sed ingens_ _Quantum, vix, animo concipis ipse tuo._ MART.

The shame that pursues them infinitely augments their misery. Such, it is true, is the dissoluteness in some places, that debauches with women are hardly looked upon there, but as matter of custom; the guilty of them make no mystery of it, and have no notion of their being the more contemptible for it: But where is the self-pollutor that dares avow his infamy? Ought not this necessity of wrapping himself up in the shades of secrecy, appear, in his own eyes, a proof of the criminality of this act? What numbers have not perished for their never having dared to reveal the cause of their evils?

It appears a natural sentiment in several letters of the _Onania_, “_I would rather die than appear before you, after such a confession._”

And indeed one cannot help being infinitely more ready to excuse a man, who being seduced by that inclination which Nature has ingraved on all hearts, and of which she makes use for the preservation of the species, is in no wrong but that of not respecting the boundaries set by the laws, and by health. He is one carried away by his passions, and who is wanting to himself. We are much more willing to absolve such an one, than him who in his sin violates all the laws of Nature, perverting all her sentiments, and disappoints all her ends. Sensible of how great a horror he must be in to society, if his crime was known, that idea alone must incessantly torment him.

“It seems to me (says one of these criminals, a fragment of whose letter I have above quoted) as if every one could read in my face, the infamous cause of my ailments, and this idea renders company insupportable to me.”

They fall into melancholy and despair; of which examples may have been seen in the fourth Section of this work, and they labor under all the evils that are brought on by a continuity of dejection or sadness, without having, and this is dreadful indeed for a criminal, any pretext of justification, any motive of comfort. And what are the effects of such a melancholy? A relaxation of the fibres, a lentor of the circulation, imperfection of the digestions, a deficient nutrition, obstructions occasioned by those shrinkings or contractions which most particularly seem the effect of sadness or melancholy: [“the strainers of the liver, says SENAC, close themselves, and the bilious overflow spreads over the whole body:”] spasms, convulsions, palsies, pains, increase of anguish _ad infinitum_; with all the train of evils consequential to these.

It would be superfluous to enlarge more here on the dangers particular to self-pollution: they are but too real, and too self-evident: I proceed to the last part of this work, the methods of cure.

ARTICLE III.

CURATIVE INDICATION.

SECTION IX.

_Means of Cure proposed by other Physicians._

There are some diseases against which the success of remedies is next to sure. Those which are the consequences of venereal exhaustion, and, _a fortiori_, of self-pollution, do not enter into this class; and the prognostic which is to be made of them, when they shall have arrived at a certain degree, has nothing in it but what is desperately terrible.