Читать книгу A Treatise on the Crime of Onan. Illustrated with a Variety of Cases, Together with the Method of Cure онлайн

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Some Physicians have attributed to the same cause, a disease which Hippocrates describes elsewhere[5], and which has some affinity to the first: this last they call “the secondary tabes dorsalis.” But the continuance under it of the bodily strength, which he particularly specifies, appears to me a convincing proof, that this last disease does not acknowledge the same cause as the first. It seems rather a rheumatic affection. For example, Celsus, in his excellent book on the preservation of health, says, “the pleasures of coition are always pernicious to weak constitutions, and the frequent use of them enfeebles the strong.[6]”

Nothing can be conceived more dreadful than the description which Aretæus has left us of the evils produced by an over-abundant evacuation of that humor. “The young (says he) contract the looks and the infirmities of old age; they become pale, effeminate, torpid, inactive, stupid, and even drivellers; their bodies are bent, their legs refuse their office; they have a general distaste, and grow unfit for all the offices of life; many fall into a palsy[7].” In another place he sets down the pleasures of venery among the six causes that produce the palsy.