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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In writing upon Inoculation, I had proposed to myself to propagate the method that I judged the properest to stop the ravages of that murderous distemper; and I have had the satisfaction of doing, at least, some good: in composing this Work, I have been encouraged by the hope of checking the progress of a corruption more rife, more destructive perhaps than the small-pox itself, and so much the more to be dreaded, for that its operations being carried on in the shades of secrecy and mystery, it undermines without noise, without even those, who are its victims, suspecting its malignity. It was of the greatest importance to make its dangers known. May that Power, to whom every thing is subordinate, vouchsafe to my views that blessing without which our best endeavours can be of no avail! Paul plants, Apollos cultivates, but increase is from God alone.

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Man is every instant losing something of himself, and if he was not continually repairing that loss, he would soon necessarily fall into a weakness productive of death. This reparation is effected by aliments. But these aliments must undergo in the body different preparations, which are comprehended under the name of nutrition. But when that nutrition is either not performed, or deficiently so, all these aliments become useless, and do not hinder the falling into all the evils which are the consequence of atrophy or inanition. Of all the causes that may hinder nutrition, there is not perhaps a more common one than over-abundant evacuations. Such is the fabric of our machine, and in general of all human machines, that for aliments to acquire the degree of preparation necessary to repair the body, there must remain in it a certain quantity of humors well elaborated, and, if I may use the expression, naturalised to it. If this condition of them is defective, the digestion and coction of the aliments remains imperfect, and so much the more imperfect, as the humor that is needed requires the most elaboration, and is of the most importance.