In short, not to mention many others, M. GAUBIUS places excessive continency in the class of causes of diseases. “It is rare, indeed, (he says,) that it produces any evils, and yet it has been known so to do, in some men, born with a warm constitution, and who breed a great deal of the seminal liquid, and in some women[140].” And he proceeds to an enumeration of those disorders. The existence then of them is not to be denied; but the rarity of them may at the same time be affirmed, especially in the present age, which seems to be the age of sensuality: and, in truth, we see every day that gross mistake committed, of attributing indistinctly to this cause, that is to say, to a need of employment for the organs of generation, all the diseases which attack marriageable persons of both sexes, and in advising marriage to them as the only remedy; a remedy often misjudged, often even noxious, because it cannot destroy the complaints which proceed from other causes of disorder, and may add to such evils, those which pregnancy and lying-in commonly produce in persons of a languishing state of health. I return to the subject of pollutions. I have shown, that the first kind of them, produced by that over-abundance of the seminal liquid, which it lessens by evacuation, is not of itself an evil; but it may become one by recurring too frequently, and at times when the over-abundance no longer exists. I have also already observed, that one evacuation disposed for a second, and so on, so great is the force of habit, which consists in this, that the reiteration of the same motions gives them the greater facility, insomuch that they reproduce themselves on the slightest cause; an observation of great use towards the understanding the animal œconomy, upon which GALEN, and especially M. MATY[141], have said some excellent things; and still it has not been treated of to the bottom. From the habit then there results this inconveniency, that these evacuations become a consequence of it, independently of the want, and when it no longer exists. Then they are extremely pernicious, and have all the dangers of an excessive evacuation procured by other means. SATYRUS surnamed GRAGROPILEX, residing at Thasus, had had, from the age of twenty-five, frequent nocturnal pollutions: nay, sometimes the liquid would come from him in the day time. He died of a consumption in his thirtieth year[142].