Mr. LUDWIG, in his description of the evils attending over-abundant evacuations, does not forget the seminal one. “The young (says he) of either sex, who abandon themselves to lasciviousness, ruin their health, by a dissipation of that strength which by nature was designed to bring their body to its greatest point of vigor. In short, they fall into a consumption[26].” M. de GORTER enters into particulars of the most dreadful accidents deriving from this cause; but as it would be of too great a length to copy him, I refer to his work those who understand the language in which he wrote[27]. M. VAN SWIETEN, after a recital of the above-quoted description of the _tabes dorsalis_ by HIPPOCRATES, adds: “I have seen all these symptoms, besides many more, befall those who had abandoned themselves to the infamy of self-pollutions. During three years, I employed, in vain, all the aids of the medical art, for a young man, who, by this vile habit, had brought on himself erratic, surprizing, and general pains, with a sensation sometimes of heat, sometimes of a very irksome cold all over his body, but especially towards the loins. These pains having, afterwards, been a little diminished, he felt so great a cold in his thighs and legs, although those parts seemed to the touch to have preserved their natural warmth, that he was continually warming himself at the fire, even during the greatest heats of the summer. But what more particularly astonished me, was a continual motion of rotation in the testicles, and the patient complained grievously of a like motion which he felt in his loins[28].” This narration does not inform us whether this wretched object terminated his life at the end of the three years, or, what is worse, yet continued to languish on, for some time longer; for there could hardly be a third issue. M. KLOEKOFF, in a very good work on those distempers of the mind which depend on the body, confirms, by his observations, what has been here advanced on this subject. “Too great a dissipation of the seminal humor weakens the springs of action in all the solids; thence arise weakness, laziness, listlessness, hectics, the _tabes dorsalis_, a torpor, and depravation of the senses, stupidity, madness, epilepsies, convulsions[29].” M. HOFFMAN had already remarked, that young people who abandoned themselves to that shameful practice of self-pollution, “lost, little by little, the faculties of the understanding, especially the memory, and became intirely unapt for study[30].” M. LEWIS describes all these evils: but I shall only transcribe from his work, what relates to the detriment occasioned to the intellectual faculties.