“An immoderate profusion of seed is pernicious, not only through the waste of that most useful humor, but also through the over-frequent repetition of that convulsive motion which is produced by the emission. For the highest pitch of that pleasure is immediately succeeded by so universal a relaxation of the animal strength, as cannot be borne often without a consequential enervity. The more frequent a draught there is on the secretory ducts of the body, the greater is the derivation of the respective humors of the secretions; so that in the case of the liquid being repeatedly attracted to the parts of generation, the rest of the secretions are depauperated: thence, from excesses of venery follow, weariness, weakness, immobility, a tottering gait, pains of the head, convulsions, a hebetation of all the senses, and especially of the sight, blindness, intellectual imbecillity, a feverish circulation, dryness, leanness, a phthisis, a _tabes dorsalis_, an effeminate habit of body. These evils are liable to augment and become incurable through that perpetual pruriency for venery which the mind does not less than the body at length contract; and from which it follows, that obscene imaginations haunt even the dreams of persons so affected, and that the parts prone to the libidinous turgescence are, on every occasion, impetuously sollicited, while the quantity of the repaired seminal fluid, were it never so small, occasions constantly a troublesome stimulation, and is ready to start from its relaxed repositories with any the least endeavour, or even without any endeavor at all. Whence it is clear why an excess of this nature is so capable of blasting the flower of youth[33].” SECTION II. _Observations communicated._ I shall preserve no other order than that of the dates of my receiving these observations. “I have (says my illustrious friend M. ZIMMERMANN,) seen a man of twenty-three years of age, who became epileptic, after having weakened himself by frequent self-pollutions. As often as he had nocturnal pollutions, he fell into a complete fit of epilepsy. The same thing happened to him after any commission of that act, from which however he would not abstain, notwithstanding those consequences, and all the admonitions against it. Having, however, abstained from it for some time, I cured him of the nocturnal pollutions, and had even hopes of removing his epilepsy, of which the fits were already gone off. He had recovered his strength, his stomach, his sleep, and a very good color, after having looked like a corpse. But being returned to his acts of self-pollution, which were always followed by an attack of the epilepsy, he came at length to be taken with fits in the street, and he was found one morning dead in his chamber, fallen out of his bed, and bathed in his own blood.”