M. VAN SWIETEN knew an epileptic patient, who was attacked with a fit on his wedding night[42]. M. HOFFMAN knew a woman, who was very lewd, and who, for the most part, had a fit of the epilepsy after every act of venery[43]. And here it may not be improper to introduce what M. BOERHAAVE says, in his treatise on the Disorders of the Nerves, that in the venereal ardor, all the nerves are affected, sometimes even to death. He mentions the example of a woman, who, after every coition, fell constantly into a pretty long fainting fit; and that of a man, who died in the act of his first coition, the force of the spasm having instantaneously thrown him into a total palsy. And I find in the excellent work with which M. DE SAUVAGES has lately inriched the physical world, a most singular, and perhaps before unheard of, case of a man, who, in the midst of the act used to be attacked (and this disorder lasted twelve years) with a spasm, which threw his whole body into a state of rigescence, with loss of sense: _Ita ut illum præ oneris impotentia in alteram lecti partem excutere cogeretur uxor, ut evacuatio spermatis lenta flaccidoque veretro demum succedebat, remittente corporis rigiditate_[44]. I know several cases which have some affinity to this. M. DE HALLER has specified a great many, in his remarks on the Institutes of BOERHAAVE[45]; and there are numbers to be seen in the works of other observers. It has precedently been remarked, that self-pollution would produce this dreadful disorder, and that happens oftener than is imagined: Can it then be surprizing, that the acts of it should recall the fits, as I have more than once seen it in persons subject to the epilepsy; or is it strange that they should render it incurable? This total rigescence or inflexibility of the body, of which M. BOERHAAVE makes mention, is one of the most uncommon symptoms; I never saw it above once, but then it was in the most consummate degree. The ill had begun by a stiffness of the neck and spine, and successively spread to all the limbs: this was the case of an unfortunate young man, whom I saw some time before his death. Uncapable of lying on the bed in any other posture but the supine one, and without power to move hand or foot, immoveable, in short, and reduced to receive no aliments but as they were put into his mouth; he languished a few weeks in this deplorable condition, and died, or rather went out like a taper, almost without any indication of pain. I have since seen another terrible example of this total and mortal rigescence, which will deserve a specification here.