In 1762, on the credit of some advertisement, he sent for, from Frankfort, the medicines of the _Onania_, which did him no service. Last year, he took others from some foreign physician, but with as little success. His disorder had, from the beginning, made slow but daily advances, and many months before his death, he could no longer support himself on his legs, nor could he so much as move his hands or arms. The embarrassment of his tongue increased, and his voice failed him to such a degree, that there was no hearing easily what he said. The extensor muscles of the head let it continually fall on the breast. He had constantly an uneasiness in his back: his sleep and appetite successively diminished: the last months of his life he could hardly swallow any thing. Since Christmas an oppression came on him, with an irregular fever. His eyes grew dim in a singular manner. When I saw him again in the month of January, he used to pass the whole day, and a great part of the night, in an elbow-chair, leaning backward, his feet extended on a chair, his head falling down every instant on his breast, having always a person standing near him, and constantly employed in changing his attitude, lifting his head up to feed him, to give him snuff, to blow his nose; and to make out, by listening attentively, what he said. The last days of his life he was reduced to pronounce his words letter by letter, which were taken down in writing just as he could articulate them. Finding that I gave him no hopes, and that I only employed some lenitives for his oppression and fever, urged, at length, by a desire of living, he opened himself in, confidence to one of his friends, for his immediately acquainting me of it, as the cause to which he imputed all his illness, and which was his self-pollution, having begun that infamous practice many years ago, and continued it as long as he could; adding, that he had felt this disorder increase in proportion to his delivering himself up to it. This confession he confirmed to me some days afterward, and withal, that it was on this account that he had been determined to send for the medicines of the _Onania_. Excess of venery does not only produce the languors of chronical diseases, but sometimes throws into acute ones, and always aggravates any disorders that proceed from other causes; it easily produces malignancies, which, in my opinion, are but a failure of the forces of nature. HIPPOCRATES, in his histories of epidemical diseases, has, of old, left us his observation on a young man, who, after excesses of wine and venery, was seized with a fever, accompanied by the most vexatious and irregular symptoms, and which proved mortal[46].