Secondly, The weakness of the nervous system, which disposes to all the paralytic and spasmodic accidents, is produced, as I have before observed, by the convulsive motions which accompany the emission, and, in the second place, by the disorder of the digestions: when these are faulty, the nerves suffer by it, and suffer the more, for that the fluid with which they are imbibed, being the very ultimate elaboration of coction, and that which requires the greatest perfection of that elaboration; when, I say, that coction is faulty, it is of all the animal fluids that which is thereby the most sensibly affected, and upon which the crudity of the rest of the humors has the most influence. In short, what augments this weakness, is an evacuation of a humor that has great affinity to the animal spirits, and which, by reason of that affinity, cannot be evacuated without diminishing the strength of the nervous system, which I cannot help attributing to those spirits, notwithstanding the modest doubts of some great men, who dare not affirm any thing, in natural philosophy, the truth of which does not fall under the senses, and notwithstanding the objections of some subaltern or systematical physiologists. Besides: independently of the damage resulting from this evacuation, relatively to the quantity of the animal spirits, it hurts, by its depriving the vessels of that gentle stimulation produced by the absorbed seed, and which contributes so much to the coction of those spirits. It is pernicious, then, both by its drawing off a part of the animal spirits, or, at least, of a very pretious humor, and by diminishing the coction, without which those spirits can, at best, be only imperfectly and insufficiently prepared. There is between the diseases of the stomach to those of the nerves, and from those of the nerves again to those of the stomach, a vitious circle. The first beget the second, and these, once formed, contribute infinitely to augment them. If daily observation were not to prove it, the bare anatomical inspection of the stomach would carry sufficient conviction with it. The quantity of nerves distributed through it, is abundantly a demonstration how necessary they are to its functions, and how, consequently, those functions must be disordered when the nerves are not in good condition. Thirdly, Perspiration does not proceed kindly in that case. SANCTORIUS has even determined the quantity diminished by it; and this evacuation, the most considerable of all the others, cannot be suppressed without there resulting from it a croud of different symptoms. It is easily then conceivable that there can be no disorder which may not be produced by this triple cause. I will not enter into the explanation of all the particular symptoms; such a particularization would too much expand this little work, and could not interest the physicians to whom it would be superfluous. What M. DE GORTER has said upon it, is worth consulting[78].