The _first_ is, that if Eunuchs do not actually draw from this liquid those advantages which are produced by its being prepared and resorbed; on the other hand, they lose nothing of that precious part of the blood which is destined to become seed. It is true, they do not experience those changes which are owing to the preparation of the seed, and which have been above set forth; but then again, they cannot be exposed to the evils which proceed from a privation of this non-prepared humor. The seed, if I could have leave to employ terms of metaphysic, is either seed imperfect, and _in fieri_, or seed _in potentia_; which is that precious part of the humors separated by the testicles, and seed actually made, or _in actu_. If the first is not separated, the animal machine is deprived of the advantages it draws from the seed prepared, and does not undergo the changes which depend on it, but then it is not depauperated: it does not gain, indeed, neither does it lose; the body remains in a sort of state of puerility. When the seed is separated and evacuated, it is then a privation, a real impoverishment. The _second_ reason is, that the Eunuchs escape that kind of spasm or convulsion, to which I have imputed a great part of the evils which are the consequence of excesses in this way. The accidents which, on the like account, befall the women, are to be accounted for in the like manner with those of the men. The humor which they lose being less precious, less elaborate, than the seed of the man, the loss of it does not perhaps so quickly produce a weakness; but when they go to excesses, the nervous system being, in them, weaker, and naturally more disposed to spasm or convulsion, the fits are more violent. Sudden excesses will throw them into fits somewhat a-kin to those of the young man whom I mentioned at the end of the fourth section. I have also seen a melancholic instance of this kind. In 1746 a girl of the age of about twenty three years challenged, to the combat of venery, six Spanish dragoons, and bore their assaults for a whole night in a house at the gates of Montpellier. In the morning she was brought into the town, dying, and weltering in her own blood, which issued from the womb. It would have afforded matter of instruction, to have been satisfied whether that effusion of blood was the consequence of some hurt, or whether it depended on the dilatation of the vessels, by the augmentation of the action of the womb. SECTION VIII. _Causes of the dangers particular to self-pollution._