Another mischief, to which this fourth cause subjects self-pollutors, is a sort of paralytical affection of the organs of generation, whence follow impotency, incapacity of erection, and the simple gonorrhœa; for, the relaxed parts suffer the true seminal liquid to come from them as fast as it arrives, and the humor separated by the prostates to keep continually oozing, and, in short, all the internal membrane of the urethra acquires a catarrhous disposition to furnish a gleet, much of the same nature as the _fluor albus_ in women: a catarrhous disposition, which, let me here somewhat digressively remark, is less rare and more general to the parts of the human body than is commonly imagined; not being confined to the membrane that invests the nostrils, the throat, the lungs, but which often attacks all the cavities of the intestines, where the disease is not discerned, because not suspected, and must, for want of that knowledge, be improperly prescribed for: nor would it be difficult to collect, from various medical observations, examples of this disorder having been mistaken for some other, and attempted to be cured accordingly. An able surgeon, once, mentioned to me a man, who, from a singularity of taste, used to indulge his debauchery with the lowest street-walkers, and being accustomed to satisfy his desires with them, in a standing posture, against some wall or bulk, fell into a wasting, accompanied with the most cruel pains of his loins, and with an atrophy or shrivelling of his thighs and legs, combined with a palsy in those parts, which seemed to be a consequence of the attitude in which he used to indulge his dirty amours. After having kept his bed about a month, he died in a condition equally fit to inspire compassion and terror. But does not this observation furnish also a fifth cause of the dangers particular to self-pollution? When one loses one’s strength by two means at once, the weakness must be considerably augmented. A person who is standing upright, or sitting, has need for the supporting himself in those postures, and especially in the first, of putting into action a great number of the muscular parts; and this action dissipates the animal spirits. Weak persons, who cannot keep, for an instant, in a standing posture, without feeling a weakness, and the sick, that cannot sit up without the like uneasiness, very evidently prove this. But in lying down, or in the being extended at full length, there is not required the same strain on the vital strength. Thence it is clear enough, that the same act, performed in the one or in the other attitude, will produce a much greater weakening in the first than in the last case. SANCTORIUS has not failed to point out the danger of this attitude: “_Usus coïtus stando, lædit, nam musculos et eorum utilem perspirationem diminuit._”