In HOFFMAN’s dissertation, which I have already often quoted, there are to be found two observations, that should recommend great circumspection as to the use of emetics. They are as follow: A man of fifty years of age, having, for a long time, indulged himself in excesses with women, fell into a state of languor, emaciation, and consumptiveness. His sight grew dim, so that at length objects appeared to him as if he saw them through a cloud. It was at this epoch that he took an emetic by way of preventing a fever, which he apprehended, after a long use of eating ham. This medicine made his head swell, and totally deprived him of his eye-sight. A common prostitute, who, every time that she had commerce with a man, felt a dimness in her eyes come upon her, having taken an emetic, lost her eye-sight intirely[94]. M. BOERHAAVE seems to have rather meant to establish the difficulties of the cure, than to point out the means of obtaining it. “There are (says he) little hopes of cure; the milk passes too easily; the exercise of riding does no good to this kind of patients; they complain that these remedies weaken them; and, in fact, exercise encreases the waste of their seed, in the course of their nocturnal pollutions by dreams, and at the same time diminishes their strength. When the day re-appears, they quit their beds, all bathed in their own sweat, and but the weaker for even their sleep; they cannot bear aromatics, of which the effects are also dangerous. The only resource, in these cases, is that of aliments, a moderate exercise of the body, bathing the feet, and frictions used with precaution[95].” Among the consultations of this great man, which M. DE HALLER has added to the edition which he has procured to us of them, there is one for a man, who had rendered himself totally impotent for the joys of love. “A man (as the case is stated) has so much weakened the organs of generation, that the seed comes away of itself, every time that he has any beginning of erection, for that is never a complete one[96], and the seed never spurts forth with any force, but dribbles away, drop by drop, which renders him impotent; his memory, stomach, loins, legs, are totally weakened.” M. BOERHAAVE answered: “These disorders are always extremely hard to cure: they hardly ever declare themselves, but when the body has lost so much of its vital forces, that the remedies remain without efficacy. However, it may not be amiss to try what the following ones will produce. “_First_, A dry and temperate regimen, composed of fowls, of beef, of mutton, of kid, all rather roasted than boiled, a small quantity of ale, but excellent in its kind, of a very little wine, but then that wine must be of a very generous restorative sort. “_Secondly_, A great deal of exercise, augmented, by due degrees; it should only border upon weariness, and always be taken fasting.