Some idea may be gathered of its importance, from observing the effects which it operates on its first beginning to form itself: the voice, the aspect of the physiognomy, even the lineaments themselves of the face undergo an alteration: the beard appears, the whole body often takes another air, from the muscles acquiring a largeness and firmness that constitute a sensible difference between the body of an adult and, that of a young man who has not passed the season of pubescence. All these developements are stopped or hindered by the loss of the organ which serves for the separation of that liquid which produces them; very just observations having proved, that the amputation of the testicles, even in the age of virility, has occasioned the shedding of the beard, and the return of an infantine voice[3]. After that, can there be any doubt of the power of its action over the whole body? Does not it sensibly give reason for apprehending the multitude of evils which must arise from the waste or profusion of so pretious an humor? Its natural destination determines the only allowable means of its evacuation. Disorders will sometimes occasion its efflux. It may be involuntarily lost through the effect of lascivious dreams. The author of _Genesis_ has left us the history of the crime of ONAN, doubtless in order to transmit with it that of his punishment; and we learn from GALEN, that DIOGENES was guilty of the like pollution. If the dangerous consequences of the over-abundant loss of this humor depended only on the quantity, or were the same, quantity for quantity, with the other humors, it would not, in a physical light, be of much importance, in which of the above ways the evacuation was made. But the manner or form here is as essential a point, as the substance of the thing itself, if I may be indulged this expression, my subject authorising such licence of language. Too considerable a quantity of the seminal humor, lost in the natural way, brings on very grievous disorders, but which are much worse when the same quantity has been wasted out of the course of nature. Those disorders, which such as exhaust themselves in the natural commerce of the sexes, bring upon themselves, are dreadful; but those are much more so which are produced by self-pollution. It is these last that are properly the objects of this work; but the intimate connexion which they have with the first, hinders the separation of them in the description. It is then the description common to both, that shall form the _first Article_. This shall be followed by the explanation of the Causes, a _second Article_, in which I shall state those that render the consequences from self-pollution the most dangerous: The Means of Cure, and Remarks on some Diseases that have an affinity to that cause, shall conclude the Work. I will add throughout, the Observations of the best Authors to those which I have myself made. ARTICLE I. _The SYMPTOMS._ SECTION I.