The affection of the nervous system in onanists consists not only in an increased susceptibility, but is indicated also, by a number of symptoms, as pains sensations and spasms of every kind. Angelot has related the case of a young man affected with constant discharge of semen, who, among other phenomena, presented so great a degree of nervous irritation that he experienced a vibration over his whole body at the slightest noise. Some patients experience pains in the limbs as if they had been beaten; others are affected with intense headache and pains in the loins which reappear at each pollution: or wandering pains, which however are sometimes fixed, are felt in the course of the nerves and are similar to neuralgia. We shall see hereafter that painful affections of various kinds have been the more or less direct consequence of venereal excesses. Sensations of giddiness, of formication or crawling, &c., may also be perceived: some patients experience cramps which at first are felt only during the act of venery, but which afterwards reappear at other times. Spasms, contractions and generally the convulsive motions so often observed in onanists usually result from severe affections of the nervous centres, affections which we shall speak of directly. A very frequent symptom and one too which has never deceived me as to its nature, says Georget, are palpitations of the heart attended with difficulty in the respiration, slight suffocating feelings, &c. He remarks also that fainting and partial or general trembling appears on the slightest contradiction and often without any known cause in onanists. These remarks are very true: palpitations and stifling sensations continue sometimes for years after onanism has ceased, and fainting fits, trembling sensations, &c. show themselves during or immediately after the act of venery. The heart and the mind suffer as much as the body from excesses of masturbation. To be assured of this we have only to remember the power exercised by the genital organs in the physiological state, on the ideas and feelings. Generally the necessity which the onanist experiences for dissembling his tastes and for concealing a habit which is both ridiculous and vile, renders him taciturn: his eyes are turned from the gaze of those around: he loves solitude, avoids the world and is embarrassed, and almost as it were ashamed of himself. His manner might sometimes pass for timidity, we might almost say for innocence, but it is entirely changed, when being in company with professed onanists he no longer feels restraint. It is to this habit of dissimulation, this inquietude with which the onanist is constantly haunted, that Montegre attributes particularly the difference between self-pollution and coition: but this moral torment is far as we shall see from being the only one with which the onanist is affected.