"A noble Venetian, aged twenty years, was married to a very handsome lady, with whom he cohabited with a good deal of vigour, but never could emit semen in the coition, whereas in his dreams he could discharge very freely. This misfortune very much afflicted him and his family; and as no remedy could be found at home, the Venetian ambassadors residing at the different courts of Europe were desired to consult some of the most eminent physicians in the cities where they resided, to account for the causes, and to find a cure for this extraordinary complaint of the difference of the states when in sleep and when actually in coition. "I was of opinion that it consisted altogether in the urethra being closely shut by the vigour of the erection in coition which found so great a resistance that the powers that throw the seed out of the _vesiculæ seminals_ could not overcome it; whereas, in dreams, the pressure on the urethra being much less, an evacuation was affected." The method of cure was not less successful than obvious from the foregoing account: for gentle evacuations and a slender diet brought about and fully completed their desires.[48] Cabanis is of opinion that debility of the stomach almost always produces a similar state in the organs of generation. "L'énergie ou la débilité de l'éstomac produit, presque toujours, un état analogue dans ceux de la génération. J'ai soigné un jeune homme chez qui la paralysie accidentelle de ces derniers avait été produit par certains vices de la digestion stomachique; et qui reprit la vigueur de son âge, aussitôt qu'il eût récouvré la puissance de digérer."[49]