"Non, le livre des Flagellans N'a jamais condamné, lisez le bien, mes pères, Ces rigidités salutaires Qui, pour ravir le Ciel, saintement violens, Exercent sur leurs corps, tant de Chrétiens austères; Il blâme seulement ces abus odieux D'étaler et d'offrir aux yeux Ce que leur doit toujours cacher la bienveillance, Et combat vivement la fausse piété, _Qui sous couleur d'eteindre en nous la volupté Par l'austérité méme, et par la pénitence Sait allumer le feu de la lubricité_.[178]" Flagellation, indeed, as well as the custom of wearing the hair-shirt, so common with the monks, and even with religious lay catholics, was, by the stimulus it imparted to the skin, and hence to the internal viscera, much more likely to increase the energy of the physiological functions, and _thus excite the commission of the very acts they are intended to suppress_. The Abbé Chuppe d'Auteroche, member of the Académie des Sciences, and who died in California a few days after the observation of the Transit of Venus in 1760, remarks that the stripes given to persons frequenting the vapour baths in Russia impart activity to the fluids and elasticity to the organs and gives additional stimulus to the venereal appetite.[179] M. Serrurier records the following curious case. "One of my schoolfellows, who found an indescribable pleasure in being flogged, purposely and wilfully neglected his duty in order to draw upon himself the correction, which never failed to produce an emission of semen. As may easily be imagined he soon began the practice of masturbation, in which he indulged to so frightful an extent that rapid consumption ensued, and he died, a most horrible and disgusting object, affording a melancholy example of that fatal vice."[180]