Young people who emit, or force irritation, draw a greater quantity of seminal fluid towards the organs of generation than would naturally arrive there, the consequence is, they cease from growing, become thin, and fall at length into consumptions, and that because they lose by premature, and too often reiterated evacuations, the necessary substance for the growth and nutrition of every part of the body. Those whose bodies are thin without emaciation, or fleshy without being fat, are the most vigorous; as soon as the superabundant nutriment has begun to form fat, it is always at the expence of the seminal fluid, and other faculties of generation. When also, not only the growth of every part of the body is entirely completed, but the bones are grown solid, the cartilages begin to ossify, the membranes have received all the solidity possible, the fibres are become hard and rough, and at length every part of the body can no longer scarcely admit of nutriment, the fat considerably increases, and the quantity of seminal fluid diminishes, because the superfluous particles, stopped in every part of the body, and the fibres, having no longer any suppleness or elasticity, cannot return it into the reservoirs of generation. The seminal liquor not only becomes more abundant till a certain age, but it also becomes thicker, and contains a greater quantity of matter under the same bulk. A person, very observant in this point, assured me that the seminal fluid is as heavy again as the blood, and consequently specifically heavier than any other fluid of the body. When a man is in good health the evacuation of this fluid produces an appetite, and he soon feels the necessity of repairing, by a new nutriment, the loss of the old; from whence it may be concluded, that the most efficacious check to every kind of luxury is abstinence and fasting.