IMPOTENCE, or the incapacity of sexual intercourse, and STERILITY, or the inability of procreation, are subjects which frequently become questions in the Ecclesiastical Courts, as relating to the performance and dissolution of the marriage contract; and as medical evidence is generally required upon such occasions, the subjects necessarily present themselves for discussion in the present work. IMPOTENCE may exist either in the male or female. STERILITY is confined to the female, for if the male be proved capable of accomplishing the act of coition, no farther question can arise as to his virility. Impotence may be _Absolute_ or _Relative_, that is to say, the parties may be incapable of cohabiting with each other, and yet they may each accomplish the venereal congress, and enjoy a fruitful intercourse with others; it may also be _functional_ or _organic_, and depend either upon _physical_ or _moral_ causes; and hence in some cases it may be _temporary_, in others _permanent_, and upon this point the evidence of the medical practitioner will be always very essential. It is therefore important that we should proceed to investigate the subject in its various relations to those different causes. 1. _Organic Causes of Impotence._ IN MALES. There was a period in the history of physiology, when the testicles were not considered essential to virility. Aristotle was led to such a conclusion from having observed that a bull was capable of impregnating the female after castration; a fact which depended upon the quantity of semen, retained in the _vesiculæ seminales_, conferring fertility upon a _coitus_ which took place immediately after the operation. The true theory of the functions of the testicles having been thus abandoned, it was necessary to substitute some other explanation of their use, and the Naturalist of Stagira has accordingly asserted, that they merely serve as weights to hinder the spermatic vessels from being folded up; an hypothesis which, absurd as it is, has found advocates in the later schools; and in its support we shall find many experiments and cases related by _Marchetti_ of Padua.[287] _Sabbatier_[288] observes, that subjects have been found who have only possessed one testicle, and what is more extraordinary, that there are others who although entirely destitute of these organs, have exhibited the other parts of generation in their natural state; in proof of which _Cabrolio_ mentions the case of a soldier addicted to sexual pleasures, in whose body no testicles were found, although the _vesiculæ seminales_ were distended with semen. _Scurigio_[289] and _Lieutaud_[290] refer to the same case; upon which _Portal_[291] very justly observes, that the soldier was doubtless furnished with testicles, but which, from their unnatural situation, probably escaped the notice of _Cabrolio_. The extraordinary situations in which the testicles may be found are fully detailed by