The Plague of Lust, Vol. 2 (of 2): Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical AntiquityRosenbaum, Julius
History
The Plague of Lust, Vol. 2 (of 2): Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical Antiquity
Rosenbaum, Julius
Sexually transmitted diseases -- History
[313] _Galen_, De sanitate tuenda Bk. VI. ch. 14. (VI. p. 443.),
Μοχθηροτάτη δὲ σώματός ἐστι καὶ ἡ τοίαδε· σπέρμα πολὺ καὶ δερμὸν ἔνιοι
γεννῶσιν, ἐπείγει γὰρ αὐτοὺς εἰς ἀπόκρισιν, οὗ μετὰ τὴν ἔκκρισιν
ἔκλυτοί τε γίγνονται τῷ στόματι τῆς κοιλίας, ... ἀσθενεῖς γίγνονται,
καὶ ξηροὶ καὶ λεπτοὶ, καὶ ὠχροὶ, καὶ κοιλοφθαλμιῶντες οἱ οὕτω
διακείμενοι· εἰ δὲ ἐκ τοῦ ταῦτα πάσχειν ἐπὶ ταῖς συνουσίαις ἀπέχοιντο
μίξεως ἀφροδισίων δύσφοροι μὲν τὴν κεφαλὴν, δύσφοροι δὲ καὶ τῷ στομάχῳ,
καὶ ἀσώδεις· οὐδὲν δὲ μέγα διὰ τῆς ἐγκρατείας ὠφελοῦνται· συμβαίνει
γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἐξονειρώττουσι παραπλησίας γίνεσθαι βλάβας, ἃς ἔπασχον ἐπὶ
ταῖς συνουσίαις· _ὡς δέ τις ἐξ αὐτῶν ἔφημοι, δακνώδους τε καὶ θερμοῦ
πάνυ τοῦ σπέρματος αἰσθάνεσθαι κατὰ τὴν ἀπόκρισιν, οὐ μόνον ἑαυτὸν,
ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας αἷς ἂν ὁμιλήσῃ_· (However the most troublesome
condition of body is the following: some patients produce copious
and hot semen, and this provokes them to ejaculation, then after its
ejaculation, they grow relaxed at the neck of the belly, ... and become
weak, and dried up, and thin, and pale, and hollow-eyed,—the patients
that find themselves so affected. And if after suffering in these
ways, they then indulge in the intercourse of sexual love, they are
afflicted in head and in stomach, and with nausea. Nor on the other
hand do they get any great benefit from continence; for they come, by
having pollutions in dreams, to undergo similar inconveniences to those
they incurred in sexual intercourse. And as one of them said to me, _he
experienced a biting and exceedingly hot sensation from the semen in
its ejaculation,—and not himself only, but also such women as he had
intercourse with_).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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