A treatise on the diseases produced by onanism / by Tissot ; translated from a new edition of the French, with notes and an appendix by a physician.

  • Tissot, S. A. D. (Samuel Auguste David), 1728-1797.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the diseases produced by onanism / by Tissot ; translated from a new edition of the French, with notes and an appendix by a physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    ESSAY ON THE DISEASES PRODUCED BY ONANISM. ARTICLE I. SYMPTOMS. SECTION I. DESCRIPTION OF THE DISEASE TAKEN FROM MEDICAL WORKS. Hippocrates, the oldest and most correct observer, has al- ready described the diseases produced by abusing the pleasures of venery, under the term, dorsal consumption. This disease, says he, arises from the dorsal portion of the spinal marroAV. It principally attacks ypung married people, or the licentious. They have no fever, and although they eat well, they grow thin and waste away. They have a sensation of ants crawling from the head down along the spine. Whenever they go to stool, or evacuate their urine, a considerable quantity of very thin seminal fluid escapes from the urethra. They lose the powers of procreation, yet often dream of venereal pleasures. They become very weak, and walking produces shortness of breath ; they have pains in the head and ringing in the ears ; finally an acute fever (Libiria) supervenes and they die. We shall mention this fever in another place. Some physicians have ascribed to the same cause, a disease which he has described, in another place, and have termed it> the second dorsal consumption of Hippocrates, and which has some relation to the first. But the preservation of the strength which he mentions particularly, seems to us a conclusive proof, that this disease does not depend on the same cause, but seems rather to be a rheumatic affection. These pleasures, says Celsus, in his excellent work on the preservation of health, are always injurious to weak persons, 2