Note 313 — THIRD SECTION. Relation of the Physician to Diseases consequent upon the Use or Misuse of the Genital Organs.

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).