Note 326 — THIRD SECTION. Relation of the Physician to Diseases consequent upon the Use or Misuse of the Genital Organs.

Similarly Aretaeus, Morb. chron. therap. bk. II. ch. 5., says: εἰ δὲ καὶ σώφρων ἔοι ἐπὶ τοῖσι ἀφροδισίοισι καὶ λούοιτο ψυχρῷ, ἐλπὶς ὡς ὤκιστα ἀνδρωθῆναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον, (And if he indulge with moderation in love and bathe in cold water, there is good hope that the man will rapidly recover manly vigour). This need surprise us the less, if we remember that the notion of a superfluitas seminis (superfluity of seed),—this was why Diogenes practised onanism, Galen, Vol. VIII. p. 419.,—was all the time in the background, and gonorrhœa according to Caelius Aurelianus and other authorities actually arose from too great self-continence. Si igitur Venerem exercere consueverit et crebriore uti concubitu, nunc autem continentius et purius innocentiusque degat, sine dubio a copia id sustinet cum partes illam ferre nequeunt. (If therefore a man is in the habit of practising love and indulging in fairly frequent cohabitation, well and good; but if on the contrary he live a too continent, pure and innocent life, without a doubt he endures this evil from the over-copiousness (of semen), as the parts cannot tolerate it.) This idea owed its origin partly to the confusion of gonorrhoea with nocturnal pollutions,—a confusion found even in the passage from Galen quoted a little above, and in especial was revived in the XVth. and XVIth. Centuries under the auspices of the monks and nuns. It at the same time gave occasion to the practice of resorting to copulation with a maiden as a cure for gonorrhœa. At any rate it was an opinion already found in Hippocrates, that copulation was a desiccative measure which in diseases arising from the phlegmatic humour (Hippocrates, Epidem. bk. VI. Vol. III. p. 609., Galen, XVII. A. p. 284.) is of advantage to hot and moist constitutions (Galen, Vol. VI. p. 402.)