Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/352



appetite, which was implanted in our natures for the purpose of propagating our species, when excessive, becomes a disease both of the body and mind. When restrained, it produces tremors, a flushing of the face, sighing, nocturnal pollutions, hysteria, hypochondriasis, and in women the furor uterinus. When indulged in an undue or a promiscuous intercourse with the female sex, or in onanism, it produces seminal weakness, impotence, dysury, tabes dorsalis, pulmonary consumption, dyspepsia, dimness of sight, vertigo, epilepsy, hypochondriasis, loss of memory, manalgia, fatuity and death. From a number of letters addressed to me, for advice, I shall select but three, in which many of those symptoms are mentioned, and deplored in the most pathetic terms. The first is from a physician in Massachusetts, dated September 4th, 1793.