elsewhere as "a means of preserving his purity." He does not mean, by the latter phrase, his moral purity; he does not say anything so depraved and hypocritical; he means his preservation from physical contamination. Lallemand shows that Rousseau's was an actual, not imaginary malady; that disease caused, or fostered, or instigated, in much or little, the moral aberration alluded to: that the symptoms were those of spermatorrhoea. In Mr. M'Dougall's able translation of Lallemand's work, the chapter relating to Rousseau is not introduced. M. Lallemand, in some passages of his work, supplies us with a glass, which almost throws a couleur de rose over self-abuse. He asserts (in page 235 of Mr. M'Dougall's translation, to which we refer as most current in this country,) that there are many, who, solely through their being more continent than virtuous, plume themselves on having never indulged in either natural intercourse or self-abuse, and who ascribe to strict views of morality and religion an exemplary course of life, which really only indicates a want of genital power. ticipate in his detestation of hypocrisy where there is hypocrisy; we acknowledge his clear-sightedness in piercing through the mists of selfillusion; we admit that all phenomena induced by spermatic plethora show genital power; but we think his opinions require to be qualified, and, by being expressed somewhat more guardedly, placed more out of the way of misinterpretation. It is left too open to the reader to doubt whether there be such virtues extant as those we have been in the habit of calling "temperance, soberness, and chastity." There are frequent instances in this country of a healthful frigidity of temperament, arising partly from nature, but chiefly from the moral restraint imposed upon the passions by a strictly religious and moral education, which it takes time and the sunshine of a true attachment to thaw; but which, thawed, gives place to a warmer and more lasting summer than succeeds to many a more lavish spring. In minds of much polish, the intermediate steps between the love of sentiment and the love of passion must be many. Fidelity and permanence of attachment are not to be expected from those whose passions have blazed forth too early, and too vividly and diffusely; who approach the altar of Hymen with impaired hearts, if not impaired constitutions, in a dissipated and dissolute frame of mind; who, having practised excess, do not easily, if at all, settle down into the tranquillity of domestic happiness. Vagrant desires have been excited, which, till those they have agitated take their everlasting rest in the bosom of their mother earth, will never know repose. There is the "hardening of all the feelings," of which Burns sings; "the madness of the heart," which Byron, in so many passages of his writings, develops rather than portrays. There are no deviations into error which are irretraceable; but we speak of what is common. We have taken upon ourselves to view the subject ethically as well as physically;

ever purposing to adhere to truth; to such adhesion to sacrifice everything.

Spermatorrhoea, of which hy pochondriasis and monomania are usual symptoms, does not always arise from self-abuse; it has other causes, which we shall specify hereafter. Unlike many other complaints, it never spontaneously cures itself. Till it be cured, none of its symptoms, physical, moral, or psychological, cease. There are few cases which, other means failing, are not curable by cauterization. There is thus one species of insanity associated with the reproductive organs which surgery can absolutely cure. The existence of spermatorrhoea is known by the presence of spermatozoa in the urine; by diurnal pollutions, which take place more or less passively; and by the size, number, and appearance of the spermatozoa which microscopical examination discovers in these secretions. Spermatozoa, as they exist in healthy spermatic secretion, have been made objects of microscopical examination almost from time immemorial; they were in old times called homunculi, and were considered to be little men and women in a tadpole state. We do not think M. Lallemand's opinions of their nature and functions much more feasible. He conjectures that they assist the orchial secretion on its way towards its procreative destination. We think that the peristaltic action of the intestines might almost as well be ascribed to the stir and bustle of the infusoria contained in the fluids we swallow. We accept of the differences in size, shape, number, and development of the spermatozoa found in healthy and in depraved orchial and nephritic secretions as, symptomatically speaking, conclusive; but are inclined to think that these differences are owing to alterations that have taken place in this fluid as being the element in which they are generated, and in which they can only be developed perfectly and numerously when it is in a natural and healthy state. We regard them simply as a species of infusoria, whose condition and appearance betray the poverty or richness of the soil of the territory they occupy, and the circumstances of their birth and breeding. When the orchial secretion has become, in an extreme degree, depraved and watery, the spermatozoa are few in number, imperfectly developed, more diaphanous, less easily detected; they are found scattered about here and there, like the gamy and highflavoured and half-starved sheep that wander over the wilder regions of Scotland, or like fish in rivers rendered untenantable by receiving the contents of common sewers or the refuse of dyehouses. These spermatozoa, then, are either homunculi; or infusoria, whose presence is incidental and of no physiological importance, or as accessories to the phenomena of conception. We are not disposed to adopt the media via of M. Lallemand. We think that it is the quality of the fluid that is essential, not the state of health of its inhabitants. It is a question

of probabilities. As, what they were once supposed to be, homunculi, no doubt an ingenious line of defence might be set up in their favour. As a question of no practical importance, and one which, if it were, it would not be very easy to settle, we might very well leave it open. Their pathological value, as indications of the state of the orchial secretion, is indisputable. M. Lallemand's discoveries constitute quite an era in this department of medicine and surgery.

Having fairly broken the ice, we deem it right to pursue this least agreeable, but most practically important portion of our subject, leisurely and systematically. It appears to us to have been treated amiss, because only physically, and not also psychologically, investigated. For instance, among the symptoms of spermatorrhoea as revealed by Rousseau, and by others of less eminence, but rivals to him in suffering, are two which are of a strictly psychological character,-the fear of hell, and the inability to meet others eye to eye,-both symptoms of either insanity or a bad conscience. Supposing the individuals to be sane, there is no concealing that they are indications of mental or moral distortion. Its physical phenomena have been nowhere treated so ably as in the work of M. Lallemand, which is not an ad captandum, but a truly scientific production; and one which, although we do not consider all the author's conclusions to be conclusive, is evidently written in perfect good faith. To say this is to say much of any work, especially of a work on such a subject. He has not only thrown much light upon it, but, more than this, is almost, if not quite, the discoverer of a hitherto unsuspected disease; and, better still, of an absolute cure for it in many, of the most appropriate remedial treatment of it in all, or in most cases. But the more merit a work has, the more necessary is it to point out any errors that may be detected in it. We shall return to the notice of these as occasion offers, adding only here our sense of the diligence, care, and patience which he has displayed in the course of his investigations, and his caution in what might be termed summing up evidence. With regard to all works upon specific diseases, which are rather addressed to the non-medical public than to the profession, suspicions of their object are apt to be entertained: they sometimes meet with the misfortune of being looked upon in the light of advertisements, especially when they treat of maladies with respect to which the imaginations of patients are peculiarly accessible. No one can by any possibility place under this category the work of M. Lallemand, or Mr. McDougall's translation of it. As before observed, we do not coincide in all his inferences, and wherein and why we do not shall be in the course of this paper explained; but the main fault which pervades his work is, what some will consider rather an excellence than a defect, its not being sufficiently psychological; or,

to speak more accurately, its not being sufficiently ethical. We have taken the liberty of speaking of temptations from within. Allied with these is one infirmity or vice of both childhood and adolescence, which, whether it be pronounced immorality or insanity, as the evidence of the case may be, tends to a termination in the latter. We shall exert our utmost energies to arrive at and promulgate as much as can be attained of the exact truth concerning it. Every public misrepresentation, however it may be put forth out of some sickly, and fantastical, and dwarfish notions of doing good, is a serious offence against the community at large. The influence of mind upon mind is capable of, and is liable to, much misuse. The power which a medical man wields over the reason and imagination of his patients requires to be employed with extreme circumspection; such power is sometimes exercised, when not dishonourably, indiscreetly. Medical men who put forth opinions ex cathedra, should mind well what they say; it has sometimes happened that, like Frankenstein, they have evoked into being a monster whom they would afterwards fain annihilate, and who causes them much annoyance and uneasiness, but of whom they cannot at option rid themselves. The word has gone forth; "a carriage and six horses could not fetch it back again;" and to the minds of the susceptible "words are things." Mischief may be soon effected, which it is found difficult or impossible to repair. If, on the one hand, truth should not always be told to patients, we think, on the other hand, that falsehoods should never be told them. In deliberately written medical compilations the more especially, there is no excuse whatever for one hair's breadth deviation from the line of honesty. We may err through want of knowledge, of evidence, or want of reasoning powers, or through a want of sufficient application and patient research; but honesty consists in saying what we know and think; in asserting nothing we do not know as if it were known; and in not professing fixed articles of belief on subjects upon which our mind is not made up; in stating our formed opinions, and the basis on which they are founded, candidly; in leaving still fairly open all that appears inconclusive. In M. Lallemand's work, unlike those of some who have followed in his wake, the cases are carefully drawn up; they display much shrewdness of observation; much industry of research; there are no rash inferences drawn; there may be some that are incorrect, there are none that are rash. We have in abundance compilations consisting half of common-place truisms, half of a tissue of dangerous plausibilities; containing nothing original that is not crude and unattached and unintelligible; nothing borrowed that is not copied distortedly and inaccurately; but M. Lallemand is a genuine discoverer in science, a pioneer through regions hitherto unexplored: and to discoverers in science, as

to creators in literature, may the higher honours which are their due be ever paid cheerfully. Science, like Genius, knows no country. For us, we shall acquit ourselves in the humble office we undertake quite to our own satisfaction if we can place the subject in true perspective before the view of the reader, upon the reduced scale which our limits necessarily prescribe to us. So far as relates to that department of pathology of which he treats, we shall gratefully accept of M. Lallemand's assistance and authority. We shall not, however, limit our remarks to physical symptoms exclusively. In order to make the subject more clear, we shall precede a close and particular synopsis of it by advancing certain general propositions.

Violations of physical laws meet with physical-of moral laws with moral-of psychological laws with psychological, retribution: such is the rule-if there be any rule which has no exceptions, it is this. Persons who pilfer are not liable to have whitlows form on their fingers as a penal consequence of pilfering. If a man sustains bodily injury from a tile blown down upon him from the roof of a house, the accident causes him no sensations of remorse. It causes a man neither bodily suffering nor any of the pangs incident to a guilty conscience to be beaten at chess. He may violate all three codes of law at once in one act, in which case he will be visited by all three with retribution, as would happen to him, if in the course of perpetrating a burglary in an unskilful manner he should get knocked on the head. But there is in none of these examples any confusion of relationship between causes and effects. In the case of the summarily punished housebreaker, who has displayed a want of skill in an unlawful avocation, there is experienced, in return for his violation of intellectual laws, a sense of vexation at his own clumsiness and consequent ill success; and in repayment of his violation of moral laws, he finds the moral sense of the rights of property entertained by others roused up against him to his personal injury, and has probably to undergo the reproaches of his own conscience as well as the dread of farther retribution to come. His errors (so to speak) being complex, his punishment is complex also. In the case of the solitary vice which we are about to bring into question, it is incumbent on us to discriminate between the phenomena observed, and to classify them accordingly, as being physically, morally, or psychologically retributive. The thief who is knocked down in the act of thieving; suffers more or less physically in proportion as the injury sustained is slight or serious. So in syphilis or gonorrhoea, physical suffering bears no proportion whatever to the degree of moral delinquency: it is a matter of temperament and constitution, and of the quality of the virus to which certain parts are subjected. Distinctions must then be made, as before observed, between such consequences of the malpractice in question as are phy