Book 1
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Passion is bad, as also sexual enjoyment; for the act itself bears the symptoms of the disease. Certain physicians have fallen into a mistake respecting coition; for seeing that the physical change to manhood produces a beneficial effect, they have done violence to the nature of children by unseasonable coition, as if thus to bring them sooner to manhood. Such persons are ignorant of the spontaneous law of nature by which all cures are accomplished; for along with every age she produces that which is proper for it in due seasons. At a given time there is the maturity of semen, of the beard, of hoary hairs; for on the one hand what physician could alter Nature’s original change in regard to the semen, and, on the other, the appointed time for each? But they also offend against the nature of the disease; for being previously injured by the unseasonableness of the act, they are not possessed of seasonable powers at the proper commencement of the age for coition.
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The patients ought to reside in hot and dry places, for the disease is of a cold and humid nature.
CHAPTER V. CURE OF MELANCHOLY.
