Simon-Auguste-Andre-David Tissot (1728-1787)

  • He followed in the tradition of the Greek medicine when he wrote that the body is an energy system which needs constant care to maintain equilibrium.1

  • ‘Losing one ounce of sperm is more debilitating than losing forty ounces of blood’, in Treatise on the Diseases Produced by Onanism. His tenet was that debility, disease and death are the outcome of semen loss

  • Tissot describes as follows the effects of sexual excess:
    "The debility caused by these excesses derange the functions of all organs... Digestion, perspiration and evacuation do not take place in their usual healthy manner; ... and astonishing weakness in the back, debility of the genital organs, bloody urine, deranged appetite, headache and numerous other diseases ensue; in a word, nothing shortens life so much as the abuse of sexual pleasures... Excesses in the gratification of sexual desire not only cause the diseases of languor, but sometimes acute diseases; and they always produce irregularities in those affections which depend on other causes, and very readily render them malignant when the energies of nature are at fault."3

Footnotes:

1. Tissot Declares Masturbation Dangerous, http://www.gayhistory.com/rev2/events/1760.htm

2. Sumathipala, A., Siribaddana, S.H., Bhugra, D., (2004), Culture-bound syndromes: the story of dhat syndrome. British Journal of Psychiatry. 184: 200-209, table 2

3. Dr. Bernard. R.W., Science Discovers the Physiological Value of Continence. (1957) Health Research: Pomeroy