Essays In Pastoral Medicine Part 31

Castratio completa, morbo vel secus, impotentiae causa est, sed non necessario statim post castrationem. Gross (_A Practical Treatise on Impotence_, Philadelphiae. 1890) citat quattuor casus in quibus erectio permanebat, in uno homine usque ad decennium. Krugelstein (_Henke's Zeitschrift._ 1842. vol. I, p. 348) dicit virum quemdam post amissionem testiculorum uxorem foecundavit. Si casus revera contigerit, spermatazoa in vesciculis seminalibus permanserant.

14. Prostat.i.tis chronica causa est impotentiae et plerumque insanabilis est.

15. Nulla regula firma dari potest de impotentia physiologica senectutis in maribus. Viri s.e.xto et octogesimo anno non solum potentes inventi sunt sed etiam liberos generaverunt. Potentia generandi in maribus vulgo circa annum s.e.xagesimum-secundum cessat, exceptiones autem multae inveniuntur. Potentia coeundi permanere potest longe post annum s.e.xagesimum-secundum. Ecclesia igitur senes cujusc.u.mque aetatis ad matrimonium admitt.i.t; et confessarius nihil rogat de potentia nisi ab ipso sene interrogatur. Si confessarius sciat senem revera impotentem esse, non permittere debet matrimonium ejus.

16. Opinio videtur esse moralistarum ad habendam copulam carnalem necessariam esse non solum erectionem et {343} intromissionem sed ettam inseminationem plus minusve perfectam.

Laymann (_De Imped. Matr.,_ cap. 11) ait: "Impotentia perpetua ad copulam perfectam dirimit matrimonium subsequens." Et addit: "Dixi _perfectam,_ id est, quae fit c.u.m effusione veri seminis in vas muliebre." Mastrius (loco jam citato) tenet inseminationem esse necessariam.

Lehmkuhl (_Theol. Mor._) in definitione impotentiae absolutae dicit talem esse impotentiam quae "aliquem ad quamlibet copulam consummatam inhabilem reddit." Hic ut.i.tur vocibtis, _copula consummata,_ in qua Ballerini requirit inseminationem quasi perfectam (_op, cit._, vol. 6, p. 178), et Sanchez (_De Matr.,_ lib. 2, disp. 21, n. 5) inseminationem imperfectam. Petrus de Ledesma quoque (apud Eschbach.

_Disputationes Physico-Theologiae._ Disp. 200) de senibus loquens ait: "Si enim senes ita senio confecti et exhausti, quod nullo modo semine valeant, quamvis possint erigere membrum et penetrare vas, non possunt contrahere, et si contrahunt, matrimonium est invalidum."

Qui steriles sunt ita sunt ex tribus causis: (1) Aspermia, seu absentia absoluta seminis; (2) Azoospermia, seu absentia spermatozoon in semine; (3) Oligospermia, seu carentia alicujus partis seminis.

Aspermia vulgo efficitur occlusione urethrae vel obliteratione partis ejusdem. Defectus isti congeniti esse possunt vel ex morbo aut vulnere. Tumores tractus generativi claudere possunt aditum inter testiculos meatumque urinarium et ita aspermia efficitur. Spadones, etiamsi raro potentiam habeant intromissionis, aspermia afflictantur quoad partem seminis ex testiculis provenientem (in qua spermatozoa sunt), sed humor ex parte anteriori tractus generativi adesse aliquo modo potest.

Azoospermia fere eodem modo oritur, obstructio autem vel destructio prope testiculos est, et ita secretio aliarum partium tractus generativi exire potest, sed sine spermatozois.

In Oligospermia spermatozoa adesse possunt, sed quia aliud elementum seminis deest spermatozoa inertia sunt.

Casus inveniuntur in quibus propter malformationem s.e.m.e.n perfectum in vesicam urinariam ejactatur.

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Omnes istae conditiones insanabiles esse possunt, raro sanari possunt.

Estne vir aspermatosus, seu carens semine, impotens?

(1). Affirmant multi moralistae qui inseminationem requirant talem impotentem.

(2). Ejectio seminis confectio est actus s.e.xualis viro, et alia in actu ejectioni mere conduc.u.n.t.

In Azoospermia copula carnalis qua copula eadem est ac in coitu normali: microscopium solum aut sterilitas absentiam spermatozoon detegunt. In Oligospermia coitus quoque normalis esse paret.

Opinor virum aspermatosum impotentem sub lege esse quia nequit copulam s.e.xualem perficere; e contra, virum oligo-spermatosum aut azoospermatosum steriles tantum esse.

Impotentia igitur definiri potest, in viro: Impotens est quum (1) vel absolute et perpetua, vel relative et perpetua, incapax sit intromissionis et quasi inseminationis; aut (2) quum spado sit, et ita sub decreto Sixti V veniat.

Impotentia in muliere definiri potest: quum nullam v.a.g.i.n.am vel v.a.g.i.n.am perpetuo impenetrabilem habeat; vel c.u.m pathologice recuset marem.

Impotentia coeundi potest esse (1) aut antecedens aut consequens; prout matrimonii contractum anteit aut illi supervenit; (2) perpetua seu insanabilis, aut temporanea; (3) absoluta aut relativa, in quantum "aliquem ad quemlibet copulam consummatam inhabilem reddit, aut tantummodo usum matrimonii inter duas certas personas impossibilem facit" (Lehmkuhl).

Ut impotentia tanquam impedimentum matrimonii dirimens habeatur, debet esse: (1) impotentia coeundi; (2) insanabilis; (3) antecedens; (4) aut absoluta aut relativa.

AUGUSTINUS oMALLEY.

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APPENDIX

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APPENDIX

b.l.o.o.d.y SWEAT

The b.l.o.o.d.y sweat of our Lord mentioned in Saint Luke's Gospel (xxii., 44), has given rise to not a little discussion. The Greek text is: [Greek text]. The Vulgate has this text thus: "Et factus est sudor ejus sicut guttae sanguinis decurrentis in terram." The Douay version is: "And his sweat became as drops of blood trickling down upon the ground." The King James translation has it: "And his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." The Greek text and the Vulgate and Douay versions are the same, but in the King James translation the words, "as it were great" differ somewhat from the statement in Greek.

The belief in the Catholic Church is that our Lord literally sweat blood through His unbroken skin, and this sweat is commonly deemed miraculous. Those that deny the sweat was really blood have no ground whatever for their a.s.sertion, because apart from all miracle b.l.o.o.d.y sweat can be a purely natural occurrence.

Dr. J. H. Pooley, in _The Popular Science Monthly_ (vol. 26, p. 357), has an article on this subject in which he reported 47 cases of b.l.o.o.d.y sweat through unbroken skin. He, however, is of the opinion that our Lord's sweat had no real blood in it. Whatever his reason may be for this a.s.sertion he carefully conceals it.

Hemorrhage through the unbroken skin is a rare occurrence; but, as has been said, Dr. Pooley found 47 cases reported, and there are probably many others. The discharge may be pure blood which coagulates in crusts, or it may be blood mixed with sweat; it may be present over the whole surface of the body or only in those parts where the {348} skin is thin and delicate. Commonly, b.l.o.o.d.y sweat is an oozing, but Hebra, is his _Diseases of the Skin,_ tells of a young man that he himself observed, from whose legs and hand blood ran, sometimes in minute jets one-twelfth of an inch in height. The skin was sound, and the b.l.o.o.d.y sweat was not caused by any emotion.

The flow may be intermittent, appearing at intervals from a few hours to months. Sometimes the discharge is connected with skin diseases, but often the skin is unaffected. Examples have been found at every age and in both s.e.xes, but this sweat is commoner in women. Du Gard reports an instance in a child only three months old, and Spolinus tells of such a sweat in a child twelve years of age.

b.l.o.o.d.y sweat may occur in malaria; it may be connected with neurasthenic conditions, and it has been caused frequently by overwhelming emotion, as terror and anguish.

De Thou tells of a French officer who was in command at Monte Maro in Piedmont in 1552, who sweated blood after he had been threatened with an ignominious execution if he did not surrender the town. The same writer mentions a young Florentine, put to death in Rome during the pontificate of Sixtus V, who sweated blood before execution.

The Society of Arts at Haarlem reported the case of a Danish sailor who sweated blood through terror in a storm. This man was observed carefully by a physician on the ship. The physician at first thought the man had been wounded by a fall, but after wiping away the blood he discovered that the oozing came through uninjured skin. When the storm had ceased the sailor at once regained a healthy condition.

In the _French Transactions medicales,_ for November, 1830, is narrated the case of a young woman who had turned from Protestantism to Catholicism, and after this conversion she grew hysterical because of persecution by her family. During the hysterical attacks she sweat blood from the surface of her cheeks and belly.

Before the Christian era b.l.o.o.d.y sweat was observed by Aristotle, Galen, Diodorus Siculus, and Lucan also mention such occurrences.

The stigmata of some saints are authenticated cases of bleeding through the sound skin of the hands, feet, and side during extraordinary sympathy with our Lord in His Pa.s.sion, and deep mental concentration upon that Pa.s.sion,--the stigmata of Saint Francis of a.s.sisi, for example. Such bleeding is regarded in the Church as miraculous. Apart from any question of faith, there is no reason why they may not be {349} miraculous, especially if the supernatural quality is supported by other facts; but, again, such stigmata can be natural. To prove, in general, that stigmata are miraculous requires commonly heroic sanct.i.ty as a background, and even then in all cases the proof is not necessarily absolute.

Focachon, a chemist at Charmes, applied postage stamps to the left shoulder of a hypnotised subject, and kept them in place with ordinary sticking plaster and a bandage. He suggested to the patient that he had applied a blister. The subject was watched, and after twenty-four hours the bandage, which had been untouched, was removed. The skin under the postage stamps was thickened, necrotic, of a yellowish-white colour, puffy with the serum of the blood and leucocytes, and surrounded by an intensely red zone of inflammation. Several physicians, including Beaunis, confirmed this observation; and Beaunis made photographs of the blister, which he showed to the Society of Physiological Psychology, June 29, 1885. (_Animal Magnetism._ Binet and Fere. New York, 1889.)

In Ricard's _Journal de magnetisme animal,_ 2d year, 1840, pp. 18, 151, is a similar case. Prejalmini, in November, 1840, raised a blister on the healthy skin of a somnambulist by a piece of ordinary writing paper on which he had written a prescription for a blister.

At the meeting of the _Societe de biologie,_ on July 11, 1885, Bourru and Burot, professors of the Rochefort school, published records of epistaxis and of b.l.o.o.d.y sweat, produced by suggestion on a male hysteric. On one occasion, after the patient had been hypnotised, his name was traced with the end of a blunt probe on both the patient's forearms. There was, of course, no mark of any kind left on the arms.

Then the patient was told: "This afternoon, at four o'clock, you will go to sleep, and blood will then issue from your arms on the lines which I have now traced." The man was paralytic and anaesthetic on the left side. He fell asleep at four o'clock, and while he was asleep the name appeared on the sound left arm, raised in a red wheal, and there were minute drops of complete blood (serum and corpuscles) in several places. There was no change on the paralysed right forearm. Later the patient himself commanded the arm to bleed and it did so. This second occurrence was observed by Mabille. (Binet and Fere. Op. cit., p.

199.) Charcot and his pupils at the Salpetriere have often produced by suggestion alone the effects of burns upon the skin of hypnotised patients. The blisters in these cases did not appear at once {350} but after some hours had elapsed. The blisters, of course, contained blood.

The weekly bleeding, through the unbroken skin, of the hands and feet of Louise Lateau is an example of stigmata in our own day, which may have been supernatural or natural. Physicians would call it natural, an effect of autohypnosis, but there is no reason why it may not have been just as miraculous as the stigmata of the saints. Professor Lefevre of the University of Louvain, a physician, said her stigmata were miraculous. Theodore Schwann, the discoverer of the cell doctrine, deemed her condition natural.

In the Letters of the Rt. Rev. Casper Borgess, Bishop of Detroit, Michigan, is an account of a visit to Louise Lateau made in July, 1877. He says, "I first seated myself on the only chair in the room, which I had placed at the right side, near the head of the bed.

Louise's two hands rested on several thicknesses of folded linen, spread over the bed-cover, and were covered with a folded linen cloth.

This I removed. The hands were both heavily covered with blood; in some places it had congealed, and looked very dark; but in the centre, between the fore and little fingers, on the upper part of the hand, the blood was quite fresh and flowed freely. Not knowing at the time that the wiping of the hands causes her intense pain, I proceeded to wipe off the hands, for a more perfect inspection of the wound on each hand. The wound, or stigma, on the right hand seemed more than one inch in length, about half an inch at its greatest width, and was of oval shape. Turning the hand, I saw a wound of the same form in the palm of the hand, and opposite the wound on the back of the same. The blood seemed to rise in bubbles, forming in rapid succession, flowing in a spread stream down to the wrist. Examining the wound itself, I was well convinced that the skin of the hand was not broken nor in any way injured; and there was no sign of a wound made by any material instrument, sharp or dull. And, withal, the blood oozing out of the wound appeared a reality, and complete in form."

The bishop evidently uses the term "wound" in a figurative sense, because he draws attention to the fact that the skin was intact, continuous. She bled from the dorsal and palmar surfaces of the hands in areas shaped like the wounds represented by painters on the hands of our Lord. While the bishop was examining her hands Louise went into an ecstatic condition.

If the Church defines that a b.l.o.o.d.y sweat or the stigmata of a saint are supernatural, that definition, of course, ends the matter for Catholics as far as the particular case is concerned; {351} but until such a decision has been made these conditions are all to be regarded as effects of natural causes working in a natural manner.