334 OP THE GENITAL FUNCTION IN MAN. 



I believe, however, that we are unacquainted with the pure 

 secretion of the testes, and that far the greatest portion of an 

 emission is secreted by the vesiculae seminales and prostate gland ; 

 and that therefore relaxed persons may, by forcing down, occasion 

 a discharge apparently identical with an emission, though not 

 containing a particle of matter furnished by the testes. The fact, 

 already mentioned, of emission occurring for a long period after 

 the removal of both testes, — till the removal had much deranged 

 the whole genital system, forcibly corroborates this idea. The dif- 

 ference discovered by Mr. Hunter between the fluid found in the 

 human vesiculae seminales after death and that of an emission, is 

 nothing more than might be expected if we were certain that 

 they were the same,* and as the matter squeezed out in sexual 

 debility exactly resembles that of a regular emission, this fact 

 is fatal to Mr. Hunter's opinion, in regard to man, unless we 

 relinquish the notion of the fluid of human emission being chiefly 

 true semen from the testes. In different species of brutes the 

 fluid of emission may be furnished in different proportions from 

 the testes, vesiculae, and prostate, and the effects of pressure and 

 seminal debility in them are unknown. 



(I) Accumulation of blood it is supposed may be produced in 

 three ways. 1. By a mechanical impediment to its return : but 

 there is no reason whatever to ascribe ordinary erection to 

 compression. 2. By an increased flow of blood to a part, so 

 that the vessels receive it faster than they convey it away. Here 

 the vessels of the part itself in which the accumulation exists, 

 are said by some to act more violently than usual ; by others, 

 the neighbouring larger vessels which supply these : their fre- 

 quency of action, however, is not increased, but always remains 

 correspondent with that of the heart. Were the vessels of the part 

 itself to act more violently than usual, that is to say, to contract 

 to a smaller and relax to a greater dimension than usual, (though 

 an ordinary alternate contraction and relaxation is hypothetical) 



* In tin* two men opened by Mr. Hunter s<x>n after death, the vesicular fluid 

 was actuallv much less bran than usual. 



