Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/249

 PUBERAL HYGIENE 235

practices. The first case was already incurable, and the second was a criminal insane person with whom the resistance of the vice was more tenacious and did not yield until after thirty-six days of hip-baths, which he took very willingly, though in the winter season, and he prolonged them beyond the fixed time.

By means of cold thus daily many times applied we can efficaciously check the precocious venereal impulses. Common hygiene recommends the washing of the genito-anal region on the ground of cleanliness. It is a counsel of sexual hygiene that the washings in the puberal age should be cold and daily repeated as many times as one obeys the natural wants.

From such a habit followed for many years by the women I found absolute immunity from leucorrhea, and a virginity of the senses up to a very ripe youth.

The benefit of cool applications against sexual impulses was already known by the ancients. Galenus in his book De sanitate tuenda notes how a pedagogue of the athletes had applied to the loins of one of them lead plates "ut nocturnis veneris imaginibus careret," and adds that with the same remedy he had healed a man of the same trouble. Plinius, too, in his Natural History mentions such virtue of the lead plates, which so applied are capable "frigidiore natura impetus veneris inhibere."

It is therefore logical that the youths from such cold applica- tions might succeed in securing the physical resistance and more suitable economical conditions to satisfy their reproductive instinct, with the advantage of a delayed, but powerful and lasting, virility. By this same means can the woman find a safeguard to keep untainted her modesty, even when the appe- tite of the sex is strongly felt.

When the impulses are more strong and unrestrained, as in individuals of vicious heredity, the cold hip-bath, sufficiently repeated, promises to check them better than all counsels or exhortation and mechanical means employed to hinder them. This method of temporarily checking venereal impulses by means