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 236 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

of cold is, in my opinion, of the utmost importance for the wel- fare of youth. Other applications of cold are not so powerful to the end, nor so harmless. In many seminaries and cloisters they seek to keep the surroundings cool, especially the dormito- ries, and provide light bed-cover so as to avoid arousing venereal impulses ; but this method, while far less efficacious, is not with- out danger. Because the heating power and the strength of resistance that issue from an active life, such as was that of German and Spartan youth, always in movement and in continual gymnastics in the open air, are widely different from those developed in young men or women vowed to ecclesiastical or monastic life, in whom sedentary habits and asceticism tend to inhibit rather than to sustain the natural warmth ; so that pro- longed exposure to cold acts only to diminish living strength and joins a new depressing influence to the other conditions unfavorable to a vigorous life.

These inconveniences are not to be found in the local applica- tions of cold by means of cold washings and cold immersions suitable to every social condition and both sexes.

The action is exerted upon a limited region of the body, upon the organs of which one wishes to restrain the functional activeness, without stopping their growth and the influence that their development exerts upon the whole organism. At least general health could not be impaired ; on the contrary, the absence of immoderate excitations to the central nervous system from the genitals, as well as that of venereal satisfaction, ought certainly to exercise the most favorable influence upon the gradual and full development of physical as well as of moral strength.

It should therefore be, in my opinion, a first rule of hygiene to render so familiar the daily morning cool washing of the pelvis as that of the hands and of the face. Every boarding- school or house for young people of either sex, with educational or other intent, ought to have water-closets so disposed as to allow its inhabitants the opportunity of washing or bathing the parts in a current of cold water. The harmlessness of dressing one's self without wiping the wet parts is proved from Kneipp's