xuberantly energetic young women who are troubled by the
irritant activity of their healthy sexual emotions sometimes spend a large
part of their time in the vain attempt to lull their activity by long
walks. Physical exercise only proves efficacious in this respect when it
is carried to an extent which produces general exhaustion. Then indeed the
sexual activity is lulled; but so are all the mental and physical
activities. It is undoubtedly true that exercises and games of all sorts
for young people of both sexes have a sexually hygienic as well as a
generally hygienic influence which is undoubtedly beneficial. They are, on
all grounds, to be preferred to prolonged sedentary occupations. But it is
idle to suppose that games and exercises will suppress the sexual
impulses, for in so far as they favor health, they favor all the impulses
that are the result of health. The most that can be expected is that they
may tend to restrain the manifestations of sex by dispersing the energy
they generate.

There are many physical rules and precautions which are advocated, not
without reason, as tending to inhibit or diminish sexual activity. The
avoidance of heat and the cultivation of cold is one of the most important
of these. Hot climates, a close atmosphere, heavy bed-clothing, hot baths,
all tend powerfully to excite the sexual system, for that system is a
peripheral sensory organ, and whatever stimulates the skin generally,
stimulates the sexual system.[99] Cold, which contracts the skin, also
deadens the sexual feelings, a fact which the ascetics of old knew and
acted upon. The garments and the posture of the body are not without
influence. Constriction or pressure in the neighborhood of the sexual
region, even tight corsets, as well as internal pressure, as from a
distended bladder, are sources of sexual irritation. Sleeping on the back,
which congests the spinal centres, also acts in the same way, as has long
been known by those who attend to sexual hygiene; thus it is stated that
in the Franciscan order it is prohibited to lie on the back. Food and
drink are, further, powerful sexual stimulants. This is true even of the
simplest and most wholesome nourishment, but it is more especially true of
flesh meat, and, above all, of alcohol in its stronger forms such as
spirits, liqueurs, sparkling and heavy wines, and even many English beers.
This has always been clearly realized by those who cultivate asceticism,
and it is one of