the powerful reasons why alcohol should not be given in
early youth. As St. Jerome wrote, when telling Eustochium that she must
avoid wine like poison, "wine and youth are the two fires of lust. Why
add oil to the flame?"[100] Idleness, again, especially when combined with
rich living, promotes sexual activity, as Burton sets forth at length in
his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, and constant occupation, on the other hand,
concentrates the wandering activities.

Mental exercise, like physical exercise, has sometimes been advocated as a
method of calming sexual excitement, but it seems to be equally equivocal
in its action. If it is profoundly interesting and exciting it may stir up
rather than lull the sexual emotions. If it arouses little interest it is
unable to exert any kind of influence. This is true even of mathematical
occupations which have been advocated by various authorities, including
Broussais, as aids to sexual hygiene.[101] "I have tried mechanical mental
work," a lady writes, "such as solving arithmetical or algebraic problems,
but it does no good; in fact it seems only to increase the excitement." "I
studied and especially turned my attention to mathematics," a clergyman
writes, "with a view to check my sexual tendencies. To a certain extent I
was successful. But at the approach of an old friend, a voice or a touch,
these tendencies came back again with renewed strength. I found
mathematics, however, the best thing on the whole to take off my attention
from women, better than religious exercises which I tried when younger
(twenty-two to thirty)." At the best, however, such devices are of merely
temporary efficacy.

It is easier to avoid arousing the sexual impulses than to impose silence
on them by hygienic measures when once they are aroused. It is,
therefore, in childhood and youth that all these measures may be most
reasonably observed in order to avoid any premature sexual excitement. In
one group of stolidly normal children influences that might be expected to
act sexually pass away unperceived. At the other extreme, another group of
children are so neurotically and precociously sensitive that no
precautions will preserve them from such influences. But between these
groups there is another, probably much the largest, who resist slight
sexual suggestions but may succumb to stronger or longer influences, and
on these the cares of sexual hygiene may profitably be bestowed.[102]

After puberty, when the spo