340 PLAIN FACTS FOE OLD AND YOUNG 



"Patients will tell you that they cannot control their 

 dreams. This is not true. Those who have studied 

 the connection between thoughts during waking hours 

 and dreams during sleep, know that they are closely 

 connected. The character is the same sleeping or wak- 

 ing. It is not surprising that, if a man has allowed his 

 thoughts during the day to rest upon libidinous sub- 

 jects, he should find his mind at night full of lascivious 

 dreams; the one is a consequence of the other, and the 

 nocturnal pollution is a natural consequence, particu- 

 larly when diurnal indulgence has produced an irrita- 

 bility of the generative organs. A will which in our 

 waking hours we have not exercised in repressing sex- 

 ual desire, will not, when we fall asleep, preserve us 

 from carrying the sleeping echo of our waking thought 

 farther than we dared to do in the daytime." 



Bathing.— Frequent bathing is indispensable to 

 health under all circumstances; for patients of this 

 class, it is especially necessary. A general bath should 

 be taken every morning immediately upon rising. 

 General cold bathing is not beneficial to every person, 

 even in the morning, though some may tolerate it re- 

 markably well, being of exceptionally hardy constitu- 

 tions; but the advice to try ''cold bathing," often 

 given to sufferers from seminal weakness, is very per- 

 nicious; for most of them have been reduced so low in 

 vitality by their disease that they cannot endure such 

 violent treatment. 



Cool bathing is, however, to be recommended. The 

 temperature of the water employed should be fifteen 

 or twenty degrees below that of the body. The admin- 

 istration of water in the form of a hand or sponge 

 bath in the morning on arising is an excellent tonic- 

 The saline sponge bath, employing a tablespoonful of 



