For them there is but one method of cure, which is, to attack the principal disorder. The removal of the obstructions is the first thing to be done; after which the cold-bath should be used, and that salutary bark which God preserve to us. Then is truly the case of recourse to those two powerful remedies, with which martials may be allied. If an attention to the choice of aliments is necessary in all cases, it is particularly so in this. The Hypochondriacs, in general, perform their digestions very ill; the ill-digested aliments produce flatulent turgescences, which disturbing the circulation, dispose to pollutions in two ways; first, by obstructing the return of the blood in the veins of the genitals; secondly, by disturbing the tranquillity of sleep, and thereby consequently disposing to dreams. Thence sensibly appears the reason why PYTHAGORAS forbad his disciples the eating flatulent aliments, which he, wisely, considered as detrimental both to the clearness and strength of the intellectual functions, and to corporal chastity. Besides the two reasons which I have given, I might venture to point out a third, which I have strongly had room to suspect in two patients; and that is, the expansion of the air, disengaged from the fluids in the _corpus cavernosum_, which produced an erection, together with the venereal pruriency. It is now well known that all our liquids are impregnated with this fluid, but that so long as they are in perfect health, that fluid is, as it were, imprisoned, and deprived of all elasticity. Great Naturalists have been of opinion, that there were but two ways of restoring to it its elasticity; the one, a considerably greater degree of heat than is observed in the animal body; and the other, putrefaction. But a multitude of observations of disorders produced by the air so dilated, have proved, that, independently of these two causes, there were other alterations in the fluids, which would have the same effect, and these alterations appear the most frequent in Hypochondriacs: so that it is not wonderful that the cavernous parts should be the seat of the expansion of this diseased air: on the contrary, there is no part which appears more likely to be exposed to it; and if attention has not thereto been given before now, it is probably rather for want of observers than of observableness. Observations, however, clearly evince the necessity of avoiding those aliments which, abounding more than others in air, are the more hurtful, both by that which separates from them in the first passages, and by that which they convey into the blood. Who does not know that new beer, which is extremely flatulent, occasions violent erections? Since my last edition of this work, I have seen that M. THIERRY, one of the most learned Physicians, and of the most celebrated practitioners of France, has taken notice of these flatulent erections.