In his dealings with such cases the physician needs a special sagacity. He must realize the great satisfaction it gives his aged patients to have him listen patiently and sympathetically to all their ills and should encourage them to trust him fully and with no reservations. This not only shields others but by humoring the wise doctor can not only gain full confidence but may be able to bring such patients to see their own selfishness and thus effect a real cure even in their physical condition. I have known cases where such ministrations were a benediction to the family. Where old patients have thus built up a system of half-fancied ailments, placeboes may work wonders, the therapy being in fact chiefly mental. Such insidious dangers to which the aged are exposed cannot be reached by medicaments but rather by pithiatism in the sense of Babinski or persuasion in the sense of Dubois, Merchenowsky, Rosenbach, or Herbert Hall, who heal by prescribing activities, physical and mental, found possible after painstaking analysis. The old often feel a falsetto invalidism that may be cured by a vigorous appeal to their moral sense or, again by changes in their daily program or regimen or by exposing them to fresh streams of rich outer impressions that correct the mental stagnation to which they are prone or keep their attention from themselves by giving their minds a larger field and a far-off focus, as against their inveterate tendency to mental short-sightedness. In youth erotic fetishes and pet, instinctive aversions are now known to play an important if half-unconscious rôle in love between the sexes. Eyes, hair, lips, cheek, neck, or any of her little ways of movement or speech may become a focus of special charm to the young amorist. Conversely, other or even the same features, traits, automatisms, or habits may mediate no less unconscious dislike.[196] Some of the same rapports or repulsions exist between the old and the young. The former may even have their favorite children or grandchildren and dislike others in ways they themselves could only inadequately justify. This partiality is most pronounced between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons. It is the chief factor not only in what is called love at first sight but of first impressions of strangers, which are proverbially so hard to efface. Thus what we deem trifles may loom large.