of life should be adopted, whereby the whole body and particularly the parts affected are brought into a healthy state; the embrocations should be persevered in for long periods of time, but washing on the other hand sparingly employed, if we wish to remedy the lassitude and acrid habit of body. It will be of advantage moreover, _if there is nothing to prevent, to have recourse to cold bathing_, which has the property of expelling all diseases arising from flux, more especially if the water is endowed with a healing quality, such as the waters of Albulae, which also are of the greatest use in these cases when taken as a drink. They are of a slightly salt taste, and of a milky warmth to the touch. Further, it is suitable to employ at intervals lotions and poultices and plasters, such as will redden and soften the skin, and bring to the surface those matters that lie latent underneath. Again, _rest should frequently be taken lying on the side_, the leaves of calamint and rue and agnus castus being spread as a couch. A poultice employed in these cases is as follows. Pound a quantity of Venus-hair and rub it up with vinegar or parsley juice or that of endive or fleabane, add to it the cooked meat of snails, pack all together in a linen cloth and lay upon the hips. Also the wax plaster prescribed for priapism should be employed, and the remedies to be mentioned presently for discharges of semen during sleep. Lastly _all thinking about love ought to be avoided_.) [326] Similarly _Aretaeus_, Morb. chron. therap. bk. II. ch. 5., says: εἰ δὲ καὶ σώφρων ἔοι ἐπὶ τοῖσι ἀφροδισίοισι καὶ λούοιτο ψυχρῷ, ἐλπὶς ὡς ὤκιστα ἀνδρωθῆναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον, (And if he indulge with moderation in love and bathe in cold water, there is good hope that the man will rapidly recover manly vigour). This need surprise us the less, if we remember that the notion of a superfluitas seminis (superfluity of seed),—this was why Diogenes practised onanism, _Galen_, Vol. VIII. p. 419.,—was all the time in the background, and gonorrhœa according to Caelius Aurelianus and other authorities actually arose from too great self-continence. Si igitur Venerem exercere consueverit et crebriore uti concubitu, nunc autem continentius et purius innocentiusque degat, sine dubio a copia id sustinet cum partes illam ferre nequeunt. (If therefore a man is in the habit of practising love and indulging in fairly frequent cohabitation, well and good; but if on the contrary he live a too continent, pure and innocent life, without a doubt he endures this evil from the over-copiousness (of semen), as the parts cannot tolerate it.) This idea owed its origin partly to the confusion of gonorrhoea with nocturnal pollutions,—a confusion found even in the passage from Galen quoted a little above, and in especial was revived in the XVth. and XVIth. Centuries under the auspices of the monks and nuns. It at the same time gave occasion to the practice of resorting to copulation with a maiden as a cure for gonorrhœa.