All measures for the purpose of artificially increasing sexual desire, such as alcoholic beverages (especially champagne), and certain drugs (especially cantharides), are even more harmful to women than they are to men. The woman who conceives while in a state of intoxication commits a great sin against the coming generation.[44] Just as harmful, however, are the anaphrodisiacs sometimes employed to diminish the intensity of sexual desire when this cannot be gratified. When affected with intense sexual excitement, a woman is much more unfavorably situated than a man, since man claims the right to indulge in sexual intercourse whenever he feels disposed, and has, moreover, ample opportunity for sexual gratification. A woman, however, properly endowed with self-respect, will understand how to bridle her senses. Bodily exercise, moderate, unstimulating diet, intellectual occupation with serious matters, the avoidance of equivocal literature and of sensual dramatic representations, cold bathing, and the use of a hard mattress and light bed-clothing—these means will coöperate powerfully toward the prevention of excessive sexual desire. _Horace_ already remarked: “Otia si tolles, periere Cupidinis arcus.” The wife should know how to bridle, not her own desires only, but also those of her husband. She must not demand too much during the intoxication of youthful vigor; she must prevent the complete combustion of the flames of masculine passion, and must keep sparks glowing in the ashes. Economy during the sexual prime preserves sexual power, enables a man to continue intercourse to a ripe age, and avoids premature exhaustion and satiety. When the husband is drawing near the end of his sixth decade, the wife must accustom herself to see in him rather the father of her children than her own husband, and must reduce her sexual demands to that measure which will not be injurious to his health. _Demosthenes_, writing of the sexual life of the Athenians of his time, said: “In order to obtain legitimate offspring and to provide a faithful guardian of our household, we marry a wife; for our service and for the performance of daily household duties, we keep concubines; for the joys of love, we seek the hetairai.” The task is extremely difficult, but a clever and virtuous modern wife must endeavor to combine in her single personality the sensual attractiveness of an Aspasia, the chastity of a Lucrece, and the intellectual greatness of a Cornelia; she must bear in mind the epigram of _Bacon_, “A wife must be a young man’s mistress, a middle-aged man’s companion, an old man’s nurse.”