-pox, but by means of contact with some infected surface--it may be
a lip in the act of kissing, a cup in drinking, a towel in washing, and
so forth. Of both these terrible diseases this is true. They therefore
rank, like leprosy, as amongst the most eminently preventable diseases.
Leprosy has in consequence been completely exterminated in England, but
though venereal disease--the name of the two contagions considered
together--diminishes, it is still abundant everywhere and in all classes
of society. Here regarding it only from the point of view of the girl
who is about to mate, I declare with all the force of which I am capable
that, many and daily as are the abominations for which posterity will
hold us up to execration, there is none more abominable in its immediate
and remote consequences, none less capable of apology than the daily
destruction of healthy and happy womanhood, whether in marriage or
outside it, by means of these diseases. At all times this is horrible,
and it is more especially horrible when the helpless victim is destroyed
with the blessing of the Church and the State, parents and friends;
everyone of whom should ever after go in sackcloth and ashes for being
privy to such a deed.

The present writer, for one, being a private individual, the servant of
the public, and responsible to no body smaller than the public, has long
declined and will continue to decline to join the hateful conspiracy of
silence, in virtue of which these daily horrors lie at the door of the
most honoured and respected individuals and professions in the
community. More especially at the doors of the Church and the medical
profession there lies the burden of shame that, as great organized
bodies having vast power, they should concern themselves, as they daily
do, with their own interests and honour, without realizing that where
things like these are permitted by their silence, their honour is
smirched beyond repair in whatever Eyes there be that regard.

I propose therefore to say in this chapter that which at the least
cannot but have the effect of saving at any rate a few girls somewhere
throughout the English-speaking world from one or other or both of these
diseases, and their consequences. Let those only who have ever saved a
single human being from either syphilis or gonorrh[oe]a dare to utter a
word against the plain speaking which may save one woman now.

The task may be much lightened by referring the reader to a pla