eatment of the question of physiological necessity. It
is freely quoted in this chapter. [Editor.]

CHAPTER IV

MEDICAL PHASES

_By Andrew C. Smith_

Some idea of the prevalence of venereal diseases in the United States may
be obtained from the following statistics of the census for 1910. The
registration area covered a population of 48,877,893 persons. The figures
are here extended to cover a population of 90,000,000 people: Deaths
ascribed to venereal disease, 5275; spinal cord diseases, 2598; paresis,
4845. Other diseases partly due to syphilis: softening of the brain, a
term indiscriminately used to cover a number of diseases including brain
syphilis and paresis, 2111; paralysis, usually meaning apoplexy, but
always including many cases of brain syphilis, 14,479; premature birth, by
some believed to be the result of syphilis in one half of all cases,
34,174; congenital debility, deaths due in many cases to feebleness of the
child resulting from syphilis, 25,285; blindness, one fourth the total
number of blind in this country estimated at 15,000 to 20,000. Many
estimate that over half of the entire male population have had gonorrhea.
The principal reason for this alarming distribution among all classes of
these infections and their steady increase is ignorance and
misunderstanding of physiological facts, particularly the viciously false
teaching of the street corner that sexual activity is a physiological
necessity.

These diseases would be arrested were there a widespread knowledge of
their disastrous effects. Although young men hear the mischievous lie that
"gonorrhea is no worse than a bad cold," thousands of them are punished
with sterility as a result of the disease. Nearly all the neglected cases
result in so-called ascending infections, reaching the bladder and kidneys
and causing many deaths, and many men carry the infection in dormant form,
to infect innocent wives in later years.

Appalling as are the consequences of gonorrheal infection in men, they are
not so fatal or so far-reaching as syphilis. The causative parasite of
this disease spares not a single tissue in the body and may disturb any or
all of its functions, not even mentality escaping. As a cause of death it
is extremely frequent. Our statistics ordinarily ascribe to syphilis but
a small percentage of the deaths actually due to it; for instance, many of
our cases of spinal disease, paralysis, arterial and other organic
diseases ar