as done so much for the
campaign against consumption as the unloosing of tongues. There is only
one way to understand syphilis, and that is to give it impartial,
discriminating discussion as an issue which concerns the general
health. To color it up and hang it in a gallery of horrors, or to befog
it with verbal turnings and twistings, are equally serious mistakes. The
simple facts of syphilis can appeal to intelligent men and women as
worthy of their most serious attention, without either stunning or
disgusting them. It is in the unpretentious spirit of talking about a
spade as a spade, and not as "an agricultural implement for the
trituration of the soil," that we should take stock of the situation and
of the resources we can muster to meet it.

+The Confusion of the Problem of Syphilis with Other Issues.+--Two
points in our approach to the problem of syphilis are important at the
outset. The first of these is to separate our thought about syphilis
from that of the other two diseases, gonorrhea, or "clap," and
chancroids, or "soft sores," which are conventionally linked with it
under the label of "venereal diseases."[2] The second is to separate
the question of syphilis at least temporarily from our thought about
morals, from the problem of prostitution, from the question as to
whether continence is possible or desirable, whether a man should be
true to one woman, whether women should be the victims of a double
standard, and all the other complicated issues which we must in time
confront. Such a picking to pieces of the tangle is simply the method of
scientific thought, and in this case, at least, has the advantage of
making it possible to begin to do something, rather than saw the air
with vain discussion.

[2] The three so-called venereal diseases are syphilis, gonorrhea,
and chancroid or soft ulcer. Gonorrhea is the commonest of the
three, and is an exceedingly prevalent disease. In man its first
symptom is a discharge of pus from the canal through which the urine
passes. Its later stages may involve the bladder, the testicles, and
other important glands. It may also produce crippling forms of
rheumatism, and affect the heart. Gonorrhea may recur, become
latent, and persist for years, doing slow, insidious damage. It is
transmitted largely by sexual intercourse. Gonorrhea in women is
frequently a serious and even fatal disease. It usually renders
women incapable of havi