permatozoa being
infected with syphilis. However, this is fortunately not always the
case, for many cured syphilitics have healthy children. A child
affected with congenital syphilis (from the father) may infect the
mother during pregnancy; this is called "syphilis by conception."
Congenital syphilis may also cause locomotor ataxy and general
paralysis.

It is difficult to enumerate all the infirmities which syphilis in the
parents may transmit to the children. Syphilis often renders marriage
sterile. It is more frequent in men than in women, because the number
of prostitutes is small compared with the number of men who go with
them; a single prostitute may contaminate a whole regiment. On their
part, the clients of prostitutes convey gonorrhea and syphilis to
their wives, thus spreading in society this abominable plague and all
the evils resulting from it.

=Soft Chancre.=--The third kind of venereal disease is the soft
chancre, thus called in distinction to hard chancre, which is the
primary sore of syphilis. Soft chancre is the least dangerous and the
least common of the three diseases. It consists of an ulcer which
remains localized to the genital organs (unless it is complicated with
syphilis, which is frequent). The ulcerated parts are destroyed, but
the sore heals generally without trouble.

Venereal diseases constitute one of the worst satellites of the sexual
appetite. If men were not so ignorant and careless, it would be on the
whole easy to avoid them and cause their gradual disappearance. One of
the most absurd and infamous organizations which can be imagined is
that of the State regulation of prostitution which, under the pretext
of hygiene, compels prostitutes to be registered by the police or to
live in brothels. They then undergo regular medical examination, the
object of which is to prevent those who are diseased from practicing
their trade, and compel them to be treated in hospital. We shall see
later on that this system absolutely fails in its object, for the
simple reason that the treatment of venereal diseases is by no means
the panacea which many people imagine.

The first attack of gonorrhea in man is very often spontaneously
cured, while unskillful treatment often aggravates it. The relapses of
this disease, on the other hand, especially in their chronic form,
often resist all kinds of treatment and sometimes become incurable.
The gonococci become hidden in the folds of the deep parts of the