ly greatly obscured by prejudice, authority, and the
indirect influence of the doctrines of religious morality. The same
applies to the question of alcohol. However, it is to medicine and its
accessory sciences that we owe the knowledge which now renders it
possible to judge of the sexual relations of man from the true and
healthy point of view of social and moral science.

We cannot describe here all the relations of medicine to sexual life.
Chapters I, II, III, IV and VIII are entirely based on its results and
on those of natural science. What we have still to consider relates
especially to sexual hygiene, for we have already treated of pathology
in Chapter VIII. I shall reserve the general and social part of
hygiene for the last chapter of the book, and shall confine myself
here to certain special points, and the criticism of current, but
erroneous, medical opinions on the sexual question.

=Prostitution. Sexual Hygiene. Sexual Connection Apart from
Marriage.=--All regulation and medical supervision of prostitution
should be rejected, not only from the moral point of view, but also
from that of hygiene, as a deplorable error, incapable even of
fulfilling its avowed object--protection against venereal disease.

Faith in the dogmas and authority of an existing institution has led
medical men to take a false view of the question. They demand from the
adversaries of regulation proof of a diminution in venereal disease
when regulation was not in force. This is both unjust and absurd. It
is for the supporters of regulation to prove that State regulation of
prostitution has led to any appreciable improvement of the social
evil. Then only can it be asked if the maintenance of such vexatious
measures is still justifiable. But medicine has not furnished the
proof demanded from it; on the contrary, its attempts in this
direction have entirely failed. After all, the system is kept up, not
because it diminishes venereal infection, but because it gives
satisfaction to the sexual appetite of men and their desire for
change. Society, however, has no right to organize such a monstrosity
as regulated prostitution and licensed proxenetism, for the special
pleasure of debauchees.

In virtue of the false dogma of regulation, many doctors, even at the
present day, recommend young men to visit brothels, for alleged
hygienic reasons. This deplorable custom perverts youth and gives it
false ideas. It is a remedy much worse and much more