diseases should be
carried out with more regard for the feelings of the patients; there
should be special hospitals for each sex, with separate divisions, so
that patients can be treated without betraying their identity. The
fear of being recognized prevents many better-class women from
applying for treatment. The idea of being placed in the venereal
divisions of a hospital along with common prostitutes is unbearable to
them. For this reason I maintain that anonymous treatment should be
instituted at hospitals in all the chief localities. This humanitarian
work would benefit not only the patients, but society in general, by
diminishing the number of venereal infections. Treatment by private
practitioners is too costly for poor people and does not easily remain
anonymous. Therefore, the creation of hospitals for venereal disease
is very necessary in the public interest, and would benefit public
health much more than the regulation of prostitution.

The treatment of sexual perversions is also very important. These
disorders are either hereditary, or acquired by auto-suggestion or
evil example. By provoking suggestion and good habits in the opposite
direction, hypnotic suggestion is alone capable of acting directly
against the evil. Other remedies, such as distraction of the mind by
work or fatigue, by marriage, electricity, etc., have only an indirect
suggestive action. When a perversion has been acquired by
auto-suggestion or by habit, especially in the case of onanism,
hypnotic suggestion should always be employed. In compensatory
masturbation, where normal sexual appetite exists, and where it is
only the opportunity of satisfying it that is wanting, marriage or
normal sexual intercourse are sufficient to cure the bad habit.

We must not, however, too easily admit the existence of acquired
perversions. Apart from compensatory masturbation, which is not a
perversion, but only an outlet to a pent-up natural want, true
acquired perversions are rather rare, and as we have seen generally
auto-suggestive. Pederasts, sodomists, and others, whose perverse
habits are truly acquired, have usually taken to them for want of
something better, and prefer normal coitus if they have the
opportunity and the means of procuring it. It is true, however, that
some debauchees contract these perverse habits from desire for change,
or from fear of infection or conception, but these individuals seldom
consult the doctor.

Thus the individua