by Dr. W.E. Harwood, who describes the system he organized in
the mines of the Minnesota Iron Company (_Journal American Medical
Association_, December 22, 1906). The women in the brothels on the
company's estate were of the lowest class, and disease was very prevalent.
Careful examination of the women was established, and control of the men,
who, immediately on becoming diseased, were bound to declare by what woman
they had been infected. The woman was responsible for the medical bill of
the man she infected, and even for his board, if incapacitated, and the
women were compelled to maintain a fund for their own hospital expenses
when required. In this way venereal disease, though not entirely uprooted,
was very greatly diminished.

[239] A clear and comprehensive statement of the present position of the
question is given by Iwan Bloch, _Das Sexualleben Unserer Zeit_, Chs.
XIII-XV. How ineffectual the system of police regulation is, even in
Germany, where police interference is tolerated to so marked a degree, may
be illustrated by the case of Mannheim. Here the regulation of
prostitution is very severe and thorough, yet a careful inquiry in 1905
among the doctors of Mannheim (ninety-two of whom sent in detailed
returns) showed that of six hundred cases of venereal disease in men,
nearly half had been contracted from prostitutes. About half the remaining
cases (nearly a quarter of the whole) were due to waitresses and
bar-maids; then followed servant-girls (Lion and Loeb, in
_Sexualpaedagogik_, the Proceedings of the Third German Congress for
Combating Venereal Diseases, 1907, p. 295).

[240] A sixth less numerous class might be added of the young girls, often
no more than children, who have been practically raped by men who believe
that intercourse with a virgin is a cure for obstinate venereal disease.
In America this belief is frequently held by Italians, Chinese, negroes,
etc. W. Travis Gibb, Examining Physician of the New York Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, has examined over 900 raped children
(only a small proportion, he states, of the cases actually occurring), and
finds that thirteen per cent have venereal diseases. A fairly large
proportion of these cases, among girls from twelve to sixteen, are, he
states, willing victims. Dr. Flora Pollack, also, of the Johns Hopkins
Hospital Dispensary, estimates that in Baltimore alone from 800 to 1,000
children between the ages of one and fifteen are v