orded to venereal diseases. It was not always
so, as indeed the survival of the word 'venereal' itself in this
connection, with its reference to a goddess, alone suffices to show. Even
the name "syphilis" itself, taken from a romantic poem in which
Fracastorus sought a mythological origin for the disease, bears witness to
the same fact. The romantic attitude is indeed as much out of date as that
of hypocritical and shamefaced obscurantism. We need to face these
diseases in the same simple, direct, and courageous way which has already
been adopted successfully in the ease of smallpox, a disease which, of
old, men thought analogous to syphilis and which was indeed once almost as
terrible in its ravages.

At this point, however, we encounter those who say that it is unnecessary
to show any sort of recognition of venereal diseases, and immoral to do
anything that might seem to involve indulgence to those who suffer from
such diseases; they have got what they deserve and may well be left to
perish. Those who take this attitude place themselves so far outside the
pale of civilization--to say nothing of morality or religion--that they
might well be disregarded. The progress of the race, the development of
humanity, in fact and in feeling, has consisted in the elimination of an
attitude which it is an insult to primitive peoples to term savage. Yet
it is an attitude which should not be ignored for it still carries weight
with many who are too weak to withstand those who juggle with fine moral
phrases. I have even seen in a medical quarter the statement that venereal
disease cannot be put on the same level with other infectious diseases
because it is "the result of voluntary action." But all the diseases,
indeed all the accidents and misfortunes of suffering human beings, are
equally the involuntary results of voluntary actions. The man who is run
over in crossing the street, the family poisoned by unwholesome food, the
mother who catches the disease of the child she is nursing, all these
suffer as the involuntary result of the voluntary act of gratifying some
fundamental human instinct--the instinct of activity, the instinct of
nutrition, the instinct of affection. The instinct of sex is as
fundamental as any of these, and the involuntary evils which may follow
the voluntary act of gratifying it stand on exactly the same level. This
is the essential fact: a human being in following the human instincts
implanted within him has st