objections. Few may avail themselves of the law, he
remarks, but all would be rendered more cautious by the fear of infringing
it; while the difficulties of tracing and proving infection are not
greater, he points out, than those of tracing and proving paternity in the
case of illegitimate children. Despres would punish with imprisonment for
not more than two years any person, knowing himself to be diseased, who
transmitted a venereal disease, and would merely fine those who
communicated the contagion by imprudence, not realizing that they were
diseased.[247] The question has more recently been discussed by Aurientis
in a Paris thesis. He states that the present French law as regards the
transmission of sexual diseases is not clearly established and is
difficult to act upon, but it is certainly just that those who have been
contaminated and injured in this way should easily be able to obtain
reparation. Although it is admitted in principle that the communication of
syphilis is an offence even under common law he is in agreement with those
who would treat it as a special offence, making a new and more practical
law.[248] Heavy damages are even at the present time obtained in the
French courts from men who have infected young women in sexual
intercourse, and also from the doctors as well as the mothers of
syphilitic infants who have infected the foster-mothers they were
entrusted to. Although the French Penal Code forbids in general the
disclosure of professional secrets, it is the duty of the medical
practitioner to warn the foster-mother in such a case of the danger she is
incurring, but without naming the disease; if he neglects to give this
warning he may be held liable.

In England, as well as in the United States, the law is more
unsatisfactory and more helpless, in relation to this class of offences,
than it is in France. The mischievous and barbarous notion, already dealt
with, according to which venereal disease is the result of illicit
intercourse and should be tolerated as a just visitation of God, seems
still to flourish in these countries with fatal persistency. In England
the communication of venereal disease by illicit intercourse is not an
actionable wrong if the act of intercourse has been voluntary, even
although there has been wilful and intentional concealment of the disease.
_Ex turpi causa non oritur actio_, it is sententiously said; for there is
much dormitative virtue in a Latin maxim. No legal off