wn by the fact that it seldom or never happens that any
attempt is made to utilize it, while not only are there a number of
existing punishable offences which form the subject of attempts at
blackmail, but blackmail can still be demanded even in regard to
disreputable actions that are not legally punishable at all. Moreover, the
attempt to levy blackmail is itself an offence always sternly dealt with
in the courts.

It is possible to trace the beginning of a recognition that the
transmission of a venereal disease is a matter of which legal cognizance
may be taken in the English law courts. It is now well settled that the
infection of a wife by her husband may be held to constitute the legal
cruelty which, according to the present law, must be proved, in addition
to adultery, before a wife can obtain divorce from her husband. In 1777
Restif de la Bretonne proposed in his _Gynographes_ that the communication
of a venereal disease should itself be an adequate ground for divorce;
this, however, is not at present generally accepted.[251]

It is sometimes said that it is very well to make the individual legally
responsible for the venereal disease he communicates, but that the
difficulties of bringing that responsibility home would still remain. And
those who admit these difficulties frequently reply that at the worst we
should have in our hands a means of educating responsibility; the man who
deliberately ran the risk of transmitting such infection would be made to
feel that he was no longer fairly within his legal rights but had done a
bad action. We are thus led on finally to what is now becoming generally
recognized as the chief and central method of combating venereal disease,
if we are to accept the principle of individual responsibility as ruling
in this sphere of life. Organized sanitary and medical precautions, and
proper legal protection for those who have been injured, are inoperative
without the educative influence of elementary hygienic instruction placed
in the possession of every young man and woman. In a sphere that is
necessarily so intimate medical organization and legal resort can never be
all-sufficing; knowledge is needed at every step in every individual to
guide and even to awaken that sense of personal moral responsibility which
must here always rule. Wherever the importance of these questions is
becoming acutely realized--and notably at the Congresses of the German
Society for Combating Venereal Disea