e of
themselves, the husband's accomplices, will tell you of the
ironical gaze they sometimes encounter when they seek to lead a
wife astray concerning the causes of her ills. The day is
approaching of a revolt against the social lie which has made so
many victims, and you will be obliged to teach women what they
need to know in order to guard themselves against you." It is the
same in America. Reform in this field, Isidore Dyer declares,
must emblazon on its flag the motto, "Knowledge is Health," as
well of mind as of body, for women as well as for men. In a
discussion introduced by Denslow Lewis at the annual meeting of
the American Medical Association in 1901 on the limitation of
venereal diseases (_Medico-Legal Journal_, June and September,
1903), there was a fairly general agreement among all the
speakers that almost or quite the chief method of prevention lay
in education, the education of women as much as of men.
"Education lies at the bottom of the whole thing," declared one
speaker (Seneca Egbert, of Philadelphia), "and we will never gain
much headway until every young man, and every young woman, even
before she falls in love and becomes engaged, knows what these
diseases are, and what it will mean if she marries a man who has
contracted them." "Educate father and mother, and they will
educate their sons and daughters," exclaims Egbert Grandin, more
especially in regard to gonorrhoea (_Medical Record_, May 26,
1906); "I lay stress on the daughter because she becomes the
chief sufferer from inoculation, and it is her right to know that
she should protect herself against the gonorrhoeic as well as
against the alcoholic."

We must fully face the fact that it is the woman herself who must be
accounted responsible, as much as a man, for securing the right conditions
of a marriage she proposes to enter into. In practice, at the outset, that
responsibility may no doubt be in part delegated to parents or guardians.
It is unreasonable that any false delicacy should be felt about this
matter on either side. Questions of money and of income are discussed
before marriage, and as public opinion grows sounder none will question
the necessity of discussing the still more serious question of health,
alike that of the prospective bridegroom and of the bride. An incalculable
amount of disease and marital unhappiness would