may seem to the superficial observer to
be merely a medical and sanitary question outside the psychologist's
sphere, is yet seen on closer view to be intimately related even to the
most spiritual conception of the sexual relationships. Not only are
venereal diseases the foes to the finer development of the race, but we
cannot attain to any wholesome and beautiful vision of the relationships
of sex so long as such relationships are liable at every moment to be
corrupted and undermined at their source. We cannot yet precisely measure
the interval which must elapse before, so far as Europe at least is
concerned, syphilis and gonorrhoea are sent to that limbo of monstrous old
dead diseases to which plague and leprosy have gone and smallpox is
already drawing near. But society is beginning to realize that into this
field also must be brought the weapons of light and air, the sword and the
breastplate with which all diseases can alone be attacked. As we have
seen, there are four methods by which in the more enlightened countries
venereal disease is now beginning to be combated.[255] (1) By proclaiming
openly that the venereal diseases are diseases like any other disease,
although more subtle and terrible than most, which may attack anyone from
the unborn baby to its grandmother, and that they are not, more than other
diseases, the shameful penalties of sin, from which relief is only to be
sought, if at all, by stealth, but human calamities; (2) by adopting
methods of securing official information concerning the extent,
distribution, and variation of venereal disease, through the already
recognized plan of notification and otherwise, and by providing such
facilities for treatment, especially for free treatment, as may be found
necessary; (3) by training the individual sense of moral responsibility,
so that every member of the community may realize that to inflict a
serious disease on another person, even only as a result of reckless
negligence, is a more serious offence than if he or she had used the knife
or the gun or poison as the method of attack, and that it is necessary to
introduce special legal provision in every country to assist the recovery
of damages for such injuries and to inflict penalties by loss of liberty
or otherwise; (4) by the spread of hygienic knowledge, so that all
adolescents, youths and girls alike, may be furnished at the outset of
adult life with an equipment of information which will assist them to
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