e peoples, both ancient and modern, has been all
too frequently recalled by writers whose pseudo-scientific
superficiality leads them to believe that knowledge concerning barbaric
and ultra-bestial sensuality will help solve modern sex problems. In
the classical days when Venus and Bacchus and other deities of
sensuality were worshipped by their devotees, there was sexual
vulgarity in action and language such as now exists only among the most
ignorant or depraved people in civilized lands. The advent of Christian
civilization in Europe left no place for temples and worship of
sensuality, but still the age-old tendency towards a crude and
barbaric kind of sexual vulgarity and obscenity has continued in
folklore, in colloquial language, and in literature. However, there has
been a vast change in the attitude of the best people within the last
two centuries. Once many English writers, many of them now deservedly
obscure, published prose and poetry that would now be criminal. An
unexpurgated edition of Shakespeare's "Complete Works," or of
Boccaccio's "Decameron," could not be circulated through the United
States mails, and there are many good people who are asking how long we
shall continue to allow the unexpurgated "Old Testament" the privilege
of circulation. It is not simply prose and poetry that has been
purified. Scientific literature has shown the influence of the reaction
against obscenity. Linnaeus and other naturalists of the past were fond
of giving scientific names that perpetuated vulgar comparisons with
sexual organs, but no naturalist of the present day would dare suggest
such designations for unnamed animals and plants. The older medical
literature contains abundant obscenities; but scientific dignity, as
well as the refinement of modern medical writers, has tended to compel
the elimination of vulgarity. However, there are still too many
physicians, especially those working with venereal and genito-urinary
diseases, who go out of their way to illuminate their conversations,
lectures, books, and magazine articles with veiled vulgarity. Even
high-class medical journals occasionally contain illustrations of this
tendency. However, the medical profession as a class stands for
dignified scientific presentation of facts, and obscenity will soon be
tabooed in medical and all other reputable literature. Save for
occasional emanations privately printed by and for degenerate persons,
public obscenity will soon be unkno