t from fifty to ninety per cent of
all men are immoral from time to time for many years. If that were
true, the situation represented by the highest estimates would be
hopeless, and we might as well start out to adjust society to a system
of recognized sexual promiscuity. Fortunately, it is far from true, for
a great many men included in even the conservative statistics of
social disease were infected because they strayed from the moral path
very few times and in many cases only once. This fact makes the outlook
for improved sexual morals and health more hopeful, for probably the
majority of young men need help in controlling themselves for a few
years only, especially between eighteen and twenty-five.[2]

[Sidenote: Established facts.]

The reports of medical men regarding the damage done by the social
diseases are inaccurate chiefly when they attempt to state percentages
of the whole population. They are reliable when they state observed
facts, such as the following: It is now established in medical science
that (1) gonorrheal infection results in tens of thousands of cases in
complications, such as heart disease, gonorrheal rheumatism, sterility
of both men and women, blindness of infants, inflammatory diseases of
female reproductive organs, and other well-marked sequelae of the
disease; and (2) that syphilis is responsible for a large majority of
cases of locomotor ataxia, paresis and certain types of insanity, and
also for numerous aneurisms of arteries, many apoplexies, and much
disease of liver, kidneys, and other organs. Moreover, syphilis is
charged with being the greatest race destroyer. Fournier, the great
French specialist, noted that only two children survived from a series
of ninety pregnancies of syphilitic women of the well-to-do class. It
is probably true that much less than ten per cent of syphilitized
embryos ever grow into mature men and women, and even these few
survivors are likely to carry in their bodies the germs or the "virus"
of syphilis which may affect the next generation.

[Sidenote: Social diseases admittedly dangerous.]

Such direct statements as the above may be accepted as not exaggerated.
However, it little matters in sex-education, except for the purposes of
sensational writers, whether statistics regarding the damage done by
venereal diseases are more than estimates; for it is sufficient to
remember that every physician of large experience agrees that syphilis
and gonorrhea are s