oscope, whether it contains spermatozoa or not. If it
does contain a normal number of lively, rapidly moving spermatozoa,
the man is fertile, regardless of whether he ever had epididymitis or
not. If the semen contains no spermatozoa, or only a few deformed or
lazily moving ones, then he is sterile.

In the case of woman, it is _absolutely_ impossible to determine
whether the gonorrhea has made her sterile or not; because there is no
way of expressing an ovum from the ovary. The woman may not have had
any pain or inflammation in the Fallopian tubes, and yet there may
have been sufficient inflammation to close up the orifices of the
tubes. On the other hand, she may have had a severe salpingitis on
_both sides and still be fertile_. Nor is there any way of telling
whether the ovaries were so involved in the process as to become
incapable of generating healthy ova, or any ova at all. In short,
there is absolutely no way of telling whether a woman is sterile or
fertile--we can only surmise. And our surmise in this respect is
liable to be wrong just as often as right. The only way the question
can be decided is by experience. If the prospective husband is willing
to take a chance, well and good.

While just as many girls marry as do young men, still, in practice, we
always shall have to examine an incomparably larger number of male
than of female candidates. This is due, not only to the fact that an
incomparably larger number of men suffer from venereal disease, but
also because very few women will confess to their fiances that they
ever entertained antematrimonial relations and--what is still
worse--were infected with venereal disease. This, of course, is owing
to our double standard of morality, which looks upon as a trivial or
no offense in the man what it condemns as a heinous crime in the
woman. I have known hundreds of men who confessed freely to their
fiancees that they had had gonorrhea, but I have known only two girls
who made a confession of the fact to their future husbands. They got
married, however, and lived happily with their husbands ever after.

CHAPTER THIRTY

MARRIAGE AND SYPHILIS

Rules for Permitting a Syphilitic Patient to Marry--Rules More
Severe in Cases Where Children Are Desired--Where Both Partners
Are Syphilitic--Danger of Paresis in Some Syphilitic Patients--A
Case in the Author's Practice.

The problem of the syphilitic differs from the problem of the
exgonorrheal patient