st is a victim of this disease who presents it well developed
in its later stages. In the large Charity Hospital upon Blackwell's
Island, near New York City, we have seen scores of these unfortunates
of both sexes, exhibiting the horrid disease in all its phases. To
describe them would be to place before our readers a picture too
revolting for these pages. No pen can portray the woebegone faces, the
hopeless air, of these degraded sufferers whose repentance has come,
alas! too late. No words can convey an adequate idea of their sufferings.
What remorse and useless regrets add to the misery of their wretched
existence as they daily watch the progress of a malignant ulceration
which is destroying their organs of speech, or burrowing deep into the
recesses of the skull, penetrating even to the brain itself! Even the
bones become rottenness; foul running sores appear on different
portions of the body, and may even cover it entirely. Perhaps the nose,
or the tongue, or the lips, or an eye, or some other prominent organ,
is lost. Still the miserable sufferer lingers on, life serving only
to prolong the torture. To many of them, death would be a grateful
release, even with the fires of retributive justice before their eyes;
for hell itself could scarcely be more awful punishment than that which
they daily endure.

Thousands of Victims.--The venturesome youth need not attempt to calm
his fears by thinking that these are only exceptional cases, for this
is not the truth. In any city, one who has an experienced eye can
scarcely walk a dozen blocks on busy streets without encountering the
woeful effects of sexual transgression. Neither do these results come
only from long-continued violations of the laws of chastity. The very
first departure from virtue may occasion all the worst effects
possible.

Effects of Vice Ineradicable.--Another fearful feature of this
terrible disease is that when once it invades the system its eradication
is impossible. No drug, no chemical, can antidote its virulent poison
or drive it from the system. Various means may smother it, possibly
for a life-time; but yet it is not cured, and the patient is never safe
from a new outbreak. Prof. Bumstead, an acknowledged authority on this
subject, after observing the disease for many years, says that "he never
after treatment, however prolonged, promises immunity for the
future."[44] Dr. Van Buren, professor of surgery at Bellevue Hospital
Medical College, New