York, bears the same testimony.

[Footnote 44: Venereal Disease.]

Prof. Van Buren also says that he has often seen the disease occur upon
the lips of young ladies who were entirely virtuous, but who were
engaged to men who had contracted the disease and had communicated it
to them by the act of kissing. Virtuous wives have not infrequently
had their constitutions hopelessly ruined by contracting the disease
from husbands who had themselves been inoculated either before or after
marriage, by illicit intercourse. Several such unfortunate cases have
fallen under our observation, and there is reason to believe that they
are not infrequent.

The Only Hope.--The only hope for one who has contracted this disease
is to lead a life of perfect continence ever after, and by a most careful
life, by conforming strictly to the laws of health, by bathing and
dieting, he may possibly avoid the horrid consequences of the later
stages of the malady. Mercury will not cure, nor will any other poison,
as before remarked.

The following strong testimony on this subject we quote from an
admirable pamphlet by Prof. Fred. H. Gerrish, M.D.:--

"The diseases dependent upon prostitution are appallingly frequent,
a distinguished surgeon recently declaring that one person in twenty
in the United States has syphilis, a malady so ineradicable that a
profound observer has remarked that 'a man who is once thus poisoned
will die a syphilitic, and, in the day of Judgment, he will be a
syphilitic ghost.' Prof. Gross says: 'What is called scrofula, struma,
or tuberculosis, is, I have long been satisfied from careful
observation of the sick and a profound study of the literature of the
subject, in a great majority of cases, if not invariably, merely
syphilis in its more remote stages.' Though there are doubtless many
of us who believe that a not inconsiderable proportion of scrofulous
and phthisical cases are clearly due to other causes than syphilis,
we must admit that this statement contains a very large element of
truth."

Hereditary Effects of Venereal Disease.--The transgressor is not the
only sufferer. If he marries, his children, if they survive infancy,
will in later years show the effects of their father's sin, exhibiting
the forms of the disease seen in its later stages. Scrofula, consumption,
cancer, rickets, diseases of the brain and nerves, decay of the bones
by caries or necrosis, and other diseases, arise in this way.

But it genera