'I have already
brought into the world four children. Alas! they all died during the
first months of their existence. A frightful eruption wasted them away
and killed them. Save me the one that is about to be born!' cried she,
in tears. The child that I delivered was sickly and puny. A few days
after its birth, it had purulent ophthalmia; then, crusted and
ulcerated pustules, a few at first, numerous afterward, covered the
entire surface of the skin. Soon this miserable little being became
as meager as a skeleton, hideous to the sight, and died. Having
questioned the husband, he acknowledged to me that he had had
syphilis."[45]

[Footnote 45: Bourgeois.]

Cure of the "Social Evil."--With rare exceptions, the efforts of civil
legislation have been directed toward controlling or modifying this
vice, rather than extirpating it.

Among other devices adopted with a view to effect this, and to mitigate
in some degree the resulting evils, the issuing of licenses for brothels
has been practiced in several large cities. One of the conditions of
the license makes it obligatory upon the keepers of houses of ill-repute
and their inmates to submit to medical examination at stated intervals.
By this means, it is expected to detect the cases of foul disease at
the outset, and thus to protect others by placing the infected
individuals under restraint and treatment. It will be seen that for
many reasons such examinations could not be effective; but, even if
they were, the propriety of this plan of dealing with the vice is
exceedingly questionable, as will appear from the following
considerations:--

1. The moment that prostitution is placed under the protection of law
by means of a license, it at once loses half its disrepute, and becomes
respectable, as do gambling and liquor-selling under the same
circumstances.

2. Why should so vile a crime as fornication be taken under legal
protection more than stealing or the lowest forms of gambling? Is it
not a lesser crime against human nature to rob a man of his money by
theft or by deceit and trickery than to snatch from him at one fell
swoop his health, his virtue, and his peace of mind? Why not as well
have laws to regulate burglary and assassination, allowing the
perpetrators of those crimes to ply their chosen avocations with
impunity under certain prescribed restrictions; if robbery, for
instance, requiring the thief to leave his victim money enough to make
his escape to anothe