known to every
physician and surgeon.

It is first necessary to state certain medical facts regarding these
diseases. They exist for years after all symptoms have disappeared; no
evidences exist even to suggest to the patient that he, or she, is not
entirely cured. After the germs have been in the patient for some time they
lose a certain degree of their virility, and a condition of immunity is
established. In other words the tissue ceases to be a favorable medium for
the development, or activity, of the germs. If these germs, however, are
conveyed to another person, who has never had the disease, or whose tissue
is not immune, they will immediately resume their full activity and
virulence, and will establish the disease, frequently in its most violent
form, in the person so infected. The startling deduction which we must draw
from these facts is, that a man may infect his wife, and may thereby be the
direct cause of wrecking her entire life, and may, in addition, as a
consequence of the infection, cause a child to be born blind, without even
remotely suspecting that he is in any way responsible for it. In the light
of this knowledge, what is the percentage risk a young girl takes when she
selects a husband, remembering that eight out of every ten husbands bring
these germs to the marriage bed? Reread the true story of the young woman
on page five, accept my assurance that there are thousands and thousands of
such cases, and ask yourself, who is to blame? We may certainly assure
ourselves that no man living would wilfully desecrate his bride. He did not
know,--did not even suspect that the disease he had years ago was still in
his system. Society is to blame--you and I--the laxity of the law is the
culprit. Had he been compelled to pass a physical examination before
marriage he would have been told the truth.

It is a notorious fact, that in every civilized city in the world, the
number of operations that are daily performed on women, is increasing [13]
appallingly. Every surgeon knows that nine-tenths of these operations are
caused, directly or indirectly, by these diseases, and in almost every case
in married women, they are obtained innocently from their own husbands. It
is rare to find a married woman who is not suffering from some ovarian or
uterine trouble, or some obscure nervous condition, which is not amenable
to the ordinary remedies, and a very large percentage of these cases are
primarily caused by infectio