tures on sexual hygiene to the advanced
pupils in Berlin schools, under the auspices of a society for the
improvement of morals, the municipal authorities withdrew their
permission to use the classrooms, on the ground that "such
lectures would be extremely dangerous to the moral sense of an
audience of the young." The same objection has been made by
municipal officials in France. In Germany, at all events,
however, opinion is rapidly growing more enlightened. In England
little or no progress has yet been made, but in America steps are
being taken in this direction, as by the Chicago Society for
Social Hygiene. It must, indeed, be said that those who oppose
the sexual enlightenment of youth in large cities are directly
allying themselves, whether or not they know it, with the
influences that make for vice and immorality.

Such lectures are also given to girls on leaving school, not only
girls of the well-to-do, but also those of the poor class, who
need them fully as much, and in some respects more. Thus Dr. A.
Heidenhain has published a lecture (_Sexuelle Belehrung der aus
den Volksschule entlassenen Maedchen_, 1907), accompanied by
anatomical tables, which he has delivered to girls about to leave
school, and which is intended to be put into their hands at this
time. Salvat, in a Lyons thesis (_La Depopulation de la France_,
1903), insists that the hygiene of pregnancy and the care of
infants should form part of the subject of such lectures. These
subjects might well be left, however, to a somewhat later period.

Something is clearly needed beyond lectures on these matters. It should be
the business of the parents or other guardians of every adolescent youth
and girl to arrange that, once at least at this period of life, there
should be a private, personal interview with a medical man to afford an
opportunity for a friendly and confidential talk concerning the main
points of sexual hygiene. The family doctor would be the best for this
duty because he would be familiar with the personal temperament of the
youth and the family tendencies.[37] In the case of girls a woman doctor
would often be preferred. Sex is properly a mystery; and to the unspoilt
youth, it is instinctively so; except in an abstract and technical form it
cannot properly form the subject of lectures. In a private and
individualized conversation between the no