women, in some cities at all events, contribute to
a sick benefit fund which pays their expenses when in hospital.
The hesitation of the police to inscribe a woman on the official
list is legitimate and inevitable, for no other course would be
tolerated; yet the majority of prostitutes begin their careers
very young, and as they tend to become infected very early after
their careers begin, it is obvious that this delay contributes to
render the system of regulation ineffective. In Berlin, where
there are no officially recognized brothels, there are some six
thousand inscribed prostitutes, but it is estimated that there
are over sixty thousand prostitutes who are not inscribed. (The
foregoing facts are taken from a series of papers describing
personal investigations in Germany made by Dr. F. Bierhoff, of
New York, "Police Methods for the Sanitary Control of
Prostitution," _New York Medical Journal_, August, 1907.) The
estimation of the amount of clandestine prostitution can indeed
never be much more than guesswork; exactly the same figure of
sixty thousand is commonly brought forward as the probable number
of prostitutes not only in Berlin, but also in London and in New
York. It is absolutely impossible to say whether it is under or
over the real number, for secret prostitution is quite
intangible. Even if the facts were miraculously revealed there
would still remain the difficulty of deciding what is and what is
not prostitution. The avowed and public prostitute is linked by
various gradations on the one side to the respectable girl living
at home who seeks some little relief from the oppression of her
respectability, and on the other hand to the married woman who
has married for the sake of a home. In any case, however, it is
very certain that public prostitutes living entirely on the
earnings of prostitution form but a small proportion of the vast
army of women who may be said, in a wide sense of the word, to be
prostitutes, i.e., who use their attractiveness to obtain from
men not love alone, but money or goods.

"The struggle against syphilis is only possible if we agree to regard its
victims as unfortunate and not as guilty.... We must give up the prejudice
which has led to the creation of the term 'shameful diseases,' and which
commands silence concerning this scourge of the family and o