that though it
may be necessary to instruct the youth it is best to leave his sister
unsullied, as they consider it, by a knowledge of the facts of life. This
is the very reverse of the truth. It is desirable indeed that all should
be acquainted with facts so vital to humanity, even although not
themselves personally concerned. But the girl is even more concerned than
the youth. A man has the matter more within his own grasp, and if he so
chooses he may avoid all the grosser risks of contact with venereal
disease. But it is not so with the woman. Whatever her own purity, she
cannot be sure that she may not have to guard against the possibility of
disease in her future husband as well as in those to whom she may entrust
her child. It is a possibility which the educated woman, so far from
being dispensed from, is more liable to encounter than is the
working-class woman, for venereal disease is less prevalent among the poor
than the rich.[253] The careful physician, even when his patient is a
minister of religion, considers it his duty to inquire if he has had
syphilis, and the clergyman of most severely correct life recognizes the
need of such inquiry and may perhaps smile, but seldom feels himself
insulted. The relationship between husband and wife is even much more
intimate and important than that between doctor and patient, and a woman
is not dispensed from the necessity of such inquiry concerning her future
husband by the conviction that the reply must surely be satisfactory.
Moreover, it may well be in some cases that, if she is adequately
enlightened, she may be the means of saving him, before it is too late,
from the guilt of premature marriage and its fateful consequences, so
deserving to earn his everlasting gratitude. Even if she fails in winning
that, she still has her duty to herself and to the future race which her
children will help to form.

In most countries there is a growing feeling in favor of the
enlightenment of young women equally with young men as regards
venereal diseases. Thus in Germany Max Flesch, in his
_Prostitution und Frauenkrankheiten_, considers that at the end
of their school days all girls should receive instruction
concerning the grave physical and social dangers to which women
are exposed in life. In France Duclaux (in his _L'Hygiene
Sociale_) is emphatic that women must be taught. "Already," he
states, "doctors who by custom have been made, in spit