facts relating to social diseases which
point to the need of sex-education as one method of prevention, are
referred to the pamphlets published by the American Society of Sanitary
and Moral Prophylaxis; Morrow's "Social Diseases and Marriage";
Creighton's "The Social Disease and How to Fight It"; Dock's "Hygiene
and Morality"; Henderson's "Education with Reference to Sex"; and
certain chapters in Warbasse's "Medical Sociology."

[Sidenote: Estimated amount of disease.]

With regard to the accuracy of the commonly quoted statements
concerning the prevalence of social disease, and therefore of
immorality, it must be said in all fairness that there has been much
guesswork and some deliberate exaggeration. We learn from various books
and lectures that fifty, sixty-five, seventy-five and even ninety per
cent of the men in the United States over eighteen years of age are at
some time infected with at least one of the social diseases. The fact
is that there is no scientific way of getting accurate statistics, for
unlike other contagious diseases, the venereal ones are kept more or
less secret, and numerous cases cannot be discovered by health
officers. All the published figures regarding the prevalence of such
diseases are merely estimates based upon the experience of certain
physicians with special groups of men, especially in hospitals. There
is no reliable scientific evidence as to the prevalence of venereal
disease in the whole mass of our American population.

[Sidenote: Education not concerned with percentages.]

However, so far as education is concerned, there is nothing to be
gained by dispute as to the possible inaccuracy of the higher
percentages,[1] for it is generally admitted that probably over fifty
per cent of the men in America and Europe become infected with
gonorrhea or syphilis, or both, one or more times during their lives,
especially in early manhood. This conservative estimate is sufficient
to show that the sexual morals of probably the majority of men are at
some time in their lives loose. There is reason to believe that with
most such men the period of moral laxity is in early manhood before
marriage, which, though not excusable, is explainable on physiological
grounds. It is important to correct the wrong impression which is now
widespread, especially among women who have read the more or less
sensational statements in certain books and magazines, that the quoted
figures on social disease mean tha