Several most skilful venereal specialists have recently said in verbal communications to the writer that personally they would rather have an attack of syphilis, if it could be well treated, than a badly treated or neglected case of gonorrhoea; and this but voices the opinion of the modern profession.
JEsop's fox, when he had lost his tail, strove to modify the prevailing fashion by advising his fellow foxes to follow his example and abridge their caudal appendages; but he never was the same fox. Similarly, a diseased man after a time becomes content with his bodily condition, actually imagines himself cured without authoritative confirmation, and reports to his companions in favor of running the risk; saying something which sounds like superlative wisdom to the ignorant, many of whom blindly follow his example.
Men who make a practice of illicit intercourse almost never escape disease. There may, of course, be a few exceptions to this rule; but practically every worshipper at Phryne's shrine receives as his punishment the inevitable sting of disease; and he may acquire all the forms-gonorrhoea, chancroids, syphilis, and even leprosy, which is largely a venereal disease.
When the writer was in Vienna he made the friendship of a most intelligent Russian gentleman, a patient in the hospital, who had formerly been a merchant in Bombay. This man was under one professor's treatment for syphilis and under another's for leprosy. Gonorrhoea he of course had had. Oh, the anguish of that sufferer! Cut off from all fellowship with the world, he yet acknowledged that he deserved all he had got on account of his profligacy; but it was a terrible load to bear-no hope of cure, separate eating utensils, a characteristic uniform, shunned by every one, no friends, no outlook but a progressive advance to a loathsome decay and death. Bepentance and contrition he had, so that his moral offence might be forgiven, but the darksome plight of his body was past repair.
Leprosy, it is true, does not seriously threaten the careless man at the present time; but there are a great number of cases in Norway, Nova Scotia, Louisiana, South America (notably Brazil), the Hawaiian Islands, all throughout Asia, and now and again it is seen sporadically in our large cities. Sexual impurity is closely associated with its spread.Prof. Howard A. Kelly, of Johns Hopkins University, a surgeon of great experience, says:
"It is not a venial sin for men to consort with prostitutes. It blunts a man's finer sensibilities, it lowers his respect for women, it leaves its indelible marks in disease, for sooner or later every man who indulges his passions unlawfully contracts disease. It is not possible for either men or women who prostitute themselves freely to escape it. And these diseases are not only the most loathsome and the most disgusting in their early manifestations, but they have the horrible characteristic of becoming latent.
A man who contracts disease of this sort can never be sure 6 that he is cured, for venereal disease is not a merciful disease, like cancer, killing its victim within a certain definite time. Bather, it is a death in life; such local lesion may occur as to destroy forever the sexual function, and the unchaste man finds that he is incapable of realizing one of the chief blessings of life, surrounding himself with a family of children, who will be to him in the struggle of life a daily incentive and comfort, in whom in old age he may live again." It may be observed that men who are on the right track grow better and better as they grow older that the reverse is true of those who give themselves up to impurity, and that such degenerate in every fibre of their higher faculties, becoming less and less types of ideal manhood. How especially repellent it is to see an old man from force of habit and evil desire looking lustfully at young girls and women!