Though we have stated with emphasis that it is quite impossible to demonstrate that a woman is free from gonorrhoea or syphilis without the most skilful methods of research, and without keeping the patient under observation for many days or even weeks, still let us grant that a given prostitute is perfectly clean at a given time. What if she is? Does she not go from the examination directly back to her dangerous calling, where the first male with whom she cohabits may be infected with disease? And will not all who follow after this diseased man be jeopardized?
Any person of common sense must quickly see that all these perfunctory medical examinations of the prostitutes are outrageously preposterous, and that the quarantine, in order to have any value, must be extended so that the equally diseased fivefold majority shall also be subjected to medical inspection before they are allowed to set foot in the brothels.
Any system of regulation dealing with the highly infectious and serious venereal diseases precisely as with the specific contagious fevers would be cordially indorsed by every scientific man, and this is the only possible way in which to check the spread of these maladies; but, in order to enforce it, we should be compelled to provide a large increase in the police force for patrolling the haunts of vice, and to imprison in the lazaretto all those who are diseased, male and female alike.
THE CRUELTY AND INJUSTICE OF THE REGULATION SYSTEM
Expediency may at times render necessary the temporary enactment of laws which are not altogether equitable; as, for instance, when civil rights are extinguished or suspended by martial law to the fullest extent required by the exigencies of war. But in the ordinary course of things, in a republican form of government, legislation must be applied with equal justice to man, woman and child, of all sorts and conditions. Let us consider then, if we can tolerate those iniquitous laws which the European Governments have long enforced, but will abandon, in all probability, within the next few years.
Now in vivid narration we must record the self evident fact that both sexes are concerned in illegitimate love and adultery, but unequally so, with the disadvantage against the men. It is the males who form the fivefold majority, who supply the capital by which the trade thrives, and who create the demand which supports the traffic in girls it is they who infect their pure wives, and spread contagion from one house of ill fame to another.
Any government which enforces unjust legislation commits the greatest possible crime against its people; but governments are in the control of men, and men never have been gallant to the weak and the disfranchised.
Such laws are axiomatically bad, because they are liable to great abuses; and there is painful and abundant evidence that respectable girls, who must of necessity go along the streets at night unattended, have been insulted and outraged by the officials ar horized to enforce the provisions of the regulation laws.
Here are a few is showing how regulation works in foreign lands:
respectable young woman was arrested by the police who worked the system. She wepi and implored to be spared the humiliation of examination, declaring that she was virtuous and pure, and her old father and mother also protested and implored in vain. She was dragged to the hospital and subjected to the examination. When brought before the doctor her manner was entirely changed; she no longer implored or wept; she was calm and decided. After the examination, the doctor pronounced her a virgin. She waited until he had made a declaration to this effect, and then, without uttering a word, went to the window and threw herself out. She was taken up dead.
"In Paris a respectable young working woman went out in the evening to fetch a doctor for her child, taken suddenly ill with the croup. The 'morals police', as they are hypocritically called in France, chose to 'suspect' her of being a prostitute, and arrested her. She explained matters to them, and told them that her child was dying of croup. They jeered at her, and insisted on taking her to the examination house. There the poor woman, distraught at being prevented from caring for her child, and appalled by the outrage to which she was subjected, very naturally went into hysterics. Then the police charged her with being a drunk and disorderly prostitute, and she was sentenced to a month's imprisonment. Her baby died during her absence, and when she got out of prison she was childless and a registered prostitute".