When a crop is sown the reaper gathers in much more than he sowed; and so also the pleasure derived from leading a voluptuous life is trifling indeed compared to the amount of harm done to one's health, career and character, or to his wife, posterity, or society, not to speak of the risks usually regarded by all as worthy the attention which he incurs by going contrary to the uniform imprecations of moral law against such practices.
The privilege of sowing "wild oats" has been altogether reserved by men for themselves, never being tolerated in their sisters; but the only way by which one can enjoy impurity of life is to put aside all thought for one's health and character, all respect for morality and womankind, all intention of reaping what is sown, and every quality which stamps a true man, and not to burden the mind with a thing so uninteresting as punishment from physician to quack, thinking, pondering, dreaming, talking of and habitually fixing his attention upon his sexual organs! We doctors wash our hands in antiseptics after touching such men, and yet they go about eating with clean people, using the same towels and water closets and bath tubs, and only wait for the external manifestations of their disease to disappear before they return to their lewdness, being absolutely thoughtless of the welfare of the poor fallen women.
THE FACTOR OF UNCLEANNESS AMONG WOMEN WHO ARE LOOSE WITH THEIR FAVORS.
Men of high intelligence may frequently be heard to say that they feel safe in going to the better grade of bawdy-houses, since it is the business of the inmates to keep themselves clean. Undoubtedly one is less liable to contract disease from a professional strumpet than from an immoral servant girl, shop girl, or actress, because the latter are strumpets in secret, and practise no precautions; but the choice is only relative, for all loose women are necessarily most unclean. By sinking to a depth of infamy far below the level of any examples to be found among the brutes, the unchaste members of the human family have transmitted the filthy venereal diseases through the ages, while the lower animals are exempt.
Even among the most degraded human beings there is an instinctive feeling of self consciousness while in the sexual embrace,1 while the brutes are entirely free from all modesty, and, if not frightened, will not hesitate to copulate before witnesses. This feeling of shame partly explains why venereal affections are called " secretdiseases." There is no animal, not even the swine, which from a bacteriological point of view can for a moment be compared in filth and repulsiveness to a prostitute. None can fully appreciate this who has not had an extended hospital and dispensary experience.
When one considers what she is no prostitute is attractive; and a visual, digital and microscopical examination of her sexual apparatus and its secretions would cool the ardor of a satyr, if he were capable of appreciating the scientific procedures. A "kept mistress", who is limited to the embraces of one man, is not, strictly speaking, a prostitute, and she may be clean from infection if both she and he remain true to each other. But a prostitute copulates with a large number of men, and the fact that she lives in the most exclusive and expensive " house" will not save her from disease ; for the rich and extravagant men who frequent these "high class" resorts have never been supposed to be a whit less free from disease than their poorer counterparts.
Furthermore, it is the rule, almost without exception, that every prostitute of much experience has had gonorrhoea at some time, and in quite a large number of cases syphilis as well, because they admit diseased men. Gonorrhoea of the male urethra is the most frequent disease which affects mankind, as all authorities say, and, with here and there an exception, every man who indulges much in venere has had gonorrhoea, or syphilis, or both. Granting that many of these men have, after the lapse of two years or so, recovered to such an extent that there is little likelihood of their transmitting infection to the woman, yet even with the best luck a large number of them will be sure to be suffering from disease; and men who follow after, unless already infected, cannot long escape contamination.