Conquering an old enemy

HX64119114
RC201 .Ir9 Conquering an old en

RECAP

KCZOI Ird

Columbia (Hntoergftp

intfjeCttptflrttigork

College of iPfjpstciang anb burgeon*

Htbrarp

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010 with funding from

Open Knowledge Commons

http://www.archive.org/details/conqueringoldeneOOirwi

CONQUERING

AN OLD ENEMY

BY

WILL IRWIN

THE AMERICAN SOCIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION

Incorporated
370 SEVENTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

Copyright, 1 910, by

The American Social Hygiene Association, Inc.

Publication No. 2.50

CONQUERING AN OLD ENEMY

Bv Will Irwin

T^WO young men, escorting two very nice young girls, once
went boating on a Western river. Suddenly they heard muffled
shouts from the rapids below them. They looked and saw that
a man, swimming, had been caught in the swift current, was going
under. The young men rowed toward him. And then, one of the girls
began to scream.

"Heavens!" she cried, "we can't take him aboard. He isn't dressed!
He's — he's naked!" The other girl joined in the protest. Their escorts,
ignoring all this, continued to row. The girls went hysterical. They
clutched at the arms of the rowers. Before that struggle finished, it
was too late. The swimmer had gone under for the last time. All this
happened, exactly as I tell it, in the Far West when I was a boy.

These were foolish girls, lacking in all sense of proportion. And still,
neither you nor I can afford to cast against them the first stone; for
this little story is an allegory of the human race. In these United
States and in this year of peace 1920, more lives than the whole em-
pire of Great Britain lost during any year of the Great War will be
flicked out by two diseases which are curable and preventable dis-
eases. Nor will the year 1920 stand alone. In the four and a half years
of intensive warfare between 1914 and 1918, the fifteen civilized
nations which fought at Armageddon gave to these twin scourges a
heavier toll than they did to bullets, shells, gas, air-bombs, all the
ghastly, wholesale killers of modern battle. Yet these two diseases
present no mystery to the modern physician. They may be cured;
and their infection can be checked at its source. Why, then, have we
not acted, we who thought we were civilized? Because we as a world
have assumed the attitude of the silly girls in the boat. We have been
too nice, too rotten, nasty nice, to organize and come out in open
fight against syphilis and gonorrhea.

Even medical science has seemed until lately to struggle against
this same handicap of modesty. We have long understood the dangers

CO

and horrors of tuberculosis and cancer; but not until the last decade
or so has any one known exactly how terrible are the "secret diseases,"
the "social diseases," the "hidden scourges." At last, we have seen
the face of the enemy. The facts which I am about to quote are not
the conjectures, guesses, and exaggerations of partisans and alarm-
ists. They are a brief synopsis of cold statistics gathered by calm men
of science, proved and approved by our government.

Of the two diseases, syphilis is by far the greater killer — at least
directly. In its fatal tertiary stage, it runs into several well-recognized
complaints which must be reckoned in the indictment. Every case of
locomotor ataxia, for example, is in origin syphilitic, — there is no
other cause for this grotesque and terrible affliction. The same thing
is true of paresis. Again, a definite proportion of other fatal diseases,
such as certain varieties of organic brain, heart, and kidney diseases,
have for origin syphilis. It is estimated by authorities that, together,
they kill annually in these United States more than 300,000 people.
France, we used to say, was "bled white" in the war. She lost about
1,350,000 lives by the fatalities of battle. During the four years and
four months of Armageddon, our tribute to syphilis was about the
same as hers to the Kaiser. It causes, year in and year out, two
American deaths out of thirteen, leading by a wide margin tubercu-
losis, which is next on the list. That dreaded "white plague"; heart
disease, the terror of declining years; pneumonia, the savage slayer of
maturity, the gentle reliever of age; cancer, the dark mystery of
science — all give place to syphilis. When we consider that America
is on the whole less generally infected than Europe, we must realize
that it is the chief enemy of the white race. Again I say: I am reporting
not the fancies of alarmists, but the approved facts of cold science.

None of this generation is likely to forget the influenza of 1918.
This was a swift, raging epidemic, as syphilis is a slow, persistent
one. In that year, when the new plague divided interest with the
war, syphilis was quietly taking nearly if not quite as many lives as
influenza. The influenza epidemic ran its course in a year and dis-
appeared; not, probably, to return in such a form for many years.
Syphilis goes on the same, year after year. Its percentage of deaths
for 1918 was virtually the same as for 1917, 1916, 1915 — for every
period since medical statistics enabled us to see what it is doing. And
unless we act, its death-roll will never diminish.

[»]

To finish the indictment against syphilis, no disease worth con<=
sidering is inherited. The theory of hereditary cancer was exploded
long ago. Neither tuberculosis nor, strictly speaking, the tuberculous
tendency passes on from generation to generation. But syphilis— stating
the matter practically, though not quite scientifically — may be in-
herited. At certain stages of this long, chronic disease, syphilitic
parents transmit the germ to their children before birth. The child
so infected may have all the complications of the disease, together
with other special complaints peculiar to the second generation.

So much for the dreadful elder sister of this pair. Gonorrhea, al-
though much more common, is far less fatal. It seldom if ever kills
directly; it may, however, lead its victim into certain fatal diseases,
and increase the mortality in others. But the statistics on gonorrhea
are still so uncertain that we would better leave its fatal effects out
of consideration. In modern war, artillery fire kills two men where it
wounds three; in actions of a certain kind, rifle and machine-gun fire
kills one man where it wounds six or seven. Syphilis is the artillery
of our hidden foe; gonorrhea is his small-arms. And the wounds and
mutilations inflicted by this lesser but more prevalent disease rival
the wounds and mutilations of war. Until recently, most of the chil-
dren blind from birth owed their pathetic affliction to a parent in-
fected with gonorrhea. Modern research into the causes of so-called
"female complaints" has brought out appalling facts. Far the greater
and more dangerous part of these diseases arises from gonorrhea, and
from nothing else. When this kind of "female complaint" has gone
far enough, nothing will prevent premature invalidism but a drastic
surgical operation. The woman so treated can never again bear chil-
dren. This is a pathetic feature of the case against gonorrhea. Most
of these victims cannot be dismissed with the glib, shallow phrase,
"They brought it on themselves." A large part of the pelvic and ab-
dominal operations on women are made necessary by gonorrhea.
Many if not most of the women who submit to this operation, which
leaves them barren for life, have never transgressed the accepted law
of sexual morality — they are paying the penalty for the promiscuity
of their husbands before marriage.

However, in striking at the foundations of the race, gonorrhea does
not strike through the woman alone. In another manner, equally cer-
tain, it produces sterility in males. Syphilis cuts down the trunk of

[3]

our race; gonorrhea attacks it at its origin. Syphilis destroys life in
its full bloom; gonorrhea prevents life.

We Americans, as a people, think a great deal of efficiency. Prob-
ably national efficiency has no enemy so powerful and persistent as
this lesser of the two antisocial diseases. Except in its more acute
early stages or its long, late complications, it seldom puts its victim
to bed. If, like smallpox or typhoid fever, it ran a violent course,
killed or passed over in a few weeks, it would trouble us less. The
victim goes about week after week, month after month — in the cases
where he is not properly treated, year after year — in a state of reduced
vitality. The bill is large, owing to the astonishing prevalence of this
disease. Though they thought they knew the worst, our army medical
authorities were appalled, when they examined our recruits for the
late war, by the number of men infected with gonorrhea. Many
authorities say flatly that it is second if not the most common of all
diseases. One authority estimates that in reduced efficiency it costs
us $300,000,000 a year. This figure, unlike those which I have quoted
above, is only shrewd guesswork. Still, few who understand the sub-
ject would call it exaggerated.

So much for what they are, these two costly plagues. There would
be no use in advertising them, as I am doing here, were the case hope-
less. It is far from that. They may be cured. They can, with sufficient
effort, be generally eliminated from the race, reduced to the status
of the rare diseases. That is the tragedy of the situation. With the
weapons long forged and ready, we have meekly submitted year after
year to our greatest racial enemy.

How many pock-marked acquaintances have you? Myself, I can
call to mind one. How often do you notice on the streets a pock-
marked face? Looking back over the past four months, I recall but
two. If you had lived a century ago, you would have seen pock-
marking as commonly as you now see baldness. Again and again in
the biographies of the time — as of Samuel Johnson or Fanny Kemble
— you encounter the simple phrase, "he was pock-marked." In those
days, smallpox was never entirely quiescent. It killed every year its
thousands in small epidemics. Occasionally it burst out into a great
epidemic which sent the rich scurrying away from the centres of
infection, and slew by the tens of thousands those who must remain.
Now, smallpox is so rare that we scarcely take the trouble to tabulate

[4]

it among the causes of death. What quelled this scourge ? An act of
Providence? Not at all. The race took the matter into its own hands.
First, medical men discovered, if not yet the germ of smallpox, at
least the conditions under which it spread. They learned first that
contact with an infected person, and, second, contact with the articles
he had worn or used during his illness, might cause the disease.
Next, that great pioneer Jenner found in vaccination a sure method
of prevention. Then the race went to work. The clothing, the bed-
clothing, the dwelling of an infected person were disinfected. We set
up hospitals, to which smallpox patients were removed, in which
they were kept isolated. Slowly at first, and then with increasing
speed, civilized humanity, especially in those places most subject to
the disease, took to vaccination. In a generation after Jenner we
had controlled smallpox; in a century we have put it behind us. But
mark this: the movement went no faster and no slower than public
education in the causes and prevention of the disease. Not until every
physician knew exactly what to do in the face of an epidemic; not
until local mayors, aldermen, supervisors, and boards of health knew
that to maintain hospitals, to isolate acute cases, and to disinfect all
polluted objects was their solemn duty; not until the dullest person
knew that he must instantly report every case, and that he could
escape the disease entirely if he got himself vaccinated — not until
education and open discussion had established all this did we con-
quer smallpox.

A generation ago, the warm regions of the American continent
trembled under the fear of yellow fever. Science went to work, guided
now by a light which Jenner lacked — the germ theory of disease.
Our medical investigators found that the germ of yellow fever was
transmitted from victim to victim by the bite of a certain mosquito.
They studied the habits of this insect; found how it could be de-
stroyed. At first in the semi-tropic parts of the United States, then
in Cuba, and later in the more thickly settled parts of South America,
sanitary engineers went to work. Now, unless we grow shockingly
careless, yellow fever will never again trouble a well-organized com-
munity. Yet here, too, the work went no faster than public educa-
tion. The governing bodies of states and municipalities, and the public
which kept them in power, had to learn that the Stegomyia mosquito
was deadlier than a rattlesnake, and that they might better poison

[5]

their wells than leave water-barrels and sewers uncovered and cis-
terns unscreened.

The same thing is happening to typhoid fever, which used to cause
more deaths in armies than the casualties of battle, and which, during
the late war, was thrust back into the category of rare diseases. The
same thing is happening to bubonic plague and cholera. And always,
the plot of the story is the same. Medical investigation finds the
germ or the exciting cause. With that clue, medicine goes on to
ascertain what conditions favor its spread. It works out remedies,
both curative and preventive. It starts a campaign of education and
organization. The medical profession and we, the public, move against
it as a body — and that war is won. The first battle, the discovery of
cause and cure, is usually the hardest. We should be moving now as
an organized army of health against cancer, did we know its cause.
That, alas, remains a baffling mystery of science.

The first battle against venereal diseases was won long ago. We
know that both syphilis and gonorrhea are germ diseases. Their deadly
agents have been seen and studied in the field cf the microscope. It
was Schaudinn who first beheld and described those pale, minute
spirals which cause the syphilis plague; it was Wassermann who
devised a blood test to find the disease even when it lies dormant
in the body. Long before that, we knew all we needed to know about
the germs of gonorrhea. And the cure followed. Even when we were
still uncertain whether or no syphilis was a germ disease, the doctors
understood that a long treatment with mercury, scientifically applied,
would arrest — possibly cure. Then came Ehrlich, some eight or ten
years ago, with his famous discovery of " 606," or salvarsan. "This,"
said an enthusiast, "will clean syphilis out of the human system as
a reagent will clean the poison out of a reservoir." Salvarsan did not
quite live up to this early reputation. But it did prove one of the
most valuable healing agents known to medicine. Further, physicians
discovered that a combined salvarsan and mercury treatment, ex-
pertly and persistently applied, worked wonders. In plain, everyday
language, salvarsan held down the troublesome and dangerous symp-
toms while killing a part of the germs, and mercury cleaned up the
rest. Any intelligent physician will tell you that no other chronic
disease may be so easily, certainly cured as syphilis — only provided
that the patient will stick to a long treatment and start it early.

[«]

The story of the gonorrhea cure is not quite so complete and
dramatic as that of the syphilis cure. Syphilis is a blood disease,
running through the hidden courses of the human system. Gonor-
rhea attacks the mucous membranes — lies, in a manner of speaking,
on the surfaces of the body-channels. Several chemical compounds
were known to be deadly enemies of the gonorrhea germ. Long ex-
perience showed which of these were most efficient. Medicine dis-
covered mechanical means of getting at those deposits of germs which
lie quiescent in the hidden folds of the body, and which make this
disease so treacherous. It is not, really, so easy of treatment as
syphilis, especially when it occurs in women. But still it belongs in
the category of curable diseases — provided the skilled physician
catches it in the early stages. With both of these plagues, an ounce
of prompt treatment is worth a pound of late treatment. Syphilis
practically never, and gonorrhea seldom, runs its course and cures
itself as do typhoid fever, smallpox, and most epidemic diseases.
If neglected, both not only entrench themselves in the system, but
they often lead to complications which are virtually incurable.

So the cause and cure were known; the first battle was won. Knowl-
edge of the conditions under which these diseases spread was almost
as old as the diseases themselves; and science bolstered that knowledge
with hard facts. The open sewer which spreads venereal disease is
prostitution. Most epidemic diseases have some "carrier." In typhoid
fever it is infected water or milk, or the household fly. In yellow fever,
it is the Stegomyia mosquito. In bubonic plague, it is the rat — or
rather his parasite, the rat-flea. The fly, the mosquito, the rat of
venereal disease is the commercialized prostitute. Whenever we dipped
into the underworld in pursuit of knowledge on this subject, we
found astonishing figures. Three hundred and twenty Barbary Coast
prostitutes in San Francisco were examined during their working
hours for syphilis alone. Ninety-seven per cent had the disease! The
Baltimore Vice Commission found that of 320 prostitutes in the red-
light district, 96 per cent had either syphilis or gonorrhea or both.
A similar investigation by the Detroit Board of Health showed 94
per cent. Let us be honest and admit that not every man who goes with
these women will catch disease. In certain stages, neither syphilis nor
gonorrhea can be communicated, as in certain other stages they most
certainly can. Further, not every one directly exposed to venereal

[7]

disease catches it; but the same is true of other contagious diseases.
During the typhoid-fever epidemic at Stanford University some fifteen
years ago, four students stopped at a dairy farm; and all had a drink
of milk from the same can. This milk was infected with typhoid.
None of the four was technically immune, for none had ever gone
through typhoid fever; and this was before the discovery of the
typhoid inoculation. Two of the four came down with typhoid fever;
two escaped absolutely. Smallpox has its stages when it can be
communicated and when it cannot; and certain people in certain
conditions of the system do not "catch" it, even when exposed. The
man who goes with one of these women stands about the same chance
to escape undamaged that he would stand if he had spent an hour in
the embraces of a smallpox patient, had been bitten by a Stegomyia
mosquito, or had drunk from a well polluted with typhoid germs.

Step one: find the cause and cure of the disease. Step two: find
the conditions under which it develops. Step three: organize and put
it out of business. With the medical profession as officers, with state
and national boards of health as a general staff, raise and train your
battalions, divisions, and armies from us, the people. This last step,
though by far the most laborious, is in the typical fight against a
disease the easiest of all. To track down a disease to its ultimate
cause and to discover the remedy takes genius; and genius is very
rare and precious. To organize, when the facts and the remedy are
known, takes only the big, wide-thinking, common mind which we
use every day in big business and big politics.

But this fight is different. The difficulty is to raise the forces. Just
now, the army against venereal disease looks like a general staff and
a fine corps of trained officers without sergeants, corporals, and pri-
vates. So far, and in the face of the appalling facts which I have
quoted above, the eminent and devoted leaders in our struggle
against venereal disease have not succeeded in getting the country
"heated up" on the subject, as New Orleans got heated up on yellow
fever, as we all got heated up on influenza. Why? Because as a gen-
eral rule the moral, decent, and devoted part of our communities, the
very people whom we most need in this endeavor, take the attitude
of the silly little girls in the boat. It is a shameful thing; therefore
it is not to be discussed. The average newspaper which, until a few
years ago, printed for money the obscene advertisements of quacks,

[8]

shrank from admitting to its columns the words "syphilis" and
"gonorrhea," or even the idea of venereal diseases. And this was not
so much the fault of the editors as of subscribers, who would stop
a newspaper containing "such thoughts."

Public ignorance on this topic is dense, black. Among intelligent,
educated, able men of my acquaintance, I find common the belief
that syphilis and gonorrhea are one and the same disease, whereas
they bear no more relation to each other than scarlet fever to small-
pox. In America, we cannot create enthusiasm without discussion;
and we need enthusiasm to arouse that gigantic national will by
which America works her marvels.

Yet the general staff has ordered battle with what forces it has,
and the organized fight has even now begun. In the late war, the
medical officers of every army made a systematic struggle against
venereal disease. They had to; left alone, it might have beaten them
unassisted by the enemy. Do the best they could, the British Royal
Army Medical Corps reported that the venereal diseases kept con-
stantly out of action enough British soldiers to diminish seriously
the fighting strength of the army. The war, further, dragged into
action and put on a common field the great directing medical men
of all the allied nations. On its medical side, it was one long world-
convention of great physicians. Before they separated and sailed
from France, they had consulted, thrashed out plans to put world-
wide team-work into the fight against diseases, especially tubercu-
losis, gonorrhea, and syphilis. The great Red Cross Conference at
Cannes, France, convened in April, 19 19. Every day a considerable
portion of the time was given to a discussion of the venereal disease
problem. Here a general plan of strategy was laid out and agreed
on; our delegates returned home to do their part.

I have no room here to describe the plan of strategy laid out by
the Red Cross Conference at Cannes; but I will touch upon some of
the phases which most concern us. First is the curative campaign.

Until a few years ago, the average man stricken with either syphilis
or gonorrhea was a prey first to his own ignorance and second to
the quacks. If these diseases stretched a man at once on his back,
impotent with fever and pain, they would doubtless be less trouble-
some to society. But usually he keeps on his feet; he can still go
about his business. So a certain proportion of the afflicted applied

[9]

some patent remedy, always worse than useless, or neglected the
early stages altogether. A greater proportion ran to the quacks. These
men, usually physicians without standing in their profession, used to
fill the newspapers with display advertisements of "sure-shot" cures.
As a class, the venereal quacks were after but one thing — the victim's
money. Sometimes they applied, though carelessly and inexpertly,
the approved remedies. Sometimes they gave no treatment worth
the name, but only hocus-pocus. And usually, when they saw no
more money in sight, they applied some temporary alleviant, per-
suaded the victim that he was cured, and turned him loose. So general
and dense was the ignorance about the "secret diseases" and their
treatment that the farm-hands and cowboys of the West, for example,
believed that a regular physician would not handle a case of venereal
disease — that the victim must take to quacks or to patent medicines.

There was a shade of truth in this idea. So disreputable had the
quacks made the treatment of these diseases, so nasty nice was the
attitude of the public, that general practitioners disliked to take a
case of venereal disease. Even yet, they tend to pass it on when they
can. And the quack, though long ago shut out from most of the news-
papers, is still with us, slaying his thousands. So here is the first
movement of the campaign. The United States Public Health Service,
which is officially leading the campaign, wants to make it possible
and even compulsory for every person afflicted with venereal disease
to get good, expert treatment regardless of his ability to pay. Already,
many of the larger cities have free venereal disease dispensaries,
where, usually, the patient fares better than he would at the hands
of a general practitioner, since the staffs of these dispensaries are
specialists. The medical profession wants to extend the system until
every city of more than 8,000 inhabitants has such an institution.
In these days of rapid transportation, they believe this will cover
the rural as well as the city population.

Of course, the $4,100,000 appropriated by Congress, and the funds
added from other federal sources, will not begin to cover the cost of
dispensaries. The funds of the American Social Hygiene Association
will serve but to aid the campaign of organization and education — the
expenses of the general staff. States, counties, and municipalities must
do the rest. Already, the authorities of almost every state have re-
sponded— some weakly, some whole-heartedly. The weak ones will

[10]

never put heart into the work until forced by the public. There is the
first job for you, John Smith, and for you, the lately enfranchised
Mary Smith. The general procedure will be in all states the same.
An expert on the treatment of venereal diseases and on the social
methods of fighting them will be detailed to the state board of health
by the surgeon-general of the United States Public Health Service.
He will father the work of the dispensaries. Part of his job will be
holding the dispensaries up to the most approved modern methods.
From laboratories under governmental supervision, he will get in
their purity the drugs necessary to the cure. This is important.
Arsphenamine ("606"), for example, requires expert manufacture.
It was devised in Germany, and until the war Germany had a
monopoly of its manufacture. With the German supply cut off, our
chemists had to learn the method. Now the laboratories of America
make the best of all remedies; and the product of these laboratories
is available for the state and municipal dispensaries.

A closely knit organization encompassing the efforts of all agencies
fighting for venereal disease control has been effected through the
Division of Venereal Diseases of the United States Public Health
Service, for the purpose of meeting the problems in medical service,
education, law enforcement, and social service.

Even at this moment, the work has gone far enough so that a
victim of syphilis or gonorrhea who is unable to pay a private physi-
cian may get in touch with the best modern treatment by writing
to his state board of health. How much this spread of scientific treat-
ment will do to reduce deaths from syphilis, devastating operations
on women, blindness, physical defects, and idiocy in children, we
cannot even guess. Yet here is a glimpse. Babies of gonorrheal mothers
are likely to go blind. At birth, they get the infection in their eyes.
Now the surfaces of the eye are easily reached by drugs, and nitrate
of silver is almost invariably fatal to the germ of gonorrhea. One by
one, our states passed laws requiring physicians and midwives to
treat the eyes of all babies, at birth, with nitrate of silver. In the past
generation, 80 per cent of blind children were said to owe their
affliction to this cause; in this generation, only 20 per cent.

The universal free dispensary will do much toward quelling the
old enemy. And still, it is only the lesser feature of the campaign.
In a yellow fever epidemic we establish hospitals, staff them with

experts, send for the best drugs and apparatus, screen our houses
against the fatal mosquito. But that is not enough. If we want to
be free from the disease, then and forever, we must get at the mos-
quito and at the environment where he breeds. So, if we are to succeed
in the most important piece of sanitary work ever undertaken by-
man, we must drain the stagnant swamps of the underworld where
flourishes that deadly mosquito, the commercialized prostitute.

That job is not easy; not nearly so easy as draining the swamps,
flushing the sewers, and screening the cisterns of a yellow fever dis-
trict. In New Orleans during the trying days of epidemic, no sensible
person who understood the problem was ever in two minds about
what must be done. Especially, no one was driven by any natural or
unnatural desire to have contact with a Stegomyia mosquito. But
when we come to attack commercial prostitution we meet a human
problem. On the respectable side of society we must deal with diverse
views of morals and law enforcement, with whims, notions, fancies,
and especially with false modesty. And the prostitute cannot be
wiped out with one swat, like a mosquito. She is a human being —
sometimes purely wicked, sometimes only unfortunate, sometimes
intelligently evil, sometimes merely underbrained — but a human being
with a soul and with certain inherent rights. The job is hard, but
when did Americans ever hesitate to tackle a hard job? Our gigantic
will is our main hold, and "It can be done" our motto. I shall not
stop here to dwell on methods. The American Social Hygiene Asso-
ciation is waiting eagerly to explain that. If you will write them,
addressing 105 West Fortieth Street, New York, they will give you
the benefit of accumulated human experience and governmental co-
operation in putting down commercial prostitution and in curbing
the diseases which it breeds.

Only, in spite of our national will, our courage in attacking the
desperately hard job, we shall never succeed with this one if we
maintain the attitude of the silly little girls in the boat. Chambers
of commerce, central labor organizations, boards of education,
churches, and not least of all, women's clubs, must get sincerely,
enthusiastically into the fight. They must educate the public until
the dullest yokel knows that a case of venereal disease is as dangerous
to himself as a case of smallpox and more dangerous to society in
general, that it demands immediate report to the proper authorities,

[»]

and early, expert treatment, and that the best treatment is to be had
for the asking. They must force city governments, sometimes half-
compromise with the powers of evil, to drain the swamps and flush
the sewers of the underworld. Going further, they must work to
replace the low dance-hall, the red-light resort, with innocent and
healthful recreation. But they will not do this, they cannot, while
venereal disease is a subject only for shameful mention, in blushing
whispers, among intimates. The great ally to this most dangerous
enemy of the human race is false modesty.

We tingle with pride over our mighty achievement in crowning
the Great War with victory. Because all America was working with
a common good will, we created out of raw material an army of
4,000,000 men, equipped them, sent them overseas at the rate of
300,000 a month; we raised sums of money beyond imagination; we
saved voluntarily from our own tables the food which kept France,
Great Britain, Italy, and Belgium from starvation. Could we have
done that if we had barred all references to Germany from polite
society, if we had mentioned the atrocities in Belgium and northern
France only in shamefaced whispers, if our newspapers had refused
to print the name of the Kaiser? The leaders in our fight against
venereal disease want to take over for this campaign some of the
organized, self-sacrificing enthusiasm which won for us the late war.
That enthusiasm cannot live in a democracy like ours without open,
high-minded discussion.

M

DATE DUE

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

0037565117

EC 201

Irwin
Conquering an old enemv

Ir9