[155] "Cortegiana, hoc est meretrix honesta," wrote Burchard, the Pope's Secretary, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, _Diarium_, ed. Thuasne, vol. ii, p. 442; other authorities are quoted by Thuasne in a note.
[156] Burchard, _Diarium_, vol. iii, p. 167. Thuasne quotes other authorities in confirmation.
[157] The example of Holland, where some large cities have adopted the regulation of prostitution and others have not, is instructive as regards the illusory nature of the advantages of regulation. In 1883 Dr. Després brought forward figures, supplied by Dutch officials, showing that in Rotterdam, where prostitution was regulated, both prostitution and venereal diseases were more prevalent than in Amsterdam, a city without regulation (A. Després, _La Prostitution en France_, p. 122).
[158] It was in 1802 that the medical inspection of prostitutes in Paris brothels was introduced, though not until 1825 fully established and made general.
[159] M.L. Heidingsfeld, "The Control of Prostitution," _Journal American Medical Association_, January 30, 1904.
[160] See, e.g., G. Bérault, _La Maison de Tolérance_, Thèse de Paris, 1904.
[161] Thus the circumstances of the English army in India are of a special character. A number of statements (from the reports of committees, official publications, etc.) regarding the good influence of regulation in reducing venereal diseases in India are brought together by Surgeon-Colonel F.H. Welch, "The Prevention of Syphilis," _Lancet_, August 12, 1899. The system has been abolished, but only as the result of a popular outcry and not on the question of its merits.
[162] Thus Richard, who accepts regulation and was instructed to report on it for the Paris Municipal Council, would not have girls inscribed as professional prostitutes until they are of age and able to realize what they are binding themselves to (E. Richard, _La Prostitution à Paris_, p. 147). But at that age a large proportion of prostitutes have been practicing their profession for years.
[163] In Germany, where the cure of infected prostitutes under regulation is nearly everywhere compulsory, usually at the cost of the community, it is found that 18 is the average age at which they are affected by syphilis; the average age of prostitutes in brothels is higher than that of those outside, and a much larger proportion have therefore become immune to disease (Blaschko, "Hygiene der Syphilis," in Weyl's _Handbuch der Hygiene_, Bd. ii, p. 62, 1900).
[165] Bonger brings together statistics illustrating this point, op. cit., pp. 402-6.
[168] _Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene_, 1906. Heft 10, p. 460. But this cause is undoubtedly effective in some cases of unmarried women in Germany unable to get work (see article by Sister Henrietta Arendt, Police-Assistant at Stuttgart, _Sexual-Probleme_, December, 1908).
[169] Thus, for instance, we find Irma von Troll-Borostyáni saying in her book, _Im Freien Reich_ (p. 176): "Go and ask these unfortunate creatures if they willingly and freely devoted themselves to vice. And nearly all of them will tell you a story of need and destitution, of hunger and lack of work, which compelled them to it, or else of love and seduction and the fear of the discovery of their false step which drove them out of their homes, helpless and forsaken, into the pool of vice from which there is hardly any salvation." It is, of course, quite true that the prostitute is frequently ready to tell such stories to philanthropic persons who expect to hear them, and sometimes even put the words into her mouth.
[170] C. Booth, _Life and Labour_, final volume, p. 125. Similarly in Sweden, Kullberg states that girls of thirteen to seventeen, living at home with their parents in comfortable circumstances, have often been found on the streets.
[172] In Lyons, according to Potton, of 3884 prostitutes, 3194 abandoned, or apparently abandoned, their profession; in Paris a very large number became servants, dressmakers, or tailoresses, occupations which, in many cases, doubtless, they had exercised before (Parent-Duchâtelet, _De la Prostitution_, 1857, vol. i, p. 584; vol. ii, p. 451). Sloggett (quoted by Acton) stated that at Davenport, 250 of the 1775 prostitutes there married. It is well known that prostitutes occasionally marry extremely well. It was remarked nearly a century ago that marriages of prostitutes to rich men were especially frequent in England, and usually turned out well; the same seems to be true still. In their own social rank they not infrequently marry cabmen and policemen, the two classes of men with whom they are brought most closely in contact in the streets. As regards Germany, C.K. Schneider (_Die Prostituirte und die Gesellschaft_), states that young prostitutes take up all sorts of occupations and situations, sometimes, if they have saved a little money, establishing a business, while old prostitutes become procuresses, brothel-keepers, lavatory women, and so on. Not a few prostitutes marry, he adds, but the proportion among inscribed German prostitutes is very small, less than 2 per cent.
[174] Reuss and other writers have reproduced typical extracts from the private account books of prostitutes, showing the high rate of their earnings. Even in the common brothels, in Philadelphia (according to Goodchild, "The Social Evil in Philadelphia," _Arena_, March, 1896), girls earn twenty dollars or more a week, which is far more than they could earn in any other occupation open to them.
[178] Raciborski, _Traité de l'Impuissance_, p. 20. It may be added that Bergh, a leading authority on the anatomical peculiarities of the external female sexual organs, who believe that strong development of the external genital organs accompanies libidinous tendencies, has not found such development to be common among prostitutes.
[179] Hammer, who has had much opportunity of studying the psychology of prostitutes, remarks that he has seen no reason to suspect sexual coldness (_Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene_, 1906, Heft 2, p. 85), although, as he has elsewhere stated, he is of opinion that indolence, rather than excess of sensuality, is the chief cause of prostitution.
[180] See "The Sexual Impulse in Women," in the third volume of these _Studies_.
[181] Tait stated that in Edinburgh many married women living with their husbands in comfortable circumstances, and having children, were found to be acting as prostitutes, that is, in the regular habit of making assignations with strangers (W. Tait, _Magdalenism in Edinburgh_, 1842, p. 16).
[182] Janke brings together opinions to this effect, _Die Willkürliche Hervorbringen des Geschlechts_, p. 275. "If we compare a prostitute of thirty-five with her respectable sister," Acton remarked (_Prostitution_, 1870, p. 39), "we seldom find that the constitutional ravages often thought to be necessary consequences of prostitution exceed those attributable to the cares of a family and the heart-wearing struggles of virtuous labor."
[183] Hirschfeld states (_Wesen der Liebe_, p. 35) that the desire for intercourse with a sympathetic person is heightened, and not decreased, by a professional act of coitus.
[184] This has been clearly shown by Hans Ostwald (from whom I take the above-quoted observation of a prostitute), one of the best authorities on prostitute life and character; see, e.g., his article, "Die erotischen Beziehungen zwischen Dirne und Zuhälter," _Sexual-Probleme_, June, 1908. In the subsequent number of the same periodical (July, 1908, p. 393) Dr. Max Marcuse supports Ostwald's experiences, and says that the letters of prostitutes and their bullies are love-letters exactly like those of respectable people of the same class, and with the same elements of love and jealousy; these relationships, he remarks, often prove very enduring. The prostitute author of the _Tagebuch einer Verlorenen_ (p. 147) also has some remarks on the prostitute's relations to her bully, stating that it is simply the natural relationship of a girl to her lover.
[185] Thus Moraglia found that among 180 prostitutes in North Italian brothels, and among 23 elegant Italian and foreign cocottes, every one admitted that she masturbated, preferably by friction of the clitoris; 113 of them, the majority, declared that they preferred solitary or mutual masturbation to normal coitus. Hammer states (_Zehn Lebensläufe Berliner Kontrollmädchen_ in Ostwald's series of "Grosstadt Dokumente," 1905) that when in hospital all but three or four of sixty prostitutes masturbate, and those who do not are laughed at by the rest.
[186] _Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Jahrgang VII, 1905, p. 148; "Sexual Inversion," vol. ii of these _Studies_, Ch. IV. Hammer found that of twenty-five prostitutes in a reformatory as many as twenty-three were homosexual, or, on good grounds, suspected to be such. Hirschfeld (_Berlins Drittes Geschlecht_, p. 65) mentions that prostitutes sometimes accost better-class women who, from their man-like air, they take to be homosexual; from persons of their own sex prostitutes will accept a smaller remuneration, and sometimes refuse payment altogether.
[187] With prostitution, as with criminality, it is of course difficult to disentangle the element of heredity from that of environment, even when we have good grounds for believing that the factor of heredity here, as throughout the whole of life, cannot fail to carry much weight. It is certain, in any case, that prostitution frequently runs in families. "It has often been my experience," writes a former prostitute (Hedwig Hard, _Beichte einer Gefallenen_, p. 156) "that when in a family a girl enters this path, her sister soon afterwards follows her: I have met with innumerable cases; sometimes three sisters will all be on the register, and I knew a case of four sisters, whose mother, a midwife, had been in prison, and the father drank. In this case, all four sisters, who were very beautiful, married, one at least very happily, to a rich doctor who took her out of the brothel at sixteen and educated her."
[188] This fact is not contradicted by the undoubted fact that prostitutes are by no means always contented with the life they choose.
[189] This point has been discussed by Bloch, _Sexualleben unserer Zeit_, Ch. XIII.
[190] Various series of observations are summarized by Lombroso and Ferrero, _La Donna Delinquente_, 1893, Part III, cap. IV.
[192] Similarly Lord Morley has written (_Diderot_, vol. ii, p. 20): "The purity of the family, so lovely and dear as it is, has still only been secured hitherto by retaining a vast and dolorous host of female outcasts...upon whose heads, as upon the scapegoat of the Hebrew ordinance, we put all the iniquities of the children of the house, and all their transgressions in all their sins, and then banish them with maledictions into the foul outer wilderness and the land not inhabited."
[194] Augustine, _De Ordine_, Bk. II, Ch. IV.
[195] _De Regimine Principum_ (_Opuscula XX_), lib. iv, cap. XIV. I am indebted to the Rev. H. Northcote for the reference to the precise place where this statement occurs; it is usually quoted more vaguely.
[196] Lea, _History of Auricular Confession_, vol. ii, p. 69. There was even, it seems, an eccentric decision of the Salamanca theologians that a nun might so receive money, "licite et valide."
[197] Lea, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 263, 399.
[198] Rabutaux, _De la Prostitution en Europe_, pp. 22 et seq.
[199] Burton, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Sect. III, Mem. IV, Subs. II.
[200] B. Mandeville, _Remarks to Fable of the Bees_, 1714, pp. 93-9; cf. P. Sakmann, _Bernard de Mandeville_, pp. 101-4.
[201] These conditions favor temporary free unions, but they also favor prostitution. The reason is, according to Adolf Gerson (_Sexual-Probleme_, September, 1908), that the woman of good class will not have free unions. Partly moved by moral traditions, and partly by the feeling that a man should be legally her property, she will not give herself out of love to a man; and he therefore turns to the lower-class woman who gives herself for money.
[202] Many girls, said Ellice Hopkins, get into mischief merely because they have in them an element of the "black kitten," which must frolic and play, but has no desire to get into danger. "Do you not think it a little hard," she added, "that men should have dug by the side of her foolish dancing feet a bottomless pit, and that she cannot have her jump and fun in safety, and put on her fine feathers like the silly bird-witted thing she is, without a single false step dashing her over the brink, and leaving her with the very womanhood dashed out of her?"
[204] As quoted by Bloch, _Sexualleben Unserer Zeit_, p. 358. In Berlin during recent years the number of prostitutes has increased at nearly double the rate at which the general population has increased. It is no doubt probable that the supply tends to increase the demand.
[207] Bonger (_Criminalité et Conditions Economiques_, p. 406) refers to the prevalence of prostitution among dressmakers and milliners, as well as among servants, as showing the influence of contact with luxury, and adds that the rich women, who look down on prostitution, do not always realize that they are themselves an important factor of prostitution, both by their luxury and their idleness; while they do not seem to be aware that they would themselves act in the same way if placed under the same conditions.
[208] H. Lippert, in his book on prostitution in Hamburg, laid much stress on the craving for dress and adornment as a factor of prostitution, and Bloch (_Das Sexualleben unsurer Zeit_, p. 372) considers that this factor is usually underestimated, and that it exerts an especially powerful influence on servants.
[209] Since this was written the influence of several generations of town-life in immunizing a stock to the evils of that life (though without reference to prostitution) has been set forth by Reibmayr, _Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genies_, 1908, vol. ii, pp. 73 _et seq._ [210] In France this intimacy is embodied in the delicious privilege of _tutoiement_. "The mystery of _tutoiement!_" exclaims Ernest La Jennesse in _L'Holocauste:_ "Barriers broken down, veils drawn away, and the ease of existence! At a time when I was very lonely, and trying to grow accustomed to Paris and to misfortune, I would go miles--on foot, naturally--to see a girl cousin and an aunt, merely to have something to _tutoyer_. Sometimes they were not at home, and I had to come back with my _tu_, my thirst for confidence and familiarity and brotherliness."
[211] For some facts and references to the extensive literature concerning this trade, see, e.g., Bloch, _Das Sexualleben Unserer Zeit_, pp. 374-376; also K.M. Baer, _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, Sept., 1908; Paulucci de Calboli, _Nuova Antologia_, April, 1902.
[212] These considerations do not, it is true, apply to many kinds of sexual perverts who form an important proportion of the clients of brothels. These can frequently find what they crave inside a brothel much more easily than outside.
[213] Thus Charles Booth, in his great work on _Life and Labor in London_, final volume (p. 128), recommends that "houses of accommodation," instead of being hunted out, should be tolerated as a step towards the suppression of brothels.
[214] "Towns like Woolwich, Aldershot, Portsmouth, Plymouth," it has been said, "abound with wretched, filthy monsters that bear no resemblance to women; but it is drink, scorn, brutality and disease which have reduced them to this state, not the mere fact of associating with men."
[215] "The contract of prostitution in the opinion of prostitutes themselves," Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo remark (_La Mala Vida en Madrid_, p. 254), "cannot be assimilated to a sale, nor to a contract of work, nor to any other form of barter recognized by the civil law. They consider that in these pacts there always enters an element which makes it much more like a gift in a matter in which no payment could be adequate. 'A woman's body is without price' is an axiom of prostitution. The money placed in the hands of her who procures the satisfaction of sexual desire is not the price of the act, but an offering which the priestess of Venus applies to her maintenance." To the Spaniard, it is true, every transaction which resembles trade is repugnant, but the principle underlying this feeling holds good of prostitution generally.
[216] _Journal des Goncourt_, vol. iii; this was in 1866.
[217] Rev. the Hon. C. Lyttelton, _Training of the Young in Laws of Sex_, p. 42.
[218] See, e.g., R.W. Taylor, _Treatise on Sexual Disorders_, 1897, pp. 74-5. Georg Hirth (_Wege zur Heimat_, 1909, p. 619) narrates the case of a young officer who, being excited by the caresses of his betrothed and having too much respect for her to go further than this, and too much respect for himself to resort to masturbation, knew nothing better than to go to a prostitute. Syphilis developed a few days after the wedding. Hirth adds, briefly, that the results were terrible.
[219] It is an oft-quoted passage, but can scarcely be quoted too often: "You see that this wrought-iron plate is not quite flat: it sticks up a little, here towards the left--'cockles,' as we say. How shall we flatten it? Obviously, you reply, by hitting down on the part that is prominent. Well, here is a hammer, and I give the plate a blow as you advise. Harder, you say. Still no effect. Another stroke? Well, there is one, and another, and another. The prominence remains, you see: the evil is as great as ever--greater, indeed. But that is not all. Look at the warp which the plate has got near the opposite edge. Where it was flat before it is now curved. A pretty bungle we have made of it. Instead of curing the original defect we have produced a second. Had we asked an artisan practiced in 'planishing,' as it is called, he would have told us that no good was to be done, but only mischief, by hitting down on the projecting part. He would have taught us how to give variously-directed and specially-adjusted blows with a hammer elsewhere: so attacking the evil, not by direct, but by indirect actions. The required process is less simple than you thought. Even a sheet of metal is not to be successfully dealt with after those common-sense methods in which you have so much confidence. What, then, shall we say about a society?...Is humanity more readily straightened than an iron plate?" (_The Study of Sociology_, p. 270.)
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CONQUEST OF THE VENEREAL DISEASES.
The Significance of the Venereal Diseases--The History of Syphilis--The Problem of Its Origin--The Social Gravity of Syphilis--The Social Dangers of Gonorrhoea--The Modern Change in the Methods of Combating Venereal Diseases--Causes of the Decay of the System of Police Regulation--Necessity of Facing the Facts--The Innocent Victims of Venereal Diseases--Diseases Not Crimes--The Principle of Notification--The Scandinavian System--Gratuitous Treatment--Punishment for Transmitting Venereal Diseases--Sexual Education in Relation to Venereal Diseases--Lectures, Etc.--Discussion in Novels and on the Stage--The "Disgusting" Not the "Immoral."
It may, perhaps, excite surprise that in the preceding discussion of prostitution scarcely a word has been said of venereal diseases. In the eyes of many people, the question of prostitution is simply the question of syphilis. But from the psychological point of view with which we are directly concerned, as from the moral point of view with which we cannot fail to be indirectly concerned, the question of the diseases which may be, and so frequently are, associated with prostitution cannot be placed in the first line of significance. The two questions, however intimately they may be mingled, are fundamentally distinct. Not only would venereal diseases still persist even though prostitution had absolutely ceased, but, on the other hand, when we have brought syphilis under the same control as we have brought the somewhat analogous disease of leprosy, the problem of prostitution would still remain.
Yet, even from the standpoint which we here occupy, it is scarcely possible to ignore the question of venereal disease, for the psychological and moral aspects of prostitution, and even the whole question of the sexual relationships, are, to some extent, affected by the existence of the serious diseases which are specially liable to be propagated by sexual intercourse.
Fournier, one of the leading authorities on this subject, has well said that syphilis, alcoholism, and tuberculosis are the three modern plagues. At a much earlier period (1851) Schopenhauer in _Parerga und Paralipomena_ had expressed the opinion that the two things which mark modern social life, in distinction from that of antiquity, and to the advantage of the latter, are the knightly principle of honor and venereal disease; together, he added, they have poisoned life, and introduced a hostile and even diabolical element into the relations of the sexes, which has indirectly affected all other social relationships.[220] It is like a merchandise, says Havelburg, of syphilis, which civilization has everywhere carried, so that only a very few remote districts of the globe (as in Central Africa and Central Brazil) are to-day free from it.[221] It is undoubtedly true that in the older civilized countries the manifestations of syphilis, though still severe and a cause of physical deterioration in the individual and the race, are less severe than they were even a generation ago.[222] This is partly the result of earlier and better treatment, partly, it is possible, the result also of the syphilization of the race, some degree of immunity having now become an inherited possession, although it must be remembered that an attack of syphilis does not necessarily confer immunity from the actual attack of the disease even in the same individual. But it must be added that, even though it has become less severe, syphilis, in the opinion of many, is nevertheless still spreading, even in the chief centres of civilization; this has been noted alike in Paris and in London.[223] According to the belief which is now tending to prevail, syphilis was brought to Europe at the end of the fifteenth century by the first discoverers of America. In Seville, the chief European port for America, it was known as the Indian disease, but when Charles VIII and his army first brought it to Italy in 1495, although this connection with the French was only accidental, it was called the Gallic disease, "a monstrous disease," said Cataneus, "never seen in previous centuries and altogether unknown in the world."
The synonyms of syphilis were at first almost innumerable. It was in his Latin poem _Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus_, written before 1521 and published at Verona in 1530, that Fracastorus finally gave the disease its now universally accepted name, inventing a romantic myth to account for its origin.
Although the weight of authoritative opinion now seems to incline towards the belief that syphilis was brought to Europe from America, on the discovery of the New World, it is only within quite recent years that that belief has gained ground, and it scarcely even yet seems certain that what the Spaniards brought back from America was really a disease absolutely new to the Old World, and not a more virulent form of an old disease of which the manifestations had become benign. Buret, for instance (_Le Syphilis Aujourd'hui et chez les Anciens_, 1890), who some years ago reached "the deep conviction that syphilis dates from the creation of man," and believed, from a minute study of classic authors, that syphilis existed in Rome under the Cæsars, was of opinion that it has broken out at different places and at different times, in epidemic bursts exhibiting different combinations of its manifold symptoms, so that it passed unnoticed at ordinary times, and at the times of its more intense manifestation was looked upon as a hitherto unknown disease. It was thus regarded in classic times, he considers, as coming from Egypt, though he looked upon its real home as Asia. Leopold Glück has likewise quoted (_Archiv für Dermatologie und Syphilis_, January, 1899) passages from the medical epigrams of a sixteenth century physician, Gabriel Ayala, declaring that syphilis is not really a new disease, though popularly supposed to be so, but an old disease which has broken out with hitherto unknown violence. There is, however, no conclusive reason for believing that syphilis was known at all in classic antiquity. A.V. Notthaft ("Die Legende von der Althertums-syphilis," in the Rindfleisch _Festschrift_, 1907, pp. 377-592) has critically investigated the passages in classic authors which were supposed by Rosenbaum, Buret, Proksch and others to refer to syphilis. It is quite true, Notthaft admits, that many of these passages might possibly refer to syphilis, and one or two would even better fit syphilis than any other disease. But, on the whole, they furnish no proof at all, and no syphilologist, he concludes, has ever succeeded in demonstrating that syphilis was known in antiquity. That belief is a legend. The most damning argument against it, Notthaft points out, is the fact that, although in antiquity there were great physicians who were keen observers, not one of them gives any description of the primary, secondary, tertiary, and congenital forms of this disease. China is frequently mentioned as the original home of syphilis, but this belief is also quite without basis, and the Japanese physician, Okamura, has shown (_Monatsschrift für praktische Dermatologie_, vol. xxviii, pp. 296 et seq.) that Chinese records reveal nothing relating to syphilis earlier than the sixteenth century. At the Paris Academy of Medicine in 1900 photographs from Egypt were exhibited by Fouquet of human remains which date from B.C. 2400, showing bone lesions which seemed to be clearly syphilitic; Fournier, however, one of the greatest of authorities, considered that the diagnosis of syphilis could not be maintained until other conditions liable to produce somewhat similar bone lesions had been eliminated (_British Medical Journal_, September 29, 1900, p. 946). In Florida and various regions of Central America, in undoubtedly pre-Columbian burial places, diseased bones have been found which good authorities have declared could not be anything else than syphilitic (e.g., _British Medical Journal_, November 20, 1897, p. 1487), though it may be noted that so recently as 1899 the cautious Virchow stated that pre-Columbian syphilis in America was still for him an open question (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Heft 2 and 3, 1899, p. 216). From another side, Seler, the distinguished authority on Mexican antiquity, shows (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1895, Heft 5, p. 449) that the ancient Mexicans were acquainted with a disease which, as they described it, might well have been syphilis. It is obvious, however, that while the difficulty of demonstrating syphilitic diseased bones in America is as great as in Europe, the demonstration, however complete, would not suffice to show that the disease had not already an existence also in the Old World. The plausible theory of Ayala that fifteenth century syphilis was a virulent recrudescence of an ancient disease has frequently been revived in more modern times. Thus J. Knott ("The Origin of Syphilis," _New York Medical Journal_, October 31, 1908) suggests that though not new in fifteenth century Europe, it was then imported afresh in a form rendered more aggravated by coming from an exotic race, as is believed often to be the case.
It was in the eighteenth century that Jean Astruc began the rehabilitation of the belief that syphilis is really a comparatively modern disease of American origin, and since then various authorities of weight have given their adherence to this view. It is to the energy and learning of Dr. Iwan Bloch, of Berlin (the first volume of whose important work, _Der Ursprung der Syphilis_, was published in 1901) that we owe the fullest statement of the evidence in favor of the American origin of syphilis. Bloch regards Ruy Diaz de Isla, a distinguished Spanish physician, as the weightiest witness for the Indian origin of the disease, and concludes that it was brought to Europe by Columbus's men from Central America, more precisely from the Island of Haiti, to Spain in 1493 and 1494, and immediately afterwards was spread by the armies of Charles VIII in an epidemic fashion over Italy and the other countries of Europe.
It may be added that even if we have to accept the theory that the central regions of America constitute the place of origin of European syphilis, we still have to recognize that syphilis has spread in the North American continent very much more slowly and partially than it has in Europe, and even at the present day there are American Indian tribes among whom it is unknown. Holder, on the basis of his own experiences among Indian tribes, as well as of wide inquiries among agency physicians, prepared a table showing that among some thirty tribes and groups of tribes, eighteen were almost or entirely free from venereal disease, while among thirteen it was very prevalent. Almost without exception, the tribes where syphilis is rare or unknown refuse sexual intercourse with strangers, while those among whom such disease is prevalent are morally lax. It is the whites who are the source of infection among these tribes (A.B. Holder, "Gynecic Notes Among the American Indians," _American Journal of Obstetrics_, 1892, No. 1).
Syphilis is only one, certainly the most important, of a group of three entirely distinct "venereal diseases" which have only been distinguished in recent times, and so far as their precise nature and causation are concerned, are indeed only to-day beginning to be understood, although two of them were certainly known in antiquity. It is but seventy years ago since Ricord, the great French syphilologist, following Bassereau, first taught the complete independence of syphilis both from gonorrhoea and soft chancre, at the same time expounding clearly the three stages, primary, secondary and tertiary, through which syphilitic manifestations tend to pass, while the full extent of tertiary syphilitic symptoms is scarcely yet grasped, and it is only to-day beginning to be generally realized that two of the most prevalent and serious diseases of the brain and nervous system--general paralysis and tabes dorsalis or locomotor ataxia--have their predominant though not sole and exclusive cause in the invasion of the syphilitic poison many years before. In 1879 a new stage of more precise knowledge of the venereal diseases began with Neisser's discovery of the gonococcus which is the specific cause of gonorrhoea. This was followed a few years later by the discovery by Ducrey and Unna of the bacillus of soft chancre, the least important of the venereal diseases because exclusively local in its effects. Finally, in 1905--after