It is well admitted now by all that ignorance is not innocence and that knowledge of the consequences of social diseases is likely to be a very important factor in preventing young men from taking risks that would otherwise be considered very slight, perhaps. As a matter of fact, nothing can be more helpful from the ethical standpoint than this knowledge of how closely may follow the wages of sin, which is death. It is for this reason that clergymen would seem to owe it, as a duty to themselves and their position in social {319} life, to acquire a certain knowledge of these affections. A very great change has come over the attitude of the medical profession towards the so-called venereal diseases in recent years. A quarter of a century ago they were considered to be not very serious after all, and indeed in some cases to be no more serious than a cold, a mere passing incident in life. Now it is well recognised that almost never do they leave their victim in the state of health in which he was before, and that unfortunately the deterioration of tissues which has taken place is likely to be enduring. Even many years afterwards there may be serious complications involving health or even life. For instance, it is now very generally conceded that paresis, or what is sometimes called general paralysis of the insane,--a progressive mental and nervous disease, which invariably ends fatally in from three to seven years,--is always due to one of the so-called social or venereal diseases. How important this affection has become in modern life can be best appreciated from the fact that in Europe nearly one in four of those who die in the insane asylums are sufferers from paresis. In this country the disease is not so frequent, the proportion being less than one in five or even one in six. The disease is becoming more and more common, however, as large city life becomes more prominent, and as the possibility of infection with social diseases is more widespread.