Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls; Or, War on the White Slave Trade
History
Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls; Or, War on the White Slave Trade
Prostitution
5. The persistence of this disease in the deeper parts long after it is
outwardly cured, leads to the unsuspected communication of the disease
to women with whom the individual may cohabit. Among these women may be
his bride, who thereupon enters upon a period of ill-health that may
ultimately compel the mutilation of her sexual organs by a surgical
operation to save her life. Much of the surgery of these organs
performed upon women has been rendered necessary by gonorrhoea,
contracted from the husband. Should she while infected with this
disease, give birth to a child, the baby's eyes may be attacked by the
infection, sometimes with immediate loss of sight. Probably 25 per cent
of the blindness of children is thus caused.
6. The other serious venereal disease, syphilis, infects the blood and
therewith all parts of the body. For months after infection with this
disease, the individual may communicate it by a kiss as well as by
cohabitation; and articles moistened by his secretions--towels, drinking
glasses, pipes, syringes, etc.--may also convey the infection. While
under proper treatment the disease is not dangerous to life in the
earlier years, yet the possibilities of transmitting the contagion
should forbid marriage for at least three years.
The most serious results of syphilis appear years after its acquisition,
when the individual has been lulled into a false sense of security by
long freedom from its outward manifestations. It attacks all organs of
the body, slowly and insidiously producing the symptoms of consumption,
dyspepsia, liver disease and many other ailments. Since we have at
present no reliable means for proving that one who has acquired the
disease is absolutely cured thereof, physicians impress upon these
patients two injunctions: first that they shall take the known remedies
for the disease one or two months in every year, and second that they
shall confide to every physician whom they may consult for any chronic
or obscure ailment, the fact that they have been infected with
syphilis. This latter injunction is especially important; for nearly all
disorders produced by syphilis can be promptly checked by certain
remedies; yet many of these disorders affecting internal organs of the
body, may not be identified as of syphilitic origin by the unsuspecting
physician, who therefore fails to administer the needed and successful
remedy. By directing the doctor's attention to the possible syphilitic
origin of the disease through a frank confession of his early infection,
the patient may save his health or even his life.
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