I promised to explain to you what I meant by the black plagues. It is strange when anything is as widely spread as are these diseases that so few people know anything about them, or realize their importance. At one time epidemics of typhoid fever were regarded as a revelation of the wrath of God. Now we know they are due to carelessness and lack of sanitation. It is the same with the sufferings of women. We used to think it was a dispensation of Providence if a woman were compelled to undergo an operation. Now we know it usually is due to someone's lack of care, to a desecration of Nature's teachings. I remember when I was quite young hearing mention made of a "bad disease." Concerning the nature of this disease I was ignorant but I gathered the idea that it was some terrible disease which was contracted only by the most depraved of mortals. How little I suspected its widely-spread distribution, and how little I dreamed that among my acquaintances might be any afflicted with these diseases! nor did I dream of the danger of innocent contagion. Since then I have learned what these diseases were. Now we call them the black plagues, because, owing to the prejudice of the majority, we dare not use their correct names generally. I have no doubt you will be as surprised and shocked as I was at the things I am going to impart to you. By black plagues we mean the two diseases spoken of by physicians as the venereal diseases, because they usually are contracted during sexual intercourse. The most common of these diseases is gonorrhoea, or clap, as it often is called by men. How common it is may be judged by a statement made by a professor to his class in the medical college that at least eighty per cent. of the men in the world have contracted it sometime during their lives. Even the most conservative give the estimate as sixty per cent. The prevalent idea common among men that it is no worse than a cold--a mere annoyance that all men must expect and endure sometime--is lamentable. The persistence of the disease in the deeper structures long after it outwardly is cured leads to unexpected communication of it to women, among whom may be the young wife. As a result she enters upon a period of ill-health that ultimately may compel the mutilation of her body by a surgical operation to save her life. Much of the surgery performed upon the female organs has been rendered necessary by disease contracted from the husband.