In speaking, as I have done, of certain alternatives that are extensively adopted instead of marriage, namely, the resorting to houses of ill-fame and self-abuse, I have merely mentioned the fact. I have not dwelt upon the risks, and frightful risks they are, accompanying both these measures. The lurid halo surrounding the strange woman, attracting men, as it were, by its very dangers, like moths fluttering about the candle that is to prove their destruction, has been commented upon through the centuries by writers sacred and profane. It has remained, however, for modern science to prove, what had long been suspected, that the venereal lues resulting from unclean intercourse, is, in one of its forms at least, a disease at times wholly ineradicable from the system, and transmissible in all its virulence to children’s children.[23] Were physicians to reveal to the unsuspecting victims of man’s treachery or early backslidings, whom they are called upon to treat in the upper walks of life, the actual character and history of many of their diseases, there would indeed be weepings and wailings and gnashing of teeth. In the absence of supervision, medical inspection, and the license of public women, the chances are greatly in favor of the existence in those poor fallen ones of contagious disease, which, remaining latent in man’s system, or directly transplanted to his home, may wreck all his hopes of future happiness. “Nothing tends more certainly to wither the energies of youth and blast the hopes of manhood. It is not merely that the mind is polluted; the body is enervated. A thousand forms of disease may hang round the victim, embitter his existence, or destroy his hopes in life, which he never imagines to have had such an origin. But even farther than this: Providence seems to have stamped this vice with more than its ordinary token of displeasure, by rendering its votaries liable to that terrible disease from which so few of them ultimately escape. The effects of this disease, as is well known, are not always to be eradicated. They are not confined to present suffering. They may set a mark upon a man as indelible as that of Cain. They may cling to him through life, may destroy his health, undermine his constitution, hasten his death,—may even terminate in disfigurement and mutilation. Nay, they may even so taint his blood as to descend to his very offspring, and inflict upon another generation the fearful consequences of his transgression.”[24]