Some years ago the author treated a pure, innocent, seventeen-year-old nurse-girl for syphilis of the pharynx who contracted the disease from the syphilitic infant she was taking care of. Both the host of the infection and the victim were thus perfectly innocent. Such innocent people surely do not deserve punishment and ought to be protected. The traditional shameful character with which the venereal diseases have been invested by popular prejudice is surely absent in this class of cases. The only practical protection is the removal of the mist of ignorance.[BR] Ignorance of the results of venereal diseases is often ruinous. Especially is ignorance, prevailing about gonorrhoea, often very disastrous. Gonorrhoea is commonly considered a benign local disease. Young men think it a joke to have gonorrhoeal infection several times in their lives. They have imbibed false views in regard to the trivial character of this venereal infection. They think gonorrhoea is not more serious than a bad cold. The young man who happens to have escaped gonorrhoeal infection is the target of his friends’ jests. Yet gonorrhoeal infection may make a tragedy of marriage by destroying the woman’s conceptional capacity and rendering her irrevocably sterile, in this way producing childlessness, and by sending thousands of women to the operating table to be condemned to the mutilation of their generative organs to save their lives. If the proper knowledge of all these dangers would be imparted to her, it is inconceivable that any woman, with a fair amount of judgment, would permit the approach of a possibly tainted man. Every girl, who knew all the dangers of contracting such a disease, would be more capable of understanding the seriousness of her taking a false step and would guard herself against it. If the girl knew of the prevalence of venereal diseases among men, and her great danger from this source, she would not so easily debase herself and sully her vestal purity. Only full knowledge can adequately assist her. Experience has shown again and again that thousands suffer physical and moral wreckage by trusting the blind instinct as the sole and sufficient guide for its regulation. The girl ought to know that the sexual instinct is imperious in its demands. If she yields to an ardent lover she runs danger to contract a serious disease.