The Eugenic Marriage, Volume 2 (of 4): A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better BabiesHague, W. Grant (William Grant)
Science
The Eugenic Marriage, Volume 2 (of 4): A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies
Hague, W. Grant (William Grant)
Eugenics; Hygiene; Marriage
When disease of the deeper parts occur the patient is frequently
incapacitated and compelled to go to bed. He may have chills, fever and
sweats, intense pain and the passage of bloody urine. He may have to be
operated upon, and his general health may be permanently wrecked. So
long as the germs are present there is danger despite the most
scientific treatment. It is not the quality of the treatment that is at
fault, it is the presence of the germs; and since it is impossible to
pursue any certain method of eradication, we must continue treatment--as
long as the germs are present--and hope for favorable results. The
infection may last for many years. The germs having found entrance into
the small tubes in the interior organs they can only be dislodged with
difficulty, if at all. These pockets of germs may be excited to renewed
activity by sexual intercourse, or by injury to the parts, and may
reinfect the patient at any times. In a very considerable number of
these cases where the deeper structures are involved, the patient may
recover from the acute or painful period of the disease, only to find
that he is sterile. There are many such cases, and the most vindictive
individual who may believe that every who sins should be punished will
admit that sterility, as the price of a moment's forgetfulness, is a
terrible fee to pay.
SYPHILIS, OR THE "POX," is an infectious, germ blood disease. It is most
frequently acquired through sexual intercourse.
It may be acquired by direct contact with a diseased person. In order to
render such contact effective, it is essential that the skin of the
healthy person be abraded, or the contact may be directly on a mucous
membrane, as the mouth in the act of kissing.
It may be acquired by using any article which has been used by a
syphilitic, as a drinking cup, or towel.
It may be acquired through hereditary transmission.
Surgeons frequently contract syphilis while operating on, or examining
patients who have the disease. Dentists may convey it by means of
instruments which have not been rendered aseptic, or thoroughly clean.
Using a towel which has been used by a syphilitic has many times
conveyed the infection to an innocent party. For this reason the roller
towel has been done away with, and some states have legislated against
its use in hotels and other public places. To use dishes, spoons,
tobacco pipe, beer glasses, etc., which have been used by one having the
disease is an absolutely certain way of being infected. Cigars which may
have been made by a syphilitic will infect whoever smokes them with the
virus of the disease. Syphilis has been known to have been caught from
using the church communion cup. The public drinking-cup has been a
prolific source of syphilitic dissemination to innocents. Legislators
are just waking up to the danger that lurks in this institution and it
will no doubt be done away with, not only in public places, but on all
railroad and steamboat lines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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