The safety of the community, so far as its sanitary condition is concerned, imperatively demands an inquiry like this. It is no longer necessary to prove that syphilitic taint is propagated by the direct agency of prostitution. That fact has been demonstrated years ago, and, reasoning from it, we rightly infer that the ravages of that poison can be checked by compelling abandoned women to certain judicious observances. One thing is absolutely certain, that the public health can not be endangered by the interference, and there is a moral certainty that it may be materially benefited. The value of this investigation, so far as relates to purely physical questions, consists in not merely pointing out where the evil is, but in showing to what extent it exists, and then contrasting the state of venereal disease, its rapid increase and augmenting virulence in this country, with its condition in those nations where similar investigations have resulted in practical measures. Public safety imperatively demands this investigation as a means of tracing the habitual resorts of criminals. It is not necessary to inform any man conversant with city life that houses of ill fame are the common resort of the most abandoned of the male part of the community. There the assassin, against whose hand no life is secure, has a safe retreat. The burglar, who commits his depredations under cover of the shade of night; the swindler, who defrauds the honest trader by false representations; the counterfeiter, who earns a precarious living by his unholy trade--these hold there high carnival. There they meet to recount their exploits and divide the spoils; to devise new schemes of wickedness, or lay plans by which simple youths may be allured to vilest practices. There is another phase of public safety which demands this investigation, namely, the preservation of female honor. Those who frequent these haunts of vice are forever employed in casting about snares to entrap the young, the unwary, or the friendless woman. They tempt her to minister to their libidinous desires, and swell the already overcrowded ranks of frailty. While these resorts are secret, there is every facility for such infamous conduct, with but slight probability of its detection, and still slighter opportunities for prevention. Thither, too, young men, and even boys, are inveigled by those who have grown old in vice, and there are they taught the horrid mysteries of unhallowed passion. Many a promising youth has left such haunts as these not only with a ruined constitution, but with loss of character and honor; many whose names swell the criminal records of the day date their first step in crime from the hour they entered a common brothel.