It is sad to see ladies of high position defending such barbarous institutions as proxenetism (the business of keeping brothels) and the regulation of prostitution, imagining that they thereby protect their daughters against seduction. Such aberration can only be explained by suggestive influence on the part of men. Among men, and especially among many physicians, the belief in the efficacy of regulation depends on a mixture of blind routine, faith in authority and want of judgment, combined perhaps with more or less unconscious eroticism. We shall consider this point in detail later on. One of the most tragic effects of venereal disease is the contamination of an innocent wife, whose whole life, hitherto chaste and pure, becomes brutally deprived of its fruits, and whose dreams of the ideal and hopes of happiness become swamped in the mire with which prostitution has contaminated her. Is it surprising that love in such cases becomes replaced by bitterness and despair? Some modern authors, such as Brieux (_Les Avariés_) and André Couvreur (_La Graine_), have pictured in their dramas and novels the tragic effects of venereal disease and heredity in the family, as well as their social consequences. What is deplorable, is the enormous proportion of persons who are infected with venereal diseases. SEXUAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY With the exception of what is called sexual inversion and pathological love of the insane, sexual psychopathology (_i.e._, sexual pathology of mind) is chiefly limited to the domain of the sexual appetite, and originates mainly in fetichism (see Chapter V), to which it is closely allied. Let us first examine certain anomalies which partly concern the lower nervous functions. First of all a general question presents itself. Hereditary or congenital sexual anomalies have been distinguished from those which are said to result from vicious habits. Krafft-Ebing, in his celebrated book which we have already quoted, makes a capital difference between these two causes, and stigmatizes the acquired vices with great indignation. I do not deny that there is reason for the distinction, but we must take exception to two fundamental errors in the manner in which the facts are presented.