It is claimed that out of 1,000 married men in New York 800 have gonorrhoea, and 90 per cent. of these have not been cured and can infect their wives. The result is that at least three out of every five married women in New York have gonorrhoea. This seems astounding and exaggerated, but the following quotation is taken from an authority and is considered quite conservative: “Over 90 per cent. of our young men stray from the path of virtue before marriage; 60 per cent. contract venereal diseases which are difficult to cure; more wives than prostitutes have venereal diseases; one-eighth of all diseases in New York hospitals are venereal; 20,000 infected persons walk the streets daily.” It seems to me that the above facts are sufficient to warrant every girl and boy knowing something about these diseases. SOME CONSEQUENCES OF IGNORANCE AND SILENCE.—PART II. The two venereal diseases which I will tell you something of here are those most commonly known to all—gonorrhoea and syphilis. Gonorrhoea is an inflammation of the urethra (water passage) characterized by redness, swelling, smarting pain on the passing of water, and accompanied by thick purulent (poisonous) discharge, at first creamy in color, and later a greenish yellow. It is considered by the highest authorities as solely a sexual disease in adults, depending almost exclusively upon sexual intercourse as its mode of origin and infection. In children, however, it is not the rule, especially in infants and little girls, who can be infected by the hands of the mother or nurse being soiled with the discharge, also where the fresh discharge is on towels, toilets, etc. It starts an inflammation of the outer delicate parts but seldom enters the urethra. In former days gonorrhoea was considered an ordinary catarrhal inflammation, “no worse than a bad cold,” the old saying went. It was thought to originate in women with the discharge at the end of the menstrual period, or leucorrhoea; in fact any secretions from the uterus, of an irritating character, were thought to be sources of gonorrhoea. However, with the discovery of the microbe “gonococcus”, in 1879, by Dr. Neisser, it is now an established fact that the disease comes from a source where there is either latent or chronic gonorrhoea, which, of course, means that the gonococcus is present. It is considered a conservative estimate that at least 50 per cent. of the adult population in this country have suffered from gonococcal infection. More men than women have been and are infected. The first symptoms of the disease appear from three to seven days after infection, and under proper treatment the discharge may disappear in six or eight weeks.