"Thy sins shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." This Bible sentence falls upon the dissipated and sexually diseased man in the fullest sense of the word, unhappily also upon the innocent woman. "Attacks of apoplexy with young men and also women, several manifestations of spinal debility and softening of the brains, all manner of nervous diseases, affections of the eyes, cariosity, inflammation of the intestines, sterility and atrophy, _frequently proceed from nothing else than chronic and neglected, and, often for special reasons, concealed syphilis_.... As things now are, ignorance and lightheadedness also contribute towards _turning blooming daughters of the land into anaemic, listless creatures_, who, under the burden of a chronic inflammation of the pelvis, _have to atone for the excesses committed by their husbands before and after marriage_."[106] In the same sense does Dr. Blaschke utter himself:[107] "Epidemics like cholera and smallpox, diphtheria and typhus, whose visible effects are, by reason of their suddenness, realized by all, although hardly equal to syphilis in point of virulence, and, in point of diffusion, not to be compared therewith, yet are they the terror of the population ... while before syphilis society stands, one feels inclined to say, with frightful indifference." The fault lies in the circumstance that it is considered "improper" to talk openly of such things. Did not even the German Reichstag stop short before a resolution to provide by law that sexual diseases, as well as all others, shall be treated by Sick-Benefit Associations? The syphilitic virus is in its effects the most tenacious and hardest poison to stamp out. Many years after an outbreak has been overcome, and the patient believes every trace to be wiped out, the sequels frequently crop up afresh in the wife or the new-born child;[108] and a swarm of ailments among wives and children trace their causes back, respectively, to marital and parental venereal diseases. With some who are born blind, the misfortune is due to the father's sins, the consequences of which transmitted themselves to the wife, and from her to the child. Weak-minded and idiotic children may frequently ascribe their infirmity to the same cause. Finally, what dire disaster may be achieved through vaccination by an insignificant drop of syphilitic blood, our own days can furnish crass illustrations of.