The two forms of disease to which we must refer are appalling in their
consequences, both for the individual and the future. In technical
language they are called contagious; meaning that the infection is
conveyed not through the air as, say, in the case of measles or
small-pox, but by means of contact with some infected surface--it may be
a lip in the act of kissing, a cup in drinking, a towel in washing, and
so forth. Of both these terrible diseases this is true. They therefore
rank, like leprosy, as amongst the most eminently preventable diseases.
Leprosy has in consequence been completely exterminated in England, but
though venereal disease--the name of the two contagions considered
together--diminishes, it is still abundant everywhere and in all classes
of society. Here regarding it only from the point of view of the girl
who is about to mate, I declare with all the force of which I am capable
that, many and daily as are the abominations for which posterity will
hold us up to execration, there is none more abominable in its immediate
and remote consequences, none less capable of apology than the daily
destruction of healthy and happy womanhood, whether in marriage or
outside it, by means of these diseases. At all times this is horrible,
and it is more especially horrible when the helpless victim is destroyed
with the blessing of the Church and the State, parents and friends;
everyone of whom should ever after go in sackcloth and ashes for being
privy to such a deed.
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