The German police has a similar power, and sometimes cases have been called to public attention in Berlin, Leipsic, Cologne, Hannover and many other places, showing that abuses or “misunderstandings” easily occur with the exercise of this power, but not much is heard among us of an energetic opposition to such transgressions.[96] In Norway, brothels were prohibited in 1888, and in the capital, Christiania, the obligatory registration of prostitutes and the medical examination connected with it was abolished. In January, 1893, the same ordinance was enacted for the entire country. Very correctly Mrs. Guillaume-Shack says in regard to state “protection” for men: “To what purpose do we teach our sons to respect virtue and morality if the state declares vice to be a necessary evil; if young men, before they have even attained intellectual maturity, are given women stamped like commodities by the public authorities as playthings of their passions?”
A man inflicted with a sexual disease may indulge in unbridled licentiousness and may infect any number of these unfortunate beings, most of whom have been driven by seducers or by bitterest need into this abominable trade. The law leaves him unmolested. But woe to the poor, diseased prostitute who does not immediately submit to medical treatment! The garrison towns, university towns and sea port towns, where many strong, healthy men aggregate, are the chief centers of prostitution and its dangerous diseases, which are disseminated all over the land and everywhere spread suffering and destruction. The moral qualification of a great number of our students is described in the following manner in the “Gazette for Combatting Public Immorality”[97]: “Among a majority of the students the views concerning moral questions are appallingly base, almost depraved.” From these circles that boast about their “German spirit” and “German morals,” our public officials, prosecutors and judges are obtained. How bad matters must be, especially among students, may be seen from the following: In the fall of 1901, a large group of professors and physicians, among them leading men in their professions, published an appeal to German students, in which they called special attention to the deplorable results of sexual debauchery, and also warned the young men of excessive indulgence in alcoholic drinks, which in many cases have a stimulating influence on sexual debauchery. At last people are beginning to recognize that the policy of silence is a mistaken one, and that we must call a spade a spade, if we would check an immeasurable disaster. Among other classes of society also this warning should not remain unheeded.
The Biblical utterance that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon their children applies in its fullest measure to the man afflicted with a sexual disease; unfortunately also to his innocent wife. “Apoplectic strokes among young men and women, forms of paralysis of the spine and softening of the brain, various nervous diseases, weakening of the eye sight, inflammation of the bowels, sterility and general debility are frequently due to no other cause than a neglected case of syphilis, that has, for good reasons been kept secret. As conditions are to-day ignorance and carelessness transform blooming daughters of the nation into weak and sickly creatures who must pay with chronic diseases for the extravagances of their husbands before and outside of marriage.”[98] Dr. A. Blaschko says among other things: “Epidemics like cholera, small pox, diphtheria and typhoid terrify the people, because the suddenness of the results are clearly visible to everybody. But syphilis is regarded by society with an appalling indifference. And yet syphilis is far more widespread and much more terrible in its effects than any of the above-mentioned diseases.”[99] The fact that we regard it as “indecent” to discuss such matters, accounts for this indifference. Even the German diet could not bring itself to provide legally for the treatment of persons afflicted with sexual diseases by means of the sick benefit funds, as in the case of other diseases.[100]
The poison of syphilis is the most tenacious and the hardest to eradicate of all poisons. Many years after the disease has been apparently cured the evil results frequently manifest themselves in the wife of the diseased or in his new-born children, and countless sicknesses of married women and children are due to the sexual diseases of husbands and fathers. In a petition addressed to the German Parliament in the fall of 1899 by the society “Jugendschutz” (protection of the young) it was stated that there are about 30,000 children in Germany who are blind from birth due to contagion from gonorrhoea, and that among 50 per cent of childless women, sterility is due to the same cause.[101] As a matter of fact an alarmingly large number of marriages is childless, and moreover the number of childless marriages is increasing. Feeble-mindedness and idiocy among children is also not infrequently due to the same cause, and many instances have shown what disasters can be caused with vaccination by a single drop of blood inoculated with the poison of syphilis. The great number of persons suffering from a sexual disease has caused several suggestions to be made for the enactment of a national law providing special treatment for persons so afflicted. But until now no such step was taken, probably because one feared the enormity of the evil that would then become manifest. Medical authorities have generally gained the conviction, that gonorrhoea, which was formerly regarded as harmless, is one of the most dangerous of these diseases. This disease continues to act upon the human system even after it has been apparently cured. As Dr. Blaschko reported in a lecture in Berlin on the 20th of February, 1898, the medical examinations of prostitutes reveal only one-fourth, or at best one-third of the actual number of cases. As a matter of fact, the overwhelmingly great majority of prostitutes are afflicted with this disease, while only a small percentage of the cases are properly diagnosed. Of those in whom the disease is recognized it is again only a small percentage with whom a permanent cure is effected. Here society is confronted by an evil for which it has no remedy as yet, but which is an imminent peril to mankind, especially to its female half.
[90] Paul Kampffmeyer—Prostitution as a social class phenomenon and the social and political struggle against it.
[91] “When the Farmers’ Association convenes in the Circus Bush, or large conventions are being held in Berlin, there is a rise in price of human flesh.” Satyr—Life at Night in the Friedrich Strasse, Berlin, 1907.
[92] Handbook of Hygiene, published by Th. Weyl, M. D. Hygiene of Prostitution and Venereal Diseases, compiled by Dr. A. Blaschko, Berlin.
[93] “As a matter of fact the system of regulation does not successfully fight the venereal diseases, nor even noticeably diminish them. The delusive feeling of safety given to men makes them more reckless. The increase in the number of correlation heightens the danger of contagion by at least as much as it has been diminished by the removal of a few who were seriously diseased.” August Forel—The Sex Question, Munich, 1907.
[94] Third report of the royal police department of Berlin for the years 1881 to 1890.