The first attack of gonorrhea in man is very often spontaneously cured, while unskillful treatment often aggravates it. The relapses of this disease, on the other hand, especially in their chronic form, often resist all kinds of treatment and sometimes become incurable. The gonococci become hidden in the folds of the deep parts of the mucous membrane, both in men and women, and cannot all be destroyed. With regard to syphilis, mercurial treatment, although remarkable in its immediate effect, requires prolonged administration. And it is by such means that it is proposed to make prostitutes clean! There is only one radical cure for venereal diseases; that is not to contract them! However, this does not prevent us from recommending all those who are affected with them to seek immediate treatment by a skilled specialist.
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.
In the first place, the difference between hereditary and acquired sexual anomalies is only relative and gradual, so that it is necessary to avoid opposing one against the other. When an anomaly arrives spontaneously in the first sexual glimmer of the child's mind during its development, it is obvious that it is the expression of a profound hereditary taint, the result of blastophthoria or of unfortunate combinations of ancestral energies which have been associated by the conjugation of the two procreative germs. In such a case it is comparatively easy to prove that this is a pathological symptom independent of the will of the individual. But a continuous series of degrees in the intensity of a hereditary predisposition to a certain sexual anomaly, or to other anomalies or peculiarities apt to provoke this anomaly, insensibly connects the purely hereditary pathological appetite with that which is simply the effect of acquired vicious habits. In this way a strong hereditary predisposition may exaggerate a moderate normal sexual appetite, or may give it a pathological direction under influences which would have had no effect in a less predisposed individual. Again, a slightly marked tendency to homosexuality in a man may increase under the seductive influence of a passionate invert, when the same individual would have lost this tendency if he had fallen seriously in love with a woman. On the other hand, the invert would have no influence on an individual who was not predisposed.
If the hereditary disposition is very strong, it is developed spontaneously or under the influence of very slight circumstances. If it is mediocre, it may remain latent and even become extinct when favorable circumstances do not awaken it. When it is entirely absent the most powerful seduction and the most evil influence cannot give rise to the corresponding anomaly. These facts are sufficient to show what abuse is made of the term acquired vice. Under this heading are designated a number of peculiarities the roots of which are to a great extent contained in the germ of heredity.
The power of words on the human mind produces antinomies which do not really exist; such is the case with the terms vice and disease. Vices depend on a hereditary mnemic disposition, of varying strength and more or less pathological, or at any rate unilateral (i.e., developed in one direction only, or connected with a single group of objects); according to the good or evil influence of the environment they may develop, become limited or even fail to appear. Inversely, we may say that many diseases, especially of the brain, are the source of vices.
In the second place, it follows from this fundamental principle, that the vicious and apparently acquired conduct of certain individuals should not be considered as the product of perverted free will, but rather as the unfortunate and destructive result of a bad hereditary disposition developed under the influence of the bad habits of a corrupt environment. This environment being itself composed of men, there is a vicious circle of cause and effect which will not escape the mind of the thoughtful reader. Bad habits are made by hereditary forces, and bad habits develop in their turn by custom, and may even create, by blastophthoria, vicious hereditary dispositions. The indignation of the moralists who condemn vicious persons are very like the temper of a child who strikes the fire which burnt him.