Doctor. Yes.
George. At the same time it’s not a subject that can be broached in the papers.
Doctor. Why not?
George. I can speak of my own knowledge, for my father used to own a small provincial paper. If we had ever printed that word, the circulation would have dropped like a stone.
DOCTOR. Yet you publish novels about adultery.
GEORGE. Of course. That’s what the public wants.
DOCTOR. You are right; it is the public that needs to be educated. A respectable man will take his wife and daughters to a music-hall, where they hear things to make a doctor blush. His modesty is only alarmed by serious words.
GEORGE. And then, after all, what would one gain by being posted up about this disease?
DOCTOR. If it were better understood it would be more often avoided.
GEORGE. What one wants is some means of avoiding it altogether.