43 T. De Witt Talmage.
[Poverty.]—The pressing influence of poverty has been urged as one cause of prostitution. It cannot be denied that in many cases, in large cities, this may be the immediate occasion of the entrance of a young girl upon a life of shame; but it may still be insisted that there must have been, in such cases, a deficiency in previous training; for a young woman, educated with a proper regard for purity, would sooner sacrifice life itself than virtue. Again, poverty can be no excuse, for in every city there are made provisions for the relief of the needy poor, and none who are really worthy need suffer.
[Ignorance.]—Perhaps nothing fosters vice more than ignorance. Prostitutes come almost entirely from the more ignorant classes, though there are, of course, many exceptions. Among the lowest classes, vice is seen in its grossest forms, and is carried to the greatest lengths. Intellectual culture is antagonistic to sensuality. As a general rule, in proportion as the intellect is developed, the animal passions are brought into subjection. It is true that very intellectual men have been great libertines, and that the licentious Borgias and Medicis of Italy encouraged art and literature; but these are only apparent exceptions, for who knows to what greater depths of vice these individuals might have sunk had it not been for the restraining influence of mental culture?
Says Deslandes, "In proportion as the intellect becomes enfeebled, the generative sensibility is augmented." The animal passions seem to survive when all higher intelligence is lost. We once saw an illustration of this fact in an idiot who was brought before a medical class in a clinic at Bellevue Hospital, New York. The patient had been an idiot from birth, and presented the most revolting appearance, seemingly possessing scarcely the intelligence of the average dog; but his animal propensities were so great as to be almost uncontrollable. Indeed, he showed evidences of having been a gross debauchee, having contracted venereal disease of the worst form. The general prevalence of extravagant sexual excitement among the insane is a well-known fact.
[Disease.]—Various diseases which cause local irritation and congestion of the reproductive organs are the causes of unchastity in both sexes, as previously explained. It not unfrequently happens that by constantly dwelling upon unchaste subjects until a condition of habitual congestion of the sexual organs is produced, young women become seized with a furor for libidinous commerce which nothing but the desired object will appease, unless active remedial measures are adopted under the direction of a skillful physician. This disease, known as nymphomania, has been the occasion of the fall of many young women of the better classes who have been bred in luxury and idleness, but were never taught even the first lessons of purity or self-control. Constipation, piles, worms, pruritis of the genitals, and some other less common diseases of the urinary and genital systems, have been causes of sexual excitement which has resulted in moral degradation.
[Results of Licentiousness.]—Apparently as a safeguard to virtue, nature has appended to the sin of illicit sexual indulgence, as penalties, the most loathsome, deadly, and incurable diseases known to man. Some of these, as gonorrhea and chancroid, are purely local diseases; and though they occasion the transgressor a vast amount of suffering, they may be cured and leave no trace of their presence except in the conscience of the individual. Such a result, however, is by no means the usual one. Most frequently, the injury done is more or less permanent; sometimes it amounts to loss of life or serious mutilation, as in cases we have seen. And one attack secures no immunity from subsequent ones, as a new disease may be contracted upon every exposure.
By far the worst form of venereal disease is syphilis, a malady which was formerly confounded with the two forms of disease mentioned, but from which it is essentially different. At first, a very slight local lesion, of no more consequence—except from its significance—than a small boil, it rapidly infects the general system, poisoning the whole body, and liable forever after to develop itself in any one or more of its protean forms. The most loathsome sight upon which a human eye can rest is a victim of this disease who presents it well developed in its later stages. In the large Charity Hospital upon Blackwell's Island, near New York City, we have seen scores of these unfortunates of both sexes, exhibiting the horrid disease in all its phases. To describe them would be to place before our readers a picture too revolting for these pages. No pen can portray the woebegone faces, the hopeless air, of these degraded sufferers whose repentance has come, alas! too late. No words can convey an adequate idea of their sufferings. What remorse and useless regrets add to the misery of their wretched existence as they daily watch the progress of a malignant ulceration which is destroying their organs of speech, or burrowing deep into the recesses of the skull, penetrating even to the brain itself! Even the bones become rottenness; foul running sores appear on different portions of the body, and may even cover it entirely. Perhaps the nose, or the tongue, or the lips, or an eye, or some other prominent organ, is lost. Still the miserable sufferer lingers on, life serving only to prolong the torture. To many of them, death would be a grateful release, even with the fires of retributive justice before their eyes; for hell itself could scarcely be more awful punishment than that which they daily endure.
[Thousands of Victims.]—The venturesome youth need not attempt to calm his fears by thinking that these are only exceptional cases, for this is not the truth. In any city, one who has an experienced eye can scarcely walk a dozen blocks on busy streets without encountering the woeful effects of sexual transgression. Neither do these results come only from long-continued violations of the laws of chastity. The very first departure from virtue may occasion all the worst effects possible.
[Effects of Vice Ineradicable.]—Another fearful feature of this terrible disease is that when once it invades the system its eradication is impossible. No drug, no chemical, can antidote its virulent poison or drive it from the system. Various means may smother it, possibly for a life-time; but yet it is not cured, and the patient is never safe from a new outbreak. Prof. Bumstead, an acknowledged authority on this subject, after observing the disease for many years, says that "he never after treatment, however prolonged, promises immunity for the future."[44] Dr. Van Buren, professor of surgery at Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York, bears the same testimony.
44 Venereal Disease.