HELEN KELLER'S "I MUST SPEAK."
In a full-page article in The Ladies' Home Journal for January, 1909, Helen Keller, the brilliant blind graduate of Radcliffe College, wrote under the heading "I Must Speak":
"The most common cause of blindness is ophthalmia of the new-born. One pupil in every three at the institution for the blind in New York City was blinded in infancy by this disease.
"What is the cause of ophthalmia neonatorum? It is a specific germ communicated by the mother to the child at birth. Previous to the child's birth she has unconsciously received it through infection from her husband. He has contracted the infection in licentious relations before or since marriage. 'The cruelest link in the chain of consequences,' says Dr. Prince Morrow, 'is the mother's innocent agency. She is made a passive, unconscious medium of instilling into the eyes of her new-born babe a virulent poison which extinguishes its sight.'
"It is part of the bitter harvest of the wild oats he has sown."
Miss Keller goes on in her article to tell the women of America that blindness is by no means the most terrible result of this pestilent sin.
INNOCENT WIVES SUFFER.
Dr. Prince A. Morrow, whom Miss Keller quotes, has written a volume on the consequences of these diseases to wives and children. The book is entitled "Social Diseases and Marriage." On page 132 Dr. Morrow quotes this from Dr. Garrigues:
"I knew a girl in perfect health, of great beauty, of Junoesque proportions, combining muscular strength with regularity of features and graceful movements, possessing a most amiable disposition—in brief a paragon of a wife to make a husband happy. She married a nice young man in a good business. It was a marriage based upon mutual affection and held out every prospect of a long and happy union. A week after her marriage she came to me with an abscess in one of Bartholini's glands and a profuse discharge. . . . She was under treatment for months. . . . She was seized with violent pain in the lower part of the abdomen and had a temperature of 105 degrees Fahrenheit and a pulse of 140. . . . The peritonitic infection continued to spread, and laparotomy was performed. Finally she died.
"In many similar cases the patients recovered for the time being, but went on leading a life of invalidism, interrupted by more acute attacks of peritonitis. Some get well after having their ovaries and tubes removed. This, then, is what awaits these poor women—discharges, inflammations, a life full of suffering, capital operations, or death."