The work deals in the main, in plain, simple moderate language, with the pathological aspects of what is called "the social evil"; laying stress not so much upon the moral danger, long known, as on the physical danger, to which we are but just awakening.
The first part gives clear descriptions of the venereal diseases, now known to be caused by specific germs; and to be both infectious and contagious in the highest degree; giving statistics as to their prevalence.
The general estimate, in syphilis, she quotes as from five to eighteen per cent of the population, varying in the different countries. Taking the most modest estimate for ours, and allowing our population at 80,000,000—this would give us an army of 4,000,000 syphilitics at large among us—unknown to the public.
Say they had leprosy, or cholera, or smallpox, and imagine our horror; yet these diseases are not comparable in their terrible consequences; not only to the victims, but to their children and grandchildren.
In gonorrhoea, a cause of sterility, blindness of babies, and all manner of surgical operations and "diseases peculiar to women," so common among innocent wives, Miss Dock shows us that European records give about seventy-five per cent of men as infected. In America things are better, a conservative estimate giving the proportion of our men having either syphilis or gonorrhoea as about sixty per cent.
As each of these diseases affects both wife and child, it is specially necessary that women should be informed about them.
The second part treats of Prostitution; the efforts made at its control and regulation, and the new widespread movement for its abolition; and gives melancholy figures to show not only the immense extent of this evil, but the fact that the large majority of its victims are unwilling ones.
Abnormal women who might wish to follow this trade are so few that in order to supply the market, innocent young girls, numbering in America about fifty thousand a year, must be forced into this profession, into shame, disease and painful death; hence the "White-Slave traffic."
The third part discusses Prevention; with wise and hopeful words; telling how chance infection may be avoided, how patients with these diseases should be isolated; and how all children should be educated in full knowledge of this danger and its best avoidance.
Miss Dock is also very clear and strong in showing that women can best reduce this evil through the use of the ballot; and gives conclusive evidence of what is already accomplished in those states and countries having equal suffrage.