The talk about the science of mating the horses he will understand readily and thoroughly, and he will not fail to see the point when you switch to man and apply the same principles. Then when you show how mismating is responsible for poor children quality and how disease accounts for feeble-minded and degenerate offspring, he will be fairly well posted, and he will be ready to imbibe more details, and you will have done much of your duty. His curiosity will be quickened and his interest is awakened. It depends upon the father. If your boy is honest and clean, open and decent, he will not fall without a fight, and while he is fighting he is maturing. If your picture of the consequences of the venereal diseases has been effective and vivid, he will grow up with a healthy horror of them. If your conduct as a father has been wise and exemplary, and if your home has the right kind of environment, and the right kind of mother in it, you have done all a father can do to help the boy over the rough spots. The proper kind of encouragement and the right kind of vigilance, and books which will satisfy the boy's craving for more knowledge along this line is all that is needed to help the boy to "win out."
Fake Medical Treatment for Venereal Diseases.—Parents should in every possible way discourage the use of patent medicines and fake medical methods of curing these diseases. Untold harm has been done to boys and to women by these nostrums.
In every instance the motive underlying the methods of people selling these things is to frighten the patients into the belief that their condition is more serious than it is in order to justify a long and expensive course of treatment.
Their work is carelessly performed, and frequently they are directly responsible for the development of complication and dangerous sequelæ. The promises of speedy cures are false, and, not infrequently, methods of black-mailing have been known to follow an expensive and unsuccessful course of treatment.
There is no class of disease in which the help and honesty of the legitimate medical profession is needed more than in the treatment of the venereal diseases. Parents should see to it that the family physician is prescribing any strange medicine that may appear in the boy's room, and not some unknown individual who may be an impostor and a blackmailer.
Sowing Wild Oats.—Writers of fiction and others of a more serious trend of thought have recognized the sowing of wild oats as an institution which, if it does not merit the full approval of society's moral code, is, at least, tolerated. No serious consequences befall the offender. On the contrary, the libertine is the type of hero who receives the commendatory quips of erotic dames and the questionable interest of hysterical maidens.
Women of easy morals are always willing to espouse the cause of the "black sheep," and to further the matrimonial success of the penitent roué. Many mothers are willing to marry their daughters to the polished villain of society, who is known as a rake and debauchee, if his family connections are desirable. It has been even held that a youth who did not "sow his wild oats" was of doubtful stamina.
That many able men have sown wild oats is indisputable, and that many men who are respectful husbands, have also gone "through the mill" is also true, but this need not blind us to the fact that thousands upon thousands, who could have been successful men of affairs and creditable husbands and fathers, have been utterly ruined, as a result of having sown wild oats. No man is a better man because of a past record of licentious habits. The man who sows and escapes the harvest is lucky. The man who reaps, reaps in abundance. Most men regret the lapses of youth. Most of these lapses would never have occurred if the impulse could have been governed by the reasoning of maturity. These acts are the promptings of an impetuosity which may be entirely foreign to the individual's innate character, but brought out by promiscuous circumstances and the ignorance and license of youth. If we can protect youth, by an adequate knowledge of the consequences, we will furnish the means to tide over the impressionable period. Until a healthy maturity of judgment will assume the task unaided.
The effects of the wild oats' theory are too tragically evident to need any argumentative refutation. The statistics of the prevalency of venereal diseases alone is sufficient; the results of these diseases are more than enough.
Study the records of the jails and prisons, courts and asylums, hospitals and health resorts, think of the hundreds of thousands of diseased and deformed and mentally inferior children, of the multitude of paretics, melancholies, ataxics, maniacs, syphilitics,—all the products of "wild oats,"—and ask if the wild oats' theory is justifiable.