The number of patent medicines always in the market for the cure of secret diseases, and which the vendors announce “can be sent any distance securely packed, and safe from observation,” affords a corroboration. They are made and sold as a business speculation. When their reputation diminishes, and the public become doubtful if all the virtues of the materia medica are comprised in a single bottle of “Red Drop,” or “Unfortunate’s Friend,” the manufacture will soon stop, and the inventors will resort to some other employment for their capital. The extent to which advertising empirics and patent medicines are flourishing is an undeniable proof of the prevalence of the maladies they professedly relieve.
The legitimate business of drug-stores affords another link in the chain of evidence. Beyond the regular nostrums, almost every druggist in the city sells large quantities of medicine for the cure of venereal disease. Sometimes a man will candidly tell the storekeeper that he has contracted disease, and ask him to make up something to cure it. At other times a prescription, which has been efficacious in a former attack, will be presented, or the sufferer has taken counsel among his friends and companions, and obtained some infallible recipe from one of them. In short, there are so many different means taken by persons who have contracted disease that it is impossible to enumerate the various methods in which the aid of the drug-store may be invoked.
There are many traditional recipes which can be used without the necessity of purchasing ingredients of a druggist. One favorite remedy among the lower classes is “Pine Knot Bitters.” Bottles of this preparation are kept for sale in liquor stores, particularly in those neighborhoods where prostitutes “most do congregate.”
Another reason may be submitted why a large amount of venereal disease must be treated privately. Many of the victims are men who move in a respectable sphere of society, and have probably been led to the act which resulted so disastrously in a moment of uncontrollable passion. Their social position would be irreparably damaged should they enter a public hospital, and the desire to retain their status forces them to secrecy, even if the natural repugnance of every man to the former course did not exist. It is vain to deny that, while medical institutions designed for the public good are so managed as to inflict a disgrace upon their inmates, their benefits are circumscribed, and will never be accepted by any but the poor unfortunates who have no other means of obtaining relief. In the case of syphilis this is particularly to be regretted from the nature of the disease. Every day it is neglected it becomes in a tenfold degree more aggravated, and entails proportionate misery in after life.
If it be assumed that the private cases of venereal disease equal in number those treated in public institutions, an aggregate is obtained of more than 29,500 cases every year. If the former are double the number of the latter, the sum will be over 44,000 cases per annum. Either of these conjectures is below the truth, and we are satisfied, from professional experience and inquiry, that there is no exaggeration in estimating the number of patients treated privately every year for lues venerea as at least quadruple the cases receiving assistance in hospitals and charitable establishments. The result is the enormous sum of seventy-four thousand cases every year! If each person suffered only one attack each year, this would represent one sixth of the total population above fifteen years of age. But many persons, especially among abandoned women and profligate men, are infected several times in the course of twelve months, and any attempt to say what proportion of individuals are represented in these 74,000 cases would be mere speculation without a particle of conclusive evidence to support it.
Notwithstanding the magnitude of the result, a very brief consideration will show that it is not extravagant. In addition to the arguments already advanced in this chapter, the reader will recollect that in a previous section it has been shown that two out of every five prostitutes in New York confessed the syphilitic taint. Supposing a girl relinquishes her calling as soon as she becomes aware of being diseased, several days may have elapsed before she discovered her condition, and during that interval she must have infected every man who had intercourse with her. To take the most liberal view, it may be conceded that the portion who acknowledged infection were not all suffering from the primary or communicable form; many of them had doubtless recovered from that; but if only one half were so suffering, and each of these infected only one man, the result would be 365,000 men diseased every year.
This is not an exaggerated estimate. As was said when alluding to the prostitutes who admitted their contamination, there can be no possible suspicion that they would acknowledge sickness if they could avoid doing so, and consequently the sick are certainly not overrated. It may be objected that the numbers who owned disease were spread over a considerable space of time, but this can be met with the fact that the inquiry which produced this result was in progress simultaneously in all parts of the city. At the farthest it did not extend three months from the time of commencement to completion, and the natural presumption would be that, as during that time the health of the women was neither better nor worse than in any other three months of any year, the same proportion of diseased women could be found whenever an investigation was made; in other words, that two out of five prostitutes in New York are diseased.
The calculation that of these diseased women one half only are affected in a manner which renders them liable to infect their paramours is also a liberal one. Syphilis, when manifested in its secondary stage in the shape of sores, eruptions, and blotches upon the face or person, is so disgusting that no prostitute thus disfigured could retain her place in any brothel, unless it was one of the very lowest grade, because her appearance would immediately repel all visitors. In its primary or local form it is of course concealed from her customers, and may be so concealed for a considerable length of time. These facts borne in mind, is it not almost too liberal an estimate to assume that one half who admit syphilis are suffering in the secondary or palpable form?
This line of argument, supported by the facts given, is perfectly justifiable, view it in what light you may, and proves that the estimate of 74,000 cases of venereal disease annually is much too small.
Another course of reasoning may be adopted. The time occupied in taking the census is stated at three months. This included all the needful preliminary measures, the instructions to examiners, the conferences with police captains, etc; and the final proceedings, such as arranging and writing out reports. Allow one third of the time for these introductory and concluding adjuncts, and it will leave about sixty days, including Sundays, or fifty-two working days devoted to the actual inquiry. The inquiry resulted in the discovery of syphilis in such a proportion of women as would amount to an aggregate of two thousand on the total number of public prostitutes. Suppose the disease of two thousand women equally distributed over the fifty-two days; or, in other words, that an average number were infected and confessed it every day, and the result is thirty-eight women diseased every twenty-four hours. We wish to make this argument as plain as possible, and the reader will pardon what may appear needless repetition. If this disease existed in each woman for four days before she was conscious of it, or it became so troublesome as to force her from her calling, and during this interval of four days each woman had intercourse with only one man per day, over fifty thousand men would be exposed to the risk, almost the certainty of contracting infection in the course of the year. As the Medico-Chirurgical Review said, in the course of a similar argument upon syphilis in London, this estimate is “ridiculously small.” In the first place, a majority of the women would not abandon their calling in four days after infection, but would continue it as long as they could possibly submit to the suffering involved. Every resident of New York will remember the excitement caused in the spring of the year 1855 by the arrest of a large number of prostitutes in the public streets, their committal to Blackwell’s Island, and their subsequent discharge on writs of habeas corpus, on account of informality in the proceedings; but it is not generally known that of those arrested at that time a very large proportion, certainly more than one half, were suffering from syphilis in its primary form, and many of them in its most inveterate stage. We make this assertion from our own knowledge, the result of a professional examination, and mention the circumstance now to prove that women will not abandon their calling when they know themselves diseased, so long as they can possibly continue it. If the estimate had been made that each woman continued prostitution for eight days instead of four days after she was infected, it would have been a closer approximation to the truth, and it would have shown over one hundred thousand (100,000) men exposed to infection every year.