iv THE NEXT GENERATION 



for them through acquaintance with such material as is given in " The 

 Next Generation." It is preferable that the reading of these facts should 

 come after and not before the book itself is studied. 



Chapters XXIII and XXIV of "The Next Generation" give infor- 

 mation about the contagious nature of two diseases, syphilis and gonor- 

 rhea, which, at the present time, are more destructive to the race than 

 any other forms of disease from which humanity suffers. 



Syphilis is caused by a microbe called Spirochaeta pallida. This 

 microbe may be transmitted from person to person through abrasions 

 of the skin, as shown in Chapter XXIII, and it is likely to be found 

 in the bodies of those who live immoral lives. Syphilis may ruin not 

 only the diseased man, but also his wife, his children, and his children's 

 children. This is the one disease of man that travels by inheritance from 

 one generation to the next. 



Dr. Morrow says : " Fully one third of all syphilitic children born alive 

 die within the first six months," or, " escaping early death, they may 

 yet suffer from the disease in their twentieth or thirtieth year, or even 

 later." 



Dr. Hodge writes : " The cough spray of a syphilitic may be more 

 dangerous than the discharge of a gun into a person's face." 



No one knows whence the disease first came, but all know that at 

 present fallen women give it to men who visit them ; that these men 

 pass the disease on to healthy women whom they marry ; that, once it 

 has entered the stream of family life, no power of man can keep it from 

 doing its work of devastation. All know that wives thus diseased become 

 permanent invalids ; that they endure surgical operations and are not 

 cured ; that their babies die needlessly, and that other little ones live 

 to suffer. 



In such cases a mother often blames herself for the endless chain of 

 woe that has encircled herself and her babies. She does not know that 

 generally the cause of it all is the disease caught in his ignorant youth 

 by the man she married a man who thought he was cured before the 

 wedding day came. 



Until recently young men and women have been allowed to pass 

 through the adolescent era and to enter the life of maturity utterly igno- 

 rant of their temptations and their dangers. For the safety of the race 

 and for their own safety these guardians of the stream of life should 

 know how to protect themselves. 



