SEXUAL HYGIENE 175 



insanity. The list might be extended; but these are 

 the most common. Persons suffering with these dis- 

 orders have no right to marry, for at least four rea- 

 sons: 



(1) It is a sin against the offspring of such unions, 

 who have a right to be born well, but are forced to 

 come into the world with weakly constitutions, diseased 

 frames, and the certainty of iDremature death. The 

 children of consumptive and syphilitic parents rarely 

 survive infancy. If they do, it is only to suffer later 

 on, as they surely will, and perhaps to communicate the 

 same destructive diseases to other human beings; but 

 these diseases rarely extend beyond the third gener- 

 ation, the line becoming extinct. The most heart- 

 rending spectacles we have ever met have been the 

 children of parents suffering with the diseases men- 

 tioned. Their appearance is characteristic; no physi- 

 cian of experience can fail to detect the sins of a prof- 

 ligate parent in a syphilitic child. Every feature in- 

 dicates the presence of a blighting curse. 



There are those who assert that a man who has suf- 

 fered with disease of the character last mentioned, may 

 marry after the lapse of two or three years from the 

 disappearance of the active sjanptoms of the malady. 

 Such assertions we consider as most dangerous and 

 pernicious. The individuals who make them are well 

 acquainted with the fact that, of all diseases, this is 

 the most difficult to eradicate when once the system 

 has become thoroughly infected by it. Not only three 

 years, but thirty, may elapse after active symptoms 

 disappear; yet the disease may break out again in a 

 new and still more serious and complicated form. It 

 may even lie entirely dormant or latent in the system 

 of the parent during his lifetime, but break out in all 



