UNCHASTITY 253 



ferers whose repentance has come, alas ! too late. No 

 words can convey an adequate idea of their sufferings. 

 What remorse and useless regrets add to the misery 

 of their wretched existence as they daily watch the prog- 

 ress of a malignant ulceration which is destroying their 

 organs of speech, or burrowing deep into the recesses 

 of the skull, penetrating even to the brain itself! 

 Even the bones become rotten; foul running sores 

 appear on different portions of the body, and may even 

 cover it entirely. Perhaps the nose, or the tongue, or 

 the lips, or an eye, or some other necessary organ, is 

 lost. Still the miserable sufferer lingers on, life serv- 

 ing only to prolong the torture. To many of them, 

 death would be a grateful release. 



Thousands of Victims.— The venturesome youth 

 need not attempt to calm his fears by thinking that 

 these are only exceptional cases; for this is not the 

 truth. In any city, one who has an experienced eye can 

 scarcely walk a dozen blocks on busy streets without 

 encountering the woeful effects of sexual transgression. 

 Neither do these results come only from long-continued 

 violations of the laws of chastity. The very first de- 

 parture from virtue may occasion all the worst effects 

 possible. 



Effects of Vice Ineradicable. — Another fear- 

 ful feature of this terrible disease is that when once it 

 invades the system, its eradication may be impossible. 

 No drug, no chemical, can antidote its virulent poison, 

 or drive it from the system. Various means may 

 smother it, possibly for a lifetime; but yet it is not 

 cured, and the patient is never safe from a new out- 

 break. Professor Bumstead, an acknowledged author- 

 ity on this subject, after observing the disease for 

 many years, says that he never, after treatment, how- 



