254 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOUNG 



ever prolonged, promises ' ' immunity for tlie future. ' ' * 

 Dr. Van Buren, professor of surgery at Bellevue Hos- 

 pital Medical College, New York, bears the same testi- 

 mony. 



Professor Van Buren also says that he has seen the 

 disease occur upon the lips of young ladies who were 

 entirely virtuous, but who were engaged to men who 

 had contracted the disease, and had communicated it 

 to them in the act of kissing. Virtuous wives have not 

 infrequently had their constitutions hopelessly ruined 

 by contracting the disease from husbands who had 

 themselves been inoculated either before or after mar- 

 riage, by illicit intercourse. Several such unfortunate 

 cases have fallen under our observation, and there is 

 reason to believe that they are not infrequent. 



The Only Hope.— The only hope for one who has 

 contracted this disease is to lead a life of perfect con- 

 tinence ever after, and by a most careful life, by con- 

 forming strictly to* the laws of health, by bathing and 

 dieting, he may possibly avoid the horrid consequences 

 of the later stages of the malady. Drugs certainly will 

 not cure it. 



The following strong testimony on this subject we 

 quote from an admirable pamphlet by Prof. Fred. H. 

 Gerrish, M. D.-: 



''The diseases dependent upon prostitution are 

 appallingly frequent, a distinguished surgeon recently 

 declaring that one person in twenty in the United 

 States has syphilis,— a malady so ineradicable that a 

 profound observer has remarked that 'a man who is 

 once thus poisoned, will die a syphilitic, and in the day 

 of Judgment he will be a syphilitic ghost.' Professor 

 Gross says: 'Wliat is called scrofula, struma, or 

 tuberculosis, is, I have long been satisfied from careful 



*" Venereal Diseasev." 



