190 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



restraint which makes its expression in the highest 

 degree automatic and no longer under the control 

 of the cerebral centers. The effects of misuse are 

 singularly far-reaching. Whereas abuses of the 

 food appetite usually work their evil consequences 

 on the body of the transgressor, sexual abuses tend 

 to implicate innocent persons also. The ills that 

 arise in this way are of many kinds, and are both 

 grossly physical and more refinedly physical or 

 spiritual. They have brought to mankind, and still 

 bring to it, countless and unpicturable miseries, 

 and there is now no reason to think that they will 

 not continue to do so for centuries to come. The 

 disabilities, sufferings, and premature deaths that 

 follow in the wake of venereal diseases are horrors of 

 human life that must, at times, cause the stoutest 

 hearts to falter in their belief in human nature. 

 The most diabolical and revolting features of these 

 infections is their incidence in women and children 

 who are wholly innocent. And even where self- 

 indulgence is not followed by infectious disease, 

 there may still arise disorders of body and of mind 

 that bring serious losses of energy, and that fill 

 asylums and hospitals with human wrecks. 



Such is the price that the human race pays to se- 

 cure its own continuance. Yet this heavy tribute in 

 suffering and death cannot be said to be exacted by 

 nature. These dire losses are almost wholly pre- 

 ventable, and it is even likely that within highly 



