January 30, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



151 



had it been done months before, complete 

 removal of the diseased tissue would have 

 resulted. In making his calls for the day 

 Dr. Smith had experienced both among the 

 well-to-do and the poor many things which 

 had brought within the range of his vision 

 more and darker clouds than those which 

 floated in the dull November sky. More 

 than a year before he had become estranged 

 from the family of one of his oldest and 

 best friends. The breaking of this relation- 

 ship which had continued from his earliest 

 professional service and had been fiUed 

 with the common joys and sorrows shared 

 only by the family physician and those 

 under his charge, had cast a deep shadow 

 over the doctor's life. He had ofSciated at 

 the birth of each of his friend's five chil- 

 dren, and he felt a parental love and pride 

 in them as he saw them grow into healthy 

 womanhood and manhood. A little more 

 than a year ago, he learned that the eldest 

 of these children, a beautiful and healthy 

 girl of eighteen, was engaged to a young 

 man whom he knew to be a rake. In a 

 spirit of altruism he had gone to the father 

 and mother and protested against the sac- 

 rifice of the daughter. This kindly in- 

 tended intervention was met with a stormy 

 rebuff, and the doctor was rudely dismissed 

 from his friend's house. But when the 

 young woman whose life with her unfaith- 

 ful husband had made her deeply regret 

 her fatal infatuation, felt the first pains of 

 childbirth she begged of her parents that 

 her old friend might be sent for, and that 

 morning he had delivered her of a syphilitic 

 child. How unlike the previous births at 

 which he had officiated in this friend's 

 house ! It had been the custom to have the 

 doctor at every birthday dinner given the 

 five children, and one of the boys bore his 

 name. There would be no birthdays for this, 

 the first grandchild, and what could the 

 future promise the young mother ? Surely, 



the November day was overcast with 

 clouds for Dr. Smith before its gray light 

 awoke the slumbering city. As he waUced 

 the few short blocks from his friend's to 

 his own home, he cried in deepest sorrow 

 how many thousands of daughters must be 

 sacrificed before their parents will permit 

 them to walk in the light of knowledge and 

 not in the shadow of ignorance. After a 

 breakfast, which was scarcely tasted, he 

 read in the morning paper that the an- 

 nouncement that "Damaged Goods" was 

 to be given in his University town had met 

 with such a storm of protest from the 

 learned members of the faculty that the 

 engagement had been cancelled. ' ' Surely, ' ' 

 he said, "the fetters of prudery and custom 

 bind both the learned and the unlearned. ' ' 

 After his morning office hours Dr. Smith 

 visited his patients at the city hospital. 

 Here is a wreck from cocaine intoxication, 

 the poison having been purchased from a 

 drug-store owned by a prominent local 

 politician. In a padded cell is a man with 

 delirium tremens, a patron of a gilded 

 saloon run by another political boss. In 

 the lying-in ward are a dozen girls seduced 

 in as many dance halls with drinking 

 alcoves. Time will relieve these girls of the 

 products of conception, a longer time will 

 be required to free them from the diseases 

 which they have contracted, but all time 

 will not wash away the stains on their 

 lives, and what of the fatherless children 

 to be born? Thirty beds are filled with 

 typhoids, who under the best conditions 

 must spend long weeks in the bondage of a 

 fever, which day by day gradually but in- 

 exorably tightens its grasp. The furred 

 tongues, glazed eyes, flushed cheeks, botind- 

 ing pulses, emaciated frames, delirious 

 brains were all due to the fact that a large 

 manufacturer had run a private sewer into 

 the river above the water works. The greed 

 and ignorance of one business firm had 



