Safe Marriage Part 5

_Bidets and Syringes._--Syringes are easily procurable, but bidets in England at present are sometimes difficult to obtain. Good strong enamel bidets can be obtained from Messrs. E. Lambert & Son, of 60, Queen's Road, E.8., and they also keep the contraceptive suppositories made by Mr.

Harman Freese in accordance with medical directions mentioned in Foreword.

_Soluble Suppositories (for women)._--These are now being manufactured by Mr. Harman Freese, of Freese & Moon, 59, Bermondsey Street, S.E.1, from whom they can be obtained. These suppositories are disinfective as well as contraceptive, but they are at present sold for the ordinary purposes of birth-control.

_Sanitary Tubes (for men)._--These tubes are also manufactured by Mr.

Harman Freese, of Freese & Moon, 59, Bermondsey Street, S.E.1, in accordance with medical directions mentioned in Foreword. It is quite possible to manufacture an ointment which, if properly used, would be a preventive of all forms of venereal disease. The sale of such an ointment is authorised by the State Health Department of Pennsylvania.

_Information_ as to the medical prevention of venereal disease may be obtained from the Hon. Sec., Society for the Prevention of Venereal Diseases, 143, Harley Street, W.1. Information regarding birth-control has been made available to adults in England for the last half-century by Dr. Drysdale, Sen., and his family and supporters, through the Malthusian League, whose present address is 124, Victoria Street, London, S.W.1., and these pioneers have made a most self-sacrificing effort for the benefit of poor women by establis.h.i.+ng a welfare centre at 153a, East Street, Walworth, London, S.E.17, where free advice is given in birth-control and s.e.xual hygiene, and where medical supplies are available at nominal prices. This centre is supported entirely by voluntary subscriptions and at present stands in dire need of financial help.[T]--E.A.R.

[Footnote T: At my personal request the publishers have agreed to name the firms and societies mentioned in Appendix II. These notifications are made gratis for the benefit of the medical profession and the general public, and not by way of advertis.e.m.e.nt.--E.A.R.]

NOTE.--Every thoughtful woman is urged to buy and study carefully the great work ent.i.tled: "PREVENTION OF VENEREAL DISEASE," by Sir Archdall Reid, K.B.E., M.B., C.M., F.R.S.E., with an introductory chapter by Sir Bryan Donkin, M.D., F.R.C.P., in order that she may understand the nature of the problems involved and the strength of the opposition to _cleanliness_.

_This book is endorsed by the Society for the Prevention of Venereal Disease and contains the evidence and arguments on which the Society bases its policy, and is addressed to all who would prevent venereal diseases in themselves or in the community._

Children may be taught any system of morals--s.e.xual or other; Christian, Mahomedan, Hindoo, Papuan, or other. They are intensely imitative and acquire a bias towards local ideas of right and wrong through a.s.sociation with intimate companions. A bias once acquired tends to persist. For that reason parents choose good companions and schools. On the other hand, it is difficult or impossible to convert "hardened sinners," for example, adult non-Christians. Children, therefore, may be really taught; adults, as a rule, can only be preached at. Any man may test the truth of all this by examining his own consciousness. Would any amount of preaching cause him to change his present ideas of right and wrong? As little can he alter the bias of other men. As the twig is bent so the tree grows.

In various times and places, almost everything from promiscuous s.e.xual intercourse to absolute abstinence from all intercourse has been held holy, or permissible, or d.a.m.nable. Even among Christians the widest differences have prevailed as regards the local and contemporary tone.

Among them, especially among the English speaking peoples, a convention forbids the familiar discussion of s.e.xual matters between children and adults. This convention may be right or wrong. In any case it exists, and is likely to persist for ages. But a knowledge of s.e.x is traditional among boys, and to some extent among girls of the school age. For good or evil, therefore, children are the real teachers of s.e.xual morals in England.

Children deal with the impressionable age and give the early bias. Adults stand aside, and teach only extreme reticence. The discussions of boys are often obscene. As a consequence vast numbers grow up with the idea that unchast.i.ty is a gallant adventure, or, at worst, only a peccadillo. Even in old age such men look back to past intrigues with satisfaction. After marriage another tradition, or bias, also taught by English boys, comes into action--the tradition to keep the plighted word, to "play the game."

The great majority of married Englishmen, therefore, are chaste.

Judging from history, the world, and in particular England, is not more--or less--immoral to-day than at any time during the last 2000 years.

During all that time children have taught and adults have preached.

Doubtless there have been many campaigns of purity in the past--mere campaigns of preaching to adults. They were ineffectual and are forgotten.

Epochs of licence have almost invariably followed epochs of austerity.

Modern campaigns of purity never arise except as consequents on medical attempts to prevent venereal disease, and always cease when the attempt to procure sanitation has ceased. In effect, they have been merely campaigns to secure the poisoning of sinners and their victims.

The extent of current immorality may be judged from the prevalence of venereal disease. The Royal Commission of 1913-16 found that ten per cent.

of the urban population suffered from syphilis. Eighty per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom is now urban, and gonorrhoea is six or seven times as prevalent as syphilis. It follows that at least every other person in the Kingdom has suffered from venereal disease. Probably not a family has escaped infection. In proportion to its prevalence syphilis is not very deadly, yet it has been reckoned as the fourth killing disease.

The victims of gonorrhoea are incalculable. Venereal diseases fill our hospitals, asylums, and workhouses. They are the princ.i.p.al causes of heart disease, apoplexy, paralysis, insanity, blindness in children, and of that life of sterility and pain to which so many women are condemned. It is said that chast.i.ty is the only real safeguard against venereal disease.

But this is always said by people who have never stirred a finger to teach chast.i.ty, but who have only preached it. At any time there are at least a million of perfectly innocent sufferers, princ.i.p.ally women and children, in the United Kingdom.

During the war a disloyal faction in every Dominion endeavoured to prevent the sending of help to the Mother Country. A princ.i.p.al cry of this faction was, "Do not let us send our clean lads to that cesspool, England."

England is more than the world-cesspool. Since Englishmen are the greatest travellers, she has been the princ.i.p.al source of infection for the world.

At one time during the war the Australasian Governments threatened to withdraw their forces unless measures were taken to protect them.

When the German offensive was impending a sanitary method was published, so effective that the venereal rate was reduced from 92 to 15 per thousand per annum. The Government proposed to bring the method into general use in the Army, but was prevented by influences which preferred to see the country poisoned and the British Army defeated. While the opponents of sanitation sat snugly at home hundreds of thousands of British soldiers were killed or maimed, enormous material was lost with territory which other hundreds of thousands of brave men had died to win, the war was prolonged, thousands of millions were added to the National Debt, and half trained boys and elderly fathers of families were hurried into the firing line. At that time there were in hospitals or in depots, convalescent from venereal disease, enough fully-trained allied soldiers to furnish, not an army corps but a great army, complete almost from G.O.C. to trumpeter.

Fear of disease does not prevent immorality, as may be judged from the immense prevalence of venereal disorders. But it does drive baser characters to the pursuit and seduction of "decent" girls. In this way nearly all prost.i.tutes begin their careers. Prost.i.tutes are much more diseased than other women, who, though often diseased, are seldom suspected of disease. Yet, since it has been found statistically that three out of four men acquire their maladies from amateurs, it is manifest that prost.i.tutes only hang on the fringe of a vaster immorality. Men, who know more of these diseases than women, are, on the average, much less chaste. Medical students who know most are not more moral than other men.

Plainly venereal diseases are causes, not preventives, of immorality.

Nothing, therefore, is gained from their prevalence except a flood of death, disability, and misery, which falls alike on the just and unjust.

During the war Sir Archdall Reid, employing very simple means, reduced the incidence of disease among the large body of troops in his charge almost to the vanis.h.i.+ng point. He could not make them more moral, he did not make them less moral, but at any rate he preserved their services for the country in its hour of need. And he preserved their future wives and children from unmerited death and suffering. Other doctors were equally successful. The town authorities of Portsmouth and many other boroughs are about to employ these methods for the prevention of disease among the civil population. This book describes them and tells the story of the fight against a wicked and cruel fanaticism. Its policy is endorsed by many of the leading men and women in the Kingdom--members of both Houses of Parliament, town authorities, doctors, authors, sociologists and others.