Safe Marriage | Page 7

and their
self-righteous indifference and intolerance soon change into lively
concern for themselves and their families."

The facts seem so plain, and yet there is still great opposition to the
promotion of a knowledge of sexual cleanliness and self-disinfection.
Only a short time ago (the end of 1920), Sir Frederick Mott, the great
authority on syphilis, felt obliged to oppose some opponents of
self-disinfection at a public enquiry in London in this fashion:--
"The point is that large numbers of innocent women have suffered from
disease. They are rendered sterile, have miscarriages and abortions, and
large numbers have been ruined. I have been connected with the
London County Asylums for twenty-five years, and I have seen in
those asylums people from all states of society, and I have seen them
die of general paralysis. Five per cent. of the people who get syphilis,
in spite of treatment, develop this disease. That is only one aspect of it.
I was on the Royal Commission on Venereal Disease, and Sir William
Osier, who was a great authority, said that he could teach medicine on
syphilis alone, because every tissue in the body is affected by it, and
that the diseases of blindness, deafness, insanity and every form of
disease may be due to syphilis. You have only to consider the effect
that it had upon the army, and I understand that more than two army
corps were invalided during the war on account of venereal disease.
What have you to say to that? Does not that create some anxiety?"
It is difficult even to read this eloquent appeal--the more eloquent
perhaps because it was quite unpremeditated--without being deeply
moved. Yet the witnesses opposing Sir Frederick Mott were apparently
unaffected. Of them, as of men of old, it might justly be said:--
"He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should
not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be
converted."
And now large numbers of hospitals all over the Empire are issuing
appeals for the means to treat venereal disease.
"It is tragic," says one London hospital, "to see the sufferers--men,
women and even little children--innocent little mites, knowing not from
what they suffer or why they should. It is thought by many that
venereal disease is a sign of guilt, but large numbers of our patients are

innocent victims."
Is it not time then that we all stopped repeating timid platitudes about
making vice safe, and did something practical to make marriage safe?
Why don't we?
Is it because we are afraid to define the terms we use so glibly? We talk
of promoting chastity, for example. What is chastity? Surely chastity is
happy, healthy sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who
love one another; and unchastity is sexual intercourse between those
who do not love one another. No sexual intercourse at all is neither
chastity nor unchastity; it is the negation of both, and it ends in
extinction. Why trouble so much about a negation that inevitably
means racial death? Why not devote ourselves to life and love; to the
building of a happy healthy human family--a family that instinctively
realises that the clean blood-stream of a nation is its most priceless
possession?
But the national blood-stream can never be clean until there is a
complete knowledge of sexual control and sanitation among all of us,
and especially among women. One of the very first things which
women must learn to understand is the control of conception and the
control of venereal diseases. They must learn how to prevent the birth
of the unfit; how to secure the birth of the fit; and even though their
husbands are infective they must learn how to break the chain of
infection in their own bodies, so that what is bad for the race does not
become worse. If women are brave enough and wise enough, they can
in most cases _wipe out the scourge of venereal diseases from their
own hearths and homes_, and ensure that every child born is at least
physically fit. But this cannot be done without knowledge, and that
knowledge is at present lacking.
The following pages are written with the object of imparting useful,
practical knowledge to sensible and serious women. The women who
accept and apply this knowledge can rest calm in the sure and certain
faith that it is their offspring who will build up the coming race.

II.--PRACTICAL METHODS OF PREVENTION.
A. FOR WOMEN:
SEXUAL REPRODUCTION.
To understand the practical methods of birth-control, or the control of
conception, we must first have a clear view of the processes involved
when the reproductive organs are in activity, and of the nature and
situation of the sexual organs themselves. The diagrams on pages 34,
35 and 36 show in general outline