"Nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, exercises his art with caution and pays equal attention to the rich and poor."-Voltaire. Certainly this is an age of both pre- man buds, reaps naught today. Ty- phoid, once decimating our armies, And so the investigators of preven- law, emblematized by blue coats, brass buttons, big sticks and brogues, and made seductively attractive by the lacy curtains of night and the tinted lights that burn low where the spark of revelry goes out and the Spirochete begin to dance. But why no prophylaxis for this vicious disease? In history it is recorded. by Darby 2367 B.C. among the Chinese who used mercurial inunctions; recorded among the Hindus 1000 years B. C. and they used mercury; recorded Biblically in Num. xxv, 8 and xxxi, 16 and 17, and Lev. xiii, and probably traced in the sores of Job down through the European epidemic of 1495 to the embracer of "606" of today where it remains unimpeded by pauper, by aristocrat, or by the law. Why this reverential culture of a disease revulsive beyond descriptive language? A disease said to be contracted by one person in six; a disease handed down to the unborn; a disease that may cause molecular death of every human tissue; a disease attacking the brain and nervous system of one in ten of all its victims; a disease responsible for 9.3 per cent of 1741 cases of mental and nervous and inebriated cases analyzed without selection(1); a disease that fosters criminal association and crime; a disease that fosters diseased association and annihilates the teachings of mental culture and the teachings of moral and Godly laws of the land. All persons of teachable intelligence are taught the shame of prostitution and that shame sinks down deep into the moral memories of the individual; but in the absence of a restraining law young adults, yet needing restraint, yield to temptation flagrantly thrust before them when the craving perceptions are hyperesthetic and are magnified by and judgment inhibition is frequently suspended by the usual decoy -alcoholic tippling. Thus they acquire illicit activity of the instinctive procreative function which either becomes blighted by disease or morally blighted, in that this creative, therefore, sacred function becomes wrongly developed, perverted and is no longer (1) Syphilis versus Accident and Life Insurance, Medical Fortnightly, St. Louis, Mo., June, 1911. subjected to mental control which should have been made the stronger by enforced teachings of morality. This is demonstrated in the youth living the simple life, remote from temptation. He matures a picture of healthful vigor, marries and remains clean throughout life, showing that the excuse of "prostitution being an essential" to be simply a self-exoneration for seeking a moral step downward to gratify an inner cultivation of the immoral. The psychological fundamentals of public protection of prostitution are much akin to promoting institutions. for training in the commission of crime. This associative teaching of the young forms character units to be accepted by,daguerreotyped within, and becomes a part of the reasoning faculties and final judgment faculties, acts, and deeds of the brain, so cultured, forever afterwards. For this reason late corrective measures for crime succeed only in part if at all. The correctives must begin in the parent. Rigid parental training of the child away from wrong doing with legal and moral restrictions guiding away from the temptations of youth all tend to dwarf the inborn infantile instincts to do wrong till training builds, little by little, in the brain the intellectual acquirement which shall predominate the doings of the individual, made proof against wrong doing. "Old dogs cannot learn new tricks;" brains educationally grounded in right or wrong-doing will approximately remain so throughout life; brains, after fixed maturity, cannot be re-educated to the extent of eradicating the past mentality and receive a new transposed, high standard mental status in its stead; drastic corporeal punishment may modify the subsequent acts but it can never obliterate the primary educational units stored up in the brain. The maintenance of immoral institutions stamp the training and intellectual standard of that official community. So long as they exist they are educating and fixing in young brains the moral standard of the future of the growing boys and young men and polluting them with life long disease to be carried to all their cohabitats and eventually to a pure wife and her unborn offspring. Kansas City may be no worse than other cities, but all this whine of crime, immorality and prostitution is a result of the reaping from the sowing; a result of lessons never learned; a result of lessons learned that cannot be unlearned; a result of official dereliction and graft of other days handed down from father to son, and "sons of guns," that we may share the parental visitation of the sins on the children. And what is Kansas City going to do about it? She proposes to make 12th street the south end of a red light going north! It would be too sudden, the shock too great, to forego an annual $40,000 income at once! And the rental money, too, of 147 bawdy houses to be considered! And a circulating medium of $1,425,580.50 paid into these houses by close-fisted boys and men. This is too much business to sacrifice. The homes from which this money comes must be separated from it some how. If they won't spend it for luxuries, comforts or groceries, it is the duty of the city to point away -into trouble, irretrievably. It seems unthinkable that a city government will be a party to such a traffic for profit! Dumb animals do not sink so low as to make the pleasurable stimulation of the end bulbs of Krause of the sexual mucosa their highest ambition-for profit! IN LITERATURE. S.G.B. Dr. Albert H. Cordier needs no introduction to the Herald readers. For many years he has been Professor of Surgery in the University Medical College, and has been identified as a contributor to the surgical literature of both local and National surgical associations. In recognition of his professional status he served as president of the Medical Society of the Mississippi Valley. Though still active, Dr. Cordier is now enjoying the fruits of success that belong to an arduous but methodical and painstaking appli The about to yield to the intellectual leisure readers the product of his energies thus spent in a new book entitled, "Some Big Game Hunts." same story of his professional application, namely, no energies misspent though spent in relaxation from labor. This is not an idle reader's book; while pleasurable and restful it is instructive. The many illustrations are life photos taken by the doctor personally. We saw much of his book when in manuscript and appreciate the endless amount of work the author has done to round out the facts so entertainingly without introducing fiction. In presenting this book the reader receives it for just what the publishers felt they could produce it for. Dr. Cordier has refused to accept one cent of royalty from its sale, accepting his pleasures in the work as his reward. S.G.B. |