single and definite. To effect its prevention therefore, what we want is earnest endeavour and co-operation. In our own persons we should care fully avoid spreading the disease, and in others we should do all we can to prevent their catching it, and to cure it if caught. We should seek, above all, completely to do away with prostitution, which is the grand cause of the venereal diseases. I shall speak hereafter of the mode in which this great object is to be effected.

Besides these social and moral means for the prevention of gonorrhoea, there are means which each individual should use, who wishes in the present dangerous state of the sexual world, and as long as prostitution exists among us, neither to receive nor to give infection. No one should ever neglect, after a suspicious sexual connection, (and all mercenary love is to be viewed as such,) to make water immediately, and also to wash well the genital organs, whether with pure water, or with a chlorine or alkaline wash, which is more effectual, but not so easily to be had. The external washing will prevent any chance of balanitis, and will render the occurrence of chancre much less probable. The urine will cleanse the canal internally, and probably prevent a gonorrhoea, even though the female should be highly diseased.

Even though one has great confidence in a woman's assertion that she is not diseased, yet if she have been exposed to infection, these precautions should never be neglected; as she may communicate a disease from infectious matter having been retained in her organs, though without causing disease in her. In fact, it should be recognised as a settled rule in all mercenary intercourse, as long as it lasts in the world, that both parties should wash carefully immediately after connection; which simple precaution, so easy of application, would of itself prevent the great majority of diseases. It is now very generally adopted, both by men and women, among those who have experience, self-regard, and prudence in these matters; but it is too often neglected, whether from carelessness or inexperience, or still more from ignorance and intoxication, especially among the poorer classes. Women of the better description, both expect and are glad to see precautions used, which are a guarantee of their own safety, and themselves habitually employ them. Besides these means, the venereal act should not be prolonged, and ejaculation should take place, as the semen helps to cleanse the canal.

But by far the most certain preventive of gonorrhoea, and of all other venereal diseases, is the condom, an artificial sheath for the penis, made of very delicate membrane; which, if well made, so as not to be torn, renders gonorrhoea impossible. It is so thin as not very greatly to interfere with the venereal enjoyment; and yet from many causes it is comparatively seldom used in this country. In the first place, the shyness between the sexes, which is much greater here than abroad, prevents the man from using, what he may think would show him to be suspicious, or might be disliked, or thought unnatural, by the woman; who probably for the most part is perfectly apathetic about the matter, or would rather be glad to see means used, which would save herself also from any risk. Moreover, the sheath has been proscribed by moralists, as an unnatural, and therefore immoral interference with the normal

act, and final cause, of sexual intercourse; and therefore it is sometimes difficult to procure it in this country, as it is sold only in a few shops, which have a low moral character, and in an under-hand way. Nay, on its first invention and introduction into France, as a means of preventing venereal diseases, we learn from M. Parent Duchatelet, thất a body of medical men, who met to deliberate on the subject, published to their own shame, their strong disapprobation of the invention and its author, not on account of the facility it might give to the secret indulgence of sexual desires, unburdened by the fear of offspring, but because they held it a sin to attempt to prevent these diseases! It gives one pain to think that the good Duchatelet, whose life-time was devoted, like that of Dr. Andrew Combe, to the prevention of disease, and whose great work on prostitution I shall afterwards treat of, should have also adopted this perverted, and in him too strangely illogical, opinion.

⚫ It is a very great pity that ideas, many of them so sinful, for by no other name can one term those prejudices, which stand in the way of the sacred cause of the prevention of disease, should prove a barrier to the introduction, and free liberty of using, according to the necessities of each case, a means which in the present condition of society is of so very great value. Indeed its discovery, if rightly viewed, may be, and I trust one day, shall be considered, as a very great benefit to society. As a preventive of venereal disease, the sheath is most invaluable; with its aid, one may pass scatheless through the very midst of infection; and for any one in whom disease is particularly to be dreaded, as in a weakly constitution, or a patient with spermatorrhoea or other evils, its protection is often the greatest blessing.

But it has fared with this instrument, just as with all other efforts to prevent venereal diseases; all have been alike discountenanced, or at best, viewed with apathy, by the mistaken moralist; to whom these hideous and desolating diseases appear more as a salutary warning to men, the existence of which he would rather coldly ascribe to providence, than to his own and other's lukewarmness. Would that the reader may feel, as strongly as I do, the injustice, immorality, and want of human sympathy, contained in such opinions!

When society has become fully alive to the desire to prevent venereal diseases, as well as all others, then and not till then, will the great value of the sheath be perceived, as a most powerful means of such prevention. Meanwhile it were very desirable that it should come into more general use, and that there should be a greater facility of obtaining it; so that each individual who wishes to avail himself of it, may readily do so. All attempts to interfere with its sale, or with the perfect freedom of procuring it, must be looked on as injurious to the interests of society, and liable to occasion the most deplorable diseases.

Care should be taken that the sheath, if used, should be made of good materials, not pervious, and that the same one should not be used frequently, as thus it becomes less trustworthy. Along with its use, the other precautions of making water and washing should not be neglected; and were these precautions generally made known and adopted we should have in a short time the number of venereal diseases wonder

fully reduced, and endless human misery, hate, crime, and bitterness spared.

Besides these precautions during and after coition, there are some other prophylactics, which are very useful for those who expose themselves much to infection, especially if they do not use the sheath. They are more efficacious as preventives of balanitis and chancre, than of gonorrhea; consisting as they do, in means for hardening the external mucous membrane. Those who have been circumcised, as 1 stated before, never have balanitis, and they are also much less subject to chancre; because the mucous membrane of the glans becomes hardened by constant exposure, and excoriations rarely take place in coition, into which the chancrous matter may find a way. Those who have much promiscuous sexual intercourse might imitate this, by drawing back the prepuce, and so keeping the glans habitually exposed, a state of things which in many persons is natural. This is a powerful preventive of balanitis and syphilis, and is especially necessary for those, in whom the mucous membrane is apt to excoriate and tear in coition, which renders them very liable to chancre. Under exposure the mucous membrane will become tough and insusceptible of infection. Sponging with cold water, or what is more powerful, washing frequently with some astringent, as the decoction of oak bark, acts also as a preventive by hardening the parts.

However unfortunate a man may be in getting a gonorrhoea, no one who has a true heart, with love for his kind, will ever give one to another. Neither in carelessness nor sport, for as we have seen, it may be a death-sport; nor from a wish to be revenged on the sex in the person of a helpless girl, innocent at least towards him, and who has so few friends, or kind treatment, an action unmanly and unfeeling; nor from ignorance whether his gleet be infectious-knowing that while a zign of yellow matter remains, it is probably still infectious, and in such a case, if he will not abstain, he must wear the sheath; nor from heedlessness, irreverence for the girl, want of heart, nor bluntness of conscience, from which feelings may the reader ever be free. A man in the prosent state of society has far less excuse for giving the disease to another, than a woman, as the latter, from the peculiar form of the female genital organs, may possibly not know that she is diseased; and besides she has often the powerful excuses of destitution, the necessity of gaining a livelihood, friendlessness, and, last not least, her shameful degradation in the eyes of society to plead for her, while we have none of these. But I trust that the reader, very far from doing anything to spread these or other diseases, will rather, to the best of his powers, cooperate in the endeavour to prevent them.

SYPHILIS.

Ir the disease, which I have just been describing, viz., gonorrhoea, be frequently viewed in a light and jesting manner, by those who are.unacquainted with the lamentable consequences it so often occasions, and by the young and thoughtless,-such is not the case with the much more formidable and dreaded disease, which comes now before us. While the former is merely a simple inflammation, rendered frequently serious only by the vitally important nature of the organs, where it occurs, syphilis consists in a peculiar and specific poison; which, if it be once fairly introduced into the system, contaminates the whole frame, and produces the most deplorable effects.

Of all the plagues and scourges of mankind in the present day, this disease may certainly be said to be the most fearful. It does not overwhelm us with sudden panic and destruction, like cholera, or other epidemic evils, which come but rarely, and therefore, however fearful their visitations, have not a permanent influence on our fate; but it is always with us, preying on our vitals, and slowly sapping the constitution, moral and physical, of thousands; and these the young, hopeful, and vigorous, the pride and the promise of our race. Mankind will yet, and let us hope ere long, become universally alive to the fearful prejudice and inhumanity, which have suffered this disease to run on so long without any means being taken for its prevention and eradication.

Syphilis, commonly called pox, is the disease produced by a poisonous inatter, introduced into the frame during sexual intercourse. It first appears locally on the genital organs of either sex, in the form of a small ulcer; the poison of which is in many cases absorbed into the general system, giving rise to the most dreadful consequences. The symptoms of the disease are therefore divided into three classes, according as they mark different stages of the poisoning, local or general. These classes are the primary, the secondary, and the tertiary.

Primary syphilis consists in a small ulcer, secreting a poisonous and contagious matter, and seated on the part which has been exposed to contagion. It is produced by the contact of the secretion of a similar ulcer, with an unprotected surface, When any of the matter of a syphilitic ulcer, in an individual affected with the disease, finds its way

beneath the skin or mucous membrane of a healthy person, the following results take place. During the first twenty four-hours, the point of the skin where the virus is, becomes red; in the second and third day, a little pimple rises on it; in the third and fourth, the pimple becomes a vesicle, filled with clear fluid; on the fourth and fifth, this fluid becomes thick and yellow, and the vesicle thus becomes a pustule with a slightly depressed centre, exactly like one of the small-pox pustules. In the sixth and seventh days, the matter dries up, and forms a crust, which in a few more days falls off, disclosing a small ulcer, about the size of a split pea. Its base is rather hard from the effusion of some lymph around; its sides are abrupt and a little everted, so that it looks as if cleanly cut out with a punch; its surface covered.with a whitish tenacious film, and secreting a thin acrid pus, which possesses the contagious properties.

Such is, in many cases, the apparently slight and simple origin of this terrible disease. A chancre, for so the small ulcer is named, is, in the male, generally seated on some part of the glans of the penis, or on the internal or external surface of the prepuce; sometimes, though rarely, inside the urethra, like gonorrhoea. A chanere is not, like gonorrhoea, confined to mucous membranes; it may arise on all parts of the body alike, provided the contagious matter be introduced beneath the skin. Hence, accoucheurs sometimes contract the disease, in examining pregnant women affected with it, if they happen to have a scratch on the finger. To give rise to chancre, a closer contact of its peculiar poisonous matter is necessary, than in gonorrhoea, which is caused merely by the pus coming in contact with a mucous membrane. The matter of chancre however must be introduced below the surface, whether of the skin or of a mucous membrane, so as to come in contact with the blood, else it will not act. Hence infection is produced either by its meeting some abrasion of the surface, or by its getting into a little follicle or pouch, where it lies dormant for a short time, till it has eaten its way into the quick, and then it is developed into the ulcer. It may also perhaps, if allowed to remain long enough, eat its way through a mucous surface by its acrid properIf it meet an abrasion, the ulcer begins immediately to be developed, and frequently without going through the previous stages of pimple, vesicle, and pustule; if it has to eat its way through the tissues, some days may pass before the disease shows itself.

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But the primary ulcer is in many cases by no means of so mild and simple a nature, but may be a most serious disease. There are several different forms of chancre, occasioned, according to some authors, by specific differences in the nature of the poisonous matter, but according to others, (among whom is M. Ricord, and who believe that there is but one syphilitic poison), by the differences of constitution in the patients. One of these is the gangrenous or phagedænic (or eating) ulcer-a most terrible disease. In it the inflammation caused by the poisonous matter, runs so high, that mortification is produced, which has a tendency to spread on every side, destroying the tissues, so that a part and sometimes even the whole of the penis is lost, and even death may result. This is by no means an uncommon form of the disease, and in the hospitals in our large towns, most deplorable instances of it are constantly to be