investigations in Germany made by Dr. F. Bierhoff, of New York, “Police Methods for the Sanitary Control of Prostitution,” New York Medical Journal, August, 1907.) The estimation of the amount of clandestine prostitution can indeed never be much more than guesswork; exactly the same figure of sixty thousand is commonly brought forward as the probable number of prostitutes not only in Berlin, but also in London and in New York.  It is absolutely impossible to say whether it is under or over the real number, for secret prostitution is quite intangible.  Even if the facts were miraculously revealed there would still remain the difficulty of deciding what is and what is not prostitution.  The avowed and public prostitute is linked by various gradations on the one side to the respectable girl living at home who seeks some little relief from the oppression of her respectability, and on the other hand to the married woman who has married for the sake of a home.  In any case, however, it is very certain that public prostitutes living entirely on the earnings of prostitution form but a small proportion of the vast army of women who may be said, in a wide sense of the word, to be prostitutes, i.e., who use their attractiveness to obtain from men not love alone, but money or goods.

“The struggle against syphilis is only possible if we agree to regard its victims as unfortunate and not as guilty....  We must give up the prejudice which has led to the creation of the term ‘shameful diseases,’ and which commands silence concerning this scourge of the family and of humanity.”  In these words of Duclaux, the distinguished successor of Pasteur at the Pasteur Institute, in his noble and admirable work L’Hygiene Sociale, we have indicated to us, I am convinced, the only road by which we can approach the rational and successful treatment of the great social problem of venereal disease.

The supreme importance of this key to the solution of a problem which has often seemed insoluble is to-day beginning to become recognized in all quarters, and in every country.  Thus a distinguished German authority, Professor Finger (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. i, Heft 5) declares that venereal disease must not be regarded as the well-merited punishment for a debauched life, but as an unhappy accident.  It seems to be in France, however, that this truth has been proclaimed with most courage and humanity, and not alone by the followers of science and medicine, but by many who might well be excused from interfering with so difficult and ungrateful a task.  Thus the brothers, Paul and Victor Margueritte, who occupy a brilliant and honorable place in contemporary French letters, have distinguished themselves by advocating a more humane attitude towards prostitutes, and a more modern method of dealing with the question of venereal disease.  “The true method of prevention is that which makes it clear to all that syphilis is not a mysterious and terrible