A few years ago, when no method of combating venereal disease was known except that system of police regulation which is now in its decadence, it would have been impossible to bring forward such considerations as these; they would have seemed Utopian.  To-day they are not only recognizable as practical, but they are being actually put into practice, although, it is true, with very varying energy and insight in different countries.  Yet it is certain that in the competition of nationalities, as Max von Niessen has well said, “that country will best take a leading place in the march of civilization which has the foresight and courage to introduce and carry through those practical movements of sexual hygiene which have so wide and significant a bearing on its own future, and that of the human race generally."[256]

FOOTNOTES: 

[220] It is probable that Schopenhauer felt a more than merely speculative interest in this matter.  Bloch has shown good reason for believing that Schopenhauer himself contracted syphilis in 1813, and that this was a factor in constituting his conception of the world and in confirming his constitutional pessimism (Medizinische Klinik, Nos. 25 and 26, 1906).

[221] Havelburg, in Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, pp. 186-189.

[222] This is the very definite opinion of Lowndes after an experience of fifty-four years in the treatment of venereal diseases in Liverpool (British Medical Journal, Feb. 9, 1907, p. 334).  It is further indicated by the fact (if it is a real fact) that since 1876 there has been a decline of both the infantile and general mortality from syphilis in England.

[223] “There is no doubt whatever that syphilis is on the increase in London, judging from hospital work alone,” says Pernet (British Medical Journal, March 30, 1907).  Syphilis was evidently very prevalent, however, a century or two ago, and there is no ground for asserting positively that it is more prevalent to-day.

[224] See, e.g., A. Neisser, Die experimentelle Syphilisforschung, 1906, and E. Hoffmann (who was associated with Schaudinn’s discovery), Die Aetiologie der Syphilis, 1906; D’Arcy Power, A System of Syphilis, 1908, etc.; F.W.  Mott, “Pathology of Syphilis in the Light of Modern Research,” British Medical Journal, February 20, 1909; also, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, vol. iv, 1909.

[225] There is some difference of opinion on this point, and though it seems probable that early and thorough treatment usually cures the disease in a few years and renders further complications highly improbable, it is not possible, even under the most favorable circumstances, to speak with absolute certainty as to the future.