The possibility of recovery from syphilis is greater at present than it has been in the past, but we cannot yet say that the disease is absolutely curable in a given case.  While most cases treated early with salvarsan, and followed by judicious use of mercury, are curable, there are nevertheless those which do not thus respond, and which in spite of all treatment go from bad to worse, till the patient’s miseries are ended in insanity, paralysis, and death.

While the venereal diseases are the greatest physical evils to be attributed to sex ignorance, there are others chargeable to the same cause.  There are, for instance, important physiological phenomena pertaining to sex development, ignorance of which is often baneful to the developing adolescent of either sex.  When the boy’s voice begins to change, and hair begins to appear on his face and body, and more thrilling sensations occasionally command his attention, he should be told, modestly but distinctly, that a pure and manly function is developing within him, the sole object of which is reproduction, and he must not consider it in a vulgar way, nor discuss it with others than his parents or physician or minister.  Tell him that these physical changes of oncoming manhood are due to the establishment of the secretion of the procreative fluid,—­the semen,—­and will be safely cared for by nature.  Fortify him against the mental pollution of the quack advertisement, and the satanically false teaching of ignorant associates that sexual intercourse is physiologically necessary, by impressing him with the fact that nature cares for the disposal of the seminal secretion.  When clearly made aware of these simple sex principles, and convinced that it is unmanly and depraved to consider them vulgarly, the rapidly developing manly boy will not become a masturbator or a frequenter of bawdy-houses and a victim of the gonococcic or spirochaetic infections; nor will he become a moral assassin, a seducer of girls.

The sister, no less than the brother, needs pure, plain, non-prudish sex education.  If her mother is not qualified to impart it, she, like the boy, should seek the aid of her minister, or physician, or a qualified school teacher; better a few suggestions from an experienced, modest source than many suggestions from inexperienced and often lewd companions.  As the brother was told of the physical phenomena accompanying his sex development, so the sister should be apprised of the physiological necessity of her periodical functions, and of nature’s kindly care and development of her delicate and wonderful sex mechanism, the sole purpose of which is maternity.  It will fortify her maidenliness to tell her that much of the world is deceitful and degrading in sex matters, and that if she would be a perfect woman, mentally and physically, she must vigilantly guard her virtue, maintaining absolute purity, not only with persons of the opposite sex, but with persons of her own sex, and the person of her own self.  Incalculable good can be done toward the uplift of wayward humanity by sex education.