Part 18 (2/2)
Sentimental Literature.--In another connection, we have referred particularly to the bawdy, obscene books and pictures which are secretly circulated among the youth of both s.e.xes, and to their corrupting influence. The hope is not entirely a vain one that this evil may be controlled; but there seems no possible practicable remedy for another evil which ultimately leads to the same result, though by less gross and obscene methods. We refer to the sentimental literature which floods the land. City and school libraries, circulating libraries, and even Sunday-school libraries, are full of books which, though they may contain good moral teaching, contain, as well, an element as incompatible with purity of morals as is light with midnight darkness.
Writers for children and youth seem to think a tale of ”courts.h.i.+p, love, and matrimony” entirely indispensable as a medium for conveying their moral instruction. Some of these ”religious novels” are actually more pernicious than the fictions of well-known novelists who make no pretense to having religious instruction a particular object in view.
Sunday-school libraries are not often wholly composed of this cla.s.s of works, but any one who takes the trouble to examine the books of such a library will be able to select the most pernicious ones by the external appearance. The covers will be well worn and the edges begrimed with dirt from much handling. Children soon tire of the shallow sameness which characterizes the ”moral” parts of most of these books, and skim lightly over them, selecting and devouring with eagerness those portions which relate the silly narrative of some love adventure. This kind of literature arouses in children premature fancies and queries, and fosters a sentimentalism which too often occasions most unhappy results. Through their influence, young girls are often led to begin a life of shame long before their parents are aware that a thought of evil has ever entered their minds.
The following words from the pen of a forcible writer[43] present this matter in none too strong a light:--
”You may tear your coat or break a vase, and repair them again; but the point where the rip or fracture took place will always be evident.
It takes less than an hour to do your heart a damage which no time can entirely repair. Look carefully over your child's library; see what book it is that he reads after he has gone to bed, with the gas turned upon the pillow. Do not always take it for granted that a book is good because it is a Sunday-school book. As far as possible, know _who_ wrote it, who ill.u.s.trated it, who published it, who sold it.
”It seems that in the literature of the day the ten plagues of Egypt have returned, and the frogs and lice have hopped and skipped over our parlor tables.
”Parents are delighted to have their children read, but they should be sure as to what they read. You do not have to walk a day or two in an infested district to get the cholera or typhoid fever; and one wave of moral unhealth will fever and blast the soul forever. Perhaps, knowing not what you did, you read a bad book. Do you not remember it altogether? Yes! and perhaps you will never get over it. However strong and exalted your character, never read a bad book. By the time you get through the first chapter you will see the drift. If you find the marks of the hoofs of the devil in the pictures, or in the style, or in the plot, away with it.
”But there is more danger, I think, from many of the family papers, published once a week, in those stories of vice and shame, full of infamous suggestions, going as far as they can without exposing themselves to the clutch of the law. I name none of them; but say that on some fas.h.i.+onable tables there lie 'family newspapers' that are the very vomit of the pit.
”The way to ruin is cheap. It costs three dollars to go to Philadelphia; six dollars to Boston; thirty-three dollars to Savannah; but, by the purchase of a bad paper for ten cents you may get a through ticket to h.e.l.l, by express, with few stopping places, and the final halting like the tumbling of the lightning train down the draw-bridge at Norwalk--sudden, terrific, deathful, never to rise.”
[Footnote 43: T. De Witt Talmage.]
Poverty.--The pressing influence of poverty has been urged as one cause of prost.i.tution. It cannot be denied that in many cases, in large cities, this may be the immediate occasion of the entrance of a young girl upon a life of shame; but it may still be insisted that there must have been, in such cases, a deficiency in previous training; for a young woman, educated with a proper regard for purity, would sooner sacrifice life itself than virtue. Again, poverty can be no excuse, for in every city there are made provisions for the relief of the needy poor, and none who are really worthy need suffer.
Ignorance.--Perhaps nothing fosters vice more than ignorance.
Prost.i.tutes come almost entirely from the more ignorant cla.s.ses, though there are, of course, many exceptions. Among the lowest cla.s.ses, vice is seen in its grossest forms, and is carried to the greatest lengths.
Intellectual culture is antagonistic to sensuality. As a general rule, in proportion as the intellect is developed, the animal pa.s.sions are brought into subjection. It is true that very intellectual men have been great libertines, and that the licentious Borgias and Medicis of Italy encouraged art and literature; but these are only apparent exceptions, for who knows to what greater depths of vice these individuals might have sunk had it not been for the restraining influence of mental culture?
Says Deslandes, ”In proportion as the intellect becomes enfeebled, the generative sensibility is augmented.” The animal pa.s.sions seem to survive when all higher intelligence is lost. We once saw an ill.u.s.tration of this fact in an idiot who was brought before a medical cla.s.s in a clinic at Bellevue Hospital, New York. The patient had been an idiot from birth, and presented the most revolting appearance, seemingly possessing scarcely the intelligence of the average dog; but his animal propensities were so great as to be almost uncontrollable.
Indeed, he showed evidences of having been a gross debauchee, having contracted venereal disease of the worst form. The general prevalence of extravagant s.e.xual excitement among the insane is a well-known fact.
Disease.--Various diseases which cause local irritation and congestion of the reproductive organs are the causes of unchast.i.ty in both s.e.xes, as previously explained. It not unfrequently happens that by constantly dwelling upon unchaste subjects until a condition of habitual congestion of the s.e.xual organs is produced, young women become seized with a furor for libidinous commerce which nothing but the desired object will appease, unless active remedial measures are adopted under the direction of a skillful physician. This disease, known as _nymphomania_, has been the occasion of the fall of many young women of the better cla.s.ses who have been bred in luxury and idleness, but were never taught even the first lessons of purity or self-control.
Constipation, piles, worms, pruritis of the genitals, and some other less common diseases of the urinary and genital systems, have been causes of s.e.xual excitement which has resulted in moral degradation.
Results of Licentiousness.--Apparently as a safeguard to virtue, nature has appended to the sin of illicit s.e.xual indulgence, as penalties, the most loathsome, deadly, and incurable diseases known to man. Some of these, as _gonorrhea_ and _chancroid_, are purely local diseases; and though they occasion the transgressor a vast amount of suffering, they may be cured and leave no trace of their presence except in the conscience of the individual. Such a result, however, is by no means the usual one. Most frequently, the injury done is more or less permanent; sometimes it amounts to loss of life or serious mutilation, as in cases we have seen. And one attack secures no immunity from subsequent ones, as a new disease may be contracted upon every exposure.
By far the worst form of venereal disease is _syphilis_, a malady which was formerly confounded with the two forms of disease mentioned, but from which it is essentially different. At first, a very slight local lesion, of no more consequence--except from its significance--than a small boil, it rapidly infects the general system, poisoning the whole body, and liable forever after to develop itself in any one or more of its protean forms. The most loathsome sight upon which a human eye can rest is a victim of this disease who presents it well developed in its later stages. In the large Charity Hospital upon Blackwell's Island, near New York City, we have seen scores of these unfortunates of both s.e.xes, exhibiting the horrid disease in all its phases. To describe them would be to place before our readers a picture too revolting for these pages. No pen can portray the woebegone faces, the hopeless air, of these degraded sufferers whose repentance has come, alas! too late. No words can convey an adequate idea of their sufferings.
What remorse and useless regrets add to the misery of their wretched existence as they daily watch the progress of a malignant ulceration which is destroying their organs of speech, or burrowing deep into the recesses of the skull, penetrating even to the brain itself! Even the bones become rottenness; foul running sores appear on different portions of the body, and may even cover it entirely. Perhaps the nose, or the tongue, or the lips, or an eye, or some other prominent organ, is lost. Still the miserable sufferer lingers on, life serving only to prolong the torture. To many of them, death would be a grateful release, even with the fires of retributive justice before their eyes; for h.e.l.l itself could scarcely be more awful punishment than that which they daily endure.
Thousands of Victims.--The venturesome youth need not attempt to calm his fears by thinking that these are only exceptional cases, for this is not the truth. In any city, one who has an experienced eye can scarcely walk a dozen blocks on busy streets without encountering the woeful effects of s.e.xual transgression. Neither do these results come only from long-continued violations of the laws of chast.i.ty. The very first departure from virtue may occasion all the worst effects possible.
Effects of Vice Ineradicable.--Another fearful feature of this terrible disease is that when once it invades the system its eradication is impossible. No drug, no chemical, can antidote its virulent poison or drive it from the system. Various means may smother it, possibly for a life-time; but yet it is not cured, and the patient is never safe from a new outbreak. Prof. b.u.mstead, an acknowledged authority on this subject, after observing the disease for many years, says that ”he never after treatment, however prolonged, promises immunity for the future.”[44] Dr. Van Buren, professor of surgery at Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York, bears the same testimony.
[Footnote 44: Venereal Disease.]
Prof. Van Buren also says that he has often seen the disease occur upon the lips of young ladies who were entirely virtuous, but who were engaged to men who had contracted the disease and had communicated it to them by the act of kissing. Virtuous wives have not infrequently had their const.i.tutions hopelessly ruined by contracting the disease from husbands who had themselves been inoculated either before or after marriage, by illicit intercourse. Several such unfortunate cases have fallen under our observation, and there is reason to believe that they are not infrequent.
The Only Hope.--The only hope for one who has contracted this disease is to lead a life of perfect continence ever after, and by a most careful life, by conforming strictly to the laws of health, by bathing and dieting, he may possibly avoid the horrid consequences of the later stages of the malady. Mercury will not cure, nor will any other poison, as before remarked.
The following strong testimony on this subject we quote from an admirable pamphlet by Prof. Fred. H. Gerrish, M.D.:--
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