Note EE — Chapter XXIV · MALE CHASTITY

Noeggerat claims that, in the city of New York, of 1000 married men 800 have had gonorrhoea, 90 per cent. of all these have not been healed and can infect their wives. As a result, at least three out of every five married women in New York have gonorrhoea as a gift of their husbands.

These statistics may be somewhat exaggerated, still the percentage of diseased young men is appalling. At least 50 per cent. of young men approaching the age of maturity become infected with venereal diseases in a single year.

Kirchner, of the Prussian ministerium of cultus, claims that about one hundred thousand men suffer daily of venereal diseases within the Prussian monarchy. The result is a loss of a daily income of at least 250,000 marks, or a loss of 90,000,000 marks a year.

Rogers claims that over ninety per cent. of our young men stray from the paths of virtue before marriage; sixty per cent. contract venereal diseases which are difficult to cure. More wives than prostitutes have venereal diseases, innocently contracted from husbands. Thousands of unborn babies are annually killed by parental infection. Sixty per cent. of the blindness in this country is due to venereal diseases. One-eighth of all cases in New York hospitals are venereal. Two hundred thousand infected persons walk the streets of New York daily.

Among men the author meets with in his practice or socially, the man who never had gonorrhoea once at least in his life is an extreme rarity.