Note EH — Chapter XXIV · MALE CHASTITY

These gonorrhoeal complications may serve as a deterrent for the individual but would have nothing to do with morality, if they would not also be met with in the innocent party. If gonorrhoea and its complications would only affect the individual that voluntarily exposes itself to infection, it would be of no more moral concern than measles or pneumonia. But gonorrhoea insidiously strikes the innocent women and children. Hence it is subject to the “moral imperative,” “Thou shalt not kill, blind or maim your wife and child.” To give such a loathsome disease to another person is hence a moral crime, apart from the fact that the misconduct of the unchaste man is to the detriment of himself and of the race and is immoral. Still writers who call themselves independent thinkers demand yet better proofs of the immorality of man’s unchastity.

The only excuse for the men who carry gonorrhoea into their families is that they do not know the consequences. As a rule, the misfortune comes upon the family quite unaware. The man cannot even be blamed of negligence. Not only the woman acquires gonorrhoea without her knowledge and in absence of all local or general symptoms, but even the man does not know that he is still harboring infectious material in his genital tract.

Prof. Bum has found gonococci in the urine and in the urethral secretions, five and ten years after the onset of the infection. At such a late period no man ever thinks of still being infectious, and in this way he becomes not infrequently unaware the murderer of his mate.