Rational sex ethics : a physiological and psychological study of the sex lives of normal men and women, with suggestions for a rational sex hygiene with reference to actual case histories / W.F. Robie.

  • Robie, W. F. (Walter Franklin), 1866-1928.
Date:
©1916, ©1918
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rational sex ethics : a physiological and psychological study of the sex lives of normal men and women, with suggestions for a rational sex hygiene with reference to actual case histories / W.F. Robie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    significance, except in a small proportion of the cases, and to Noggerath is due the first real warning note, which was sounded as late as 1872. Although at the time Noggerath’s statements were looked upon as greatly exaggerated, closer study seems to bear him out, and he does not appear to have greatly overstated the case. A large percentage of blindness from infancy, sterility in the husband or wife, or a life of invalidism on the part of one or the other, can be ascribed to its influence, and the disease contracted in the igno- rance of youth, and even forgotten, has not infrequent- ly been the cause of long-continued suffermg on the part of the wife, marriage having taken place long after the subsidence of the disease in the man.” Where do we find ourselves? No sane man, with the happiness and higher symmetrical development of the individual and the highest future of the race at heart can advise any course for young people except mod- erately early, well-assorted marriages. If three-fifths of the young men and one-fifth of the young women are infected at the time of marriage with communicable venereal disease, to say nothing of the loose habits and low conception of private and public morals which must inevitably have come during the acquiring of these diseases, what a failure this, the only course which can lead to the greatest personal happiness and the greatest public good, must be in thousands of instances unless physicians and all educated people first inform them- selves in matters of sex and then so advise and instruct the young people of both sexes that these evils may be avoided !