Syphilis in its medical, medico-legal and sociological aspects / by A. Ravogli.

  • Ravogli, A. (Augustus), 1851-1934.
Date:
[1907], ©1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Syphilis in its medical, medico-legal and sociological aspects / by A. Ravogli. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    This, however, leaves entirely untouched those who keep brothels and houses of prostitution where are harbored adult prostitutes. Here we find ourselves in the presence of the much discussed and difficult question, surveillance of prostitution, or abolition of all rules. It is true that so long as the markets are open, the merchandise will be always in demand. The governments fix rules, license prostitution, and consequently prostitution and proxenetism must flourish. The aboli- tionists consider the regulation of prostitution as establishing a social profession of the procuresses. The young prostitutes find in the pro- curess their support and their protection, not only from the dangers connected with this profession, but especially against the police. Any system authorizing, recognizing or licensing prostitution is repudiated by the abolitionists, and they want it suppressed. Indeed, they do not care to suppress the system of surveillance on account of its purpose, but for the more important question, whether, in reference to the public hygiene, free prostitution, or licensed prostitution is better. The abolitionists consider the rules of surveillance of prosti- tution entirely insufficient for the purpose. Furthermore, they attack the principle of licensing as false and immoral, because it is based on the wrong idea that prostitution is a necessary evil. That prostitution is an evil is admitted by everybody, even by those who enjoy it. From the fact of the existence of prostitution there cannot be made a good reason to legalize its exercise, and recognize it as of public utility. They rightly maintain that licensing prostitution is a cause of demoralization. It is a disgrace for a man to obtain women who sell themselves or are placed at his disposal by the public authorities, and with whom the commerce is entirely free from any responsibility for the man. Where there is no responsibility, there is no morality, and morality and liberty are the essential conditions of responsibility. The system of licensing prostitution takes liberty from the woman, and all the responsibility from the man. When the woman gives herself for money, she commits a horrible crime, for which she is placed beyond the protection of the law; the man who pays the woman to satisfy his carnal appetite, attends only to a natural act, which is granted to him by the law, and moreover, the state guarantees also the quality of the goods. Indeed, it seems that morals are only for one sex. The morality of woman is one thing, and quite another is the morality for the man, and these principles are upheld by the rules of the government. There is no doubt that the state cannot diminish the carnal appetite, the sexual passions, which the abolitionists believe to be in- creased by the licensing of prostitution. We, too, agree with them, that the best way to combat the evil of prostitution is the moral prin-