Public morals / [James Marchant, editor].

Date:
[between 1900 and 1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Public morals / [James Marchant, editor]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    224/256 (page 224)
    the question of Abolition is being once more mooted. If the Governments have not been idle, so neither have the doctors. One by one the Brussels recommendations are being taken up and carried a step further. French and German professors are throwing themselves with energy into the work of enlightening the public. The first act of Professor Fournier’s Paris Society was to prepare—or ask him to prepare — a warning addressed to all young men over seventeen in public schools and colleges. Here the temptations to be encountered and the probable consequences of yielding are set forth with great plainness of speech. Young men are not to trust in Regulation, or to imagine that because the “ clandestines ” are the most dangerous, the “registered women” are safe; “for the first of these propositions does not by any means involve the second.” “ The necessary conclusion of all this is, that the best prevention is individual prevention. . . . Let us begin by protecting ourselves, which is far better than trusting to the vigilance of others.” 1 So, again, Professor Finger, of Vienna, in an important article in the same number of the Bulletin.2 Regulation, he says, will never do much to check disease. “ The future seems very dark. We have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to attain our object by the means hitherto employed. And the suppression of prostitution appears at present as impossible as its sanitation.” 1 Bulletin de la Society Internationale de Frophylaxiet etc., 1901, tome i. No. 4, pp. 392, 393. 2 Ibid. pp. 333-339.