Publisher's Synopsis
From the book's INTRODUCTION.This book deals with what is commonly described as the Hidden Scourge, and is written with the intention that this scourge shall be hidden no longer, for if it were to remain hidden, then there would be no hope of abolishing it.Men writers for the most part refuse to tell what the Hidden Scourge is, and so it becomes the duty of women to do it.The Hidden Scourge is sexual disease, which takes two chief forms - syphilis and gonorrhoea. These diseases are due to prostitution - they are due, that is to say, to sexual immorality. But they are not confined to those who are immoral. Being contagious, they are communicated to the innocent, and especially to wives. The infection of innocent wives in marriage is justly declared by a man doctor to be "The crowning infamy of our so- cial life." Generally speaking, wives who are thus infected are quite ignorant of what is the matter with them. The men who would think it indelicate to utter in their hearing the words syphilis and gonorrhea, seem not to think it indelicate to infect them with the terrible diseases which bear these names. The sexual diseases are the great cause of physical, mental, and moral degeneracy, and of race suicide. As they are very widespread (from 75 to 80 per cent, of men becoming infected by gonorrhea, and a considerable percentage, difficult to ascertain precisely, becoming infected with syphilis), the problem is one of appalling magnitude. To discuss an evil, and then to run away from it without suggesting how it may be cured, is not the way of Suffragettes, and in the following pages will be found a proposed cure for the great evil in question. That cure; briefly stated, is Votes for Women and Chastity for Men. Quotations and opinions from eminent medical men are given, and these show that chastity for men is healthful for themselves and is imperative in the interests of the race.
