In all this tremendous volume of public sanitary education, no one
feature stands out more clearly than the work being done in sex
hygiene. Prudery is passing; there can be no doubt of that. Within
the last five years every public school in New York has introduced a
course of teaching in its physiology or biology department the aim of
which is to acquaint the growing boy and girl with the essential facts
of sex life, to open their eyes to sexual evils, and to prepare them
to treat with sexual diseases intelligently. Ignorant mothers, both
foreign-born and native, or those whose false modesty is worse than
their ignorance, are day by day being taught by their daughters of
twelve and fourteen, who have learned their lessons in school or in
neighborhood classes, certain essential facts of sex life, ignorance of
which has brought about pitiful conditions of disease and death.
The effect of this is not yet fully apparent in a decreased death-rate,
but there can be little doubt that within a very few years it will have
its result. For instance, one third of the infant mortality is due to
prenatal conditions, congenital diseases which afflict the child at
birth, and which mean either speedy death or a lingering, crippled
life. The larger part of these untoward prenatal conditions are due to
sexual diseases. To eliminate them will require two sustained efforts:
the further abolishing of prudery, with consequent rigorous sex
hygiene, and the enactment and enforcement of laws that will require
proper medical examination before marriage.
A physician told me recently that in his opinion within a decade laws
will be enacted providing that every man and woman desiring to marry
can do so only with a doctor’s certificate that shall carry with it a
clean bill of health. Once that is done, it is confidently believed
that the death-rate among infants will fall off perhaps by a quarter,
and surely by a fifth or a sixth. The educational work in this field is
being done for the future. With present adults there is little hope;
but the fathers and mothers of the next generation will be much better
equipped.