The Great Red Plague by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 30, 1913

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 38

The Great Red Plague

By Editor

By the Editor

The writer of this article is not a physician, nor a specialist. He has had no experience in the things of which this paper treats, save that of common observation. But he profoundly believes that he ought to raise his voice, and echo on the warnings which have been raised and are being voiced by professional men, well-known physicians, state boards of health, and various other organizations. The safety of women and children, of girls and boys, demands the utterance.

He believes that the diseases of which this article treats, both of which he has classed under “the great red plague,” should be called by their right names, and the public made intelligent concerning their malefic power and ravaging inroads. Where human life and well-being are at stake, it is not a time to let false modesty or prudery hold back the warning. Through all the years, prudery and physicians’ secrets have been doing this—keeping back vital and all-important information and warning. Because of this, the evil has flourished. Worse than smallpox or diphtheria or scarlet fever, worse than cancer or pellagra or sleeping sickness, worse than pneumonia or cerebro-spinal meningitis or cholera, worse than bubonic plague or leprosy or the dread white plague, tuberculosis, worse than the black death which slew twenty-five millions in Europe in the fourteenth century, are the venereal diseases, the diseases of vice, syphilis and gonorrhea, the first of which has been denominated the great red plague. They are worse because they work in secret, with but little known open manifestations, and secure their victims unwarned, enchaining them with a fearful malady, perpetuated and incurable.

Of the first-named of these, Nelson’s Encyclopædia says:

“Syphilis, a specific, highly contagious, but non-infectious disease, communicated by contact of the virus with a breach of surface, or transmitted hereditarily.”

From its attack may follow “nervous diseases such as general paralysis and locomotor ataxia.” The same authority thus defines the second:

“Gonorrhea, a contagious disease caused by a specific micro-organism, the gonococcus. . . . It is extremely difficult to cure, and often causes blindness through accidental infection.”

Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, of Portland, Oregon, said at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco August 16, 1913:

“These diseases are the greatest menace to the white race to-day. They cause sterility, blindness, insanity, deformities, and sorrows untold.”

Says Charles Stedman Bull, A.M., M.D., of New York (“Medical Record” of January 7, 1911):

“I think we will all agree that the gravest, by far the most serious, consequences of syphilis are those due to heredity. One of the greatest of social dangers is the high rate of infant mortality among the children of syphilitic parents; but a greater one is the disastrous results of heredity in those who live to maturity. Many of them pass through a stunted childhood into a still more stunted manhood or womanhood, to become a permanent charge upon their family or upon the state. The position assumed and maintained by the state and municipal authorities toward the so-called ‘social diseases’ is eminently false, and has largely to do with the wide-spread ignorance, on the part of the public, of the far-reaching disastrous effects of such diseases. It should be the duty of the medical profession to demand from the authorities the right of the public to protection from these diseases as from any contagious disease, and for three reasons: (1) that the innocent may not suffer; (2) that the state may not be compelled to support stunted children; (3) that racial degeneracy may be avoided.”

How Wide-Spread

These diseases are not confined to a corner, tho not observed. It is possible to hold them in check for a time, so to the ordinary observer, and even to the physician, they are not manifest. Their outbreakings are hidden under the name of some common skin eruption or ordinary disease. The victims themselves do not cry like the ancient leper, “Unclean, unclean,” and there is no professional warning to the public.

We recall a woman so affected that an ordinary layman suspected it when he saw her fondling his children. But her physician—a good man—gave no warning till the father demanded information for the sake of his baby boy. Then it was given in a covert way.

The Indiana State Board of Health declares, in a recently published “Health Circular,” that from 8 to 18 per cent—8 to 18 in every hundred—of young men in the United States contract syphilis, and THAT 80 PER CENT of the males between the ages of 18 and 30 years contract gonorrhea. Some hospital authorities say 70 per cent, some 85 per cent, of abdominal and pelvic SURGICAL OPERATIONS on women are the RESULT OF GONORRHEAL INFECTION, “in many cases ignorantly transmitted by the husband,” in “some cases long after he may think himself free from the disease.” The same circular says that the same disease is responsible for 20 TO 30 PER CENT OF BLINDNESS. Formerly it was charged that 80 per cent of blindness was due to this disease, till the discovery of the Crede method of applying a solution of nitrate of silver to the eyes of the new-born. Practically every prostitute is affected.

The same circular recites that in an Indiana school thirteen boys were contaminated by one girl. A little while ago a mayor in an Indiana city called a meeting of the fathers to place before them the alarming extent of the disease among the boys.

A letter from a physician of thirty-seven years’ practise in the Middle West to the writer not long ago, declares that he found that “most of the finest women” were infected by these diseases by their husbands, and his practise was among “the better classes.” He further says, “In the place where I have practised for thirty years, not a SINGLE MALE OF SIXTEEN YEARS WAS FREE FROM GONORRHEAL INFECTION—NOT ONE!”

We can not quote all the burning words of this physician, who speaks from first knowledge.

The Indiana “Health Circular” says:

“Our best physicians are thoroly alarmed over the vast extent of venereal infection. The great cities, themselves rapidly becoming venerealized, are serving as centers for the distribution of infection to the population outside the cities, that previously has remained comparatively free from contamination, and from which the nation in the past has drawn its reserve strength.”

Incurability and Effects

“There are some well-meaning people who still cling to the old-fashioned moralist view that venereal affliction is the just punishment of those who violate the seventh commandment, and therefore nothing should be said or done. The weakness of this view is that the evil worked is not confined to the transgressor. The infection is often brought home and transmitted to innocent wife and child. It will hardly be contended that the Supreme Intelligence ever intended a human being should contract a loathsome disease and then infect the innocent.”

Syphilis was once thought to be curable through mercurial treatment. But since the germ has been discovered, hope has declined. “THE GERM has been found in the brain and other parts of the body TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE INFECTION HAD BEEN CONTRACTED.” The Wassermann reaction test applied in 254 cases of insane in Mount Hope hospital, near Baltimore, all of whom had denied all syphilitic infection, Dr. Sylvanus Stall tells us, showed that 86 per cent had been infected. The same test showed that 85 per cent of a hundred prostitutes in Europe had been infected, tho only one showed outward manifestations. Like a hidden fire in peat bogs it slumbers for a time awaiting favorable conditions for its outbreak.

We are told that this “disease is responsible for an asserted 90 per cent of locomotor ataxia, a large per cent of insanity, for a great number of still-born children, and for a heavy percentage of premature deaths in children, for apoplexy, paralysis, and sudden death, long after the disease is supposed to have been eliminated. Insurance actuaries hold that on an average syphilis shortens life one third.

The Medical Society of Chicago, comprising 2,000 physicians, has organized the Chicago Society of Social Hygiene. It was organized to impart information concerning these fearful diseases and for protection of wives and children. Its president is Professor Charles R. Henderson, of the University of Chicago; its first vice-president is Bishop Charles P. Anderson, of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. Its other officers are prominent men in that great city. The society has issued four circulars on self, home, family, and community protection. They call these plagues “an insidious and prevalent form of murder and robbery; namely, the contamination of wives and children through the venereal diseases of husbands who suppose themselves cured before marriage. Through these diseases, many wives and more children are destroyed outright, and many more are robbed of their birthright to health of body and mind.”

The society charges that a considerable percentage of the idiotic, imbecile, and insane in our charitable institutions, a curse to themselves and a burden to the community, are there through the heritage of these diseases.

A Hoped-For Remedy

The incurability of syphilis, and the dread effects which follow, have led physicians and

bacteriologists to put forth special efforts to discover the germ and find a cure. When Professor Ehrlich announced, in 1910, a remedy made up of a combination of drugs, there was great hope that a sure cure of the dread disease had been discovered. It was called “bioxydiamidoarsenobenzol,” later “606,” later still “arsenobenzol,” and now “salvarsan.” Immorally inclined thought it was possible to indulge lust with impunity. But William M. Leszynsky, M.D., of New York, neurologist to the Harlem and Lebanon hospitals, in a paper read before various medical societies, and printed in the “Medical Record” of February 18, 1911, says, “It is well known that SYPHILIS IS ONE OF THE MOST INFECTIOUS CAUSES OF ORGANIC NERVOUS DISEASES.” He discusses the “salvarsan” remedy, and declares “that we now possess a new and valuable remedy against SOME of the MANIFESTATIONS of syphilis” (capitals ours); but, he says, it “is positively injurious in advanced cases of chronic nervous disease, and that the heralding of the remedy by unauthorized persons as a ‘positive cure’ was premature.” He further tells us that certain cases are not only “not benefited by the use of ‘salvarsan,’ but that in some cases deleterious results have supervened.” Professor Ehrlich “distinctly and emphatically warns against using it in persons afflicted with any organic lesions, especially of the liver, kidney, heart, or circulatory system (aneurysms). In the case of the tuberculous, the senile, and heavy drinkers, the remedy should not be used.” There are not many left that need it.

The Paris correspondent of the New York “Medical Record,” under date of February 15, 1911, speaks of the experience of Ehrlich himself: “After treating seven syphilitics who had been refractory to mercury with 606, he followed them after the injection and was able to see that the amelioration, often miraculous, did not last more than seven to fifteen days in the seven cases, and a month in others. In all seven patients, recurrence occurred for the most part as serious as before the treatment.”

Little therefore can be hoped for from the wonderful discovery. It is like Koch’s and Friedmann’s tuberculosis specifics. Their praise and potency were heralded too soon. As stated in the “Medical Record” of December 17, 1910, “It will require years of observation and many more tests for a positive assurance of a permanent cure.” In the meantime the great red plague continues its ravages; and the diseased, the halt, the maimed, the blind, the immoral, the degenerate, the hidden lepers of society, multiply.

Its Spreading Power

The contagiousness of the disease is thus set forth by various authorities:

L. Duncan Bulkley, A.M., M.D., New York City, in his book “Syphilis in the Innocent,” states that the disease can be acquired from—“kissing, biting, scratching, use of spoons, knives, forks, cups, glasses, tobacco pipes, cigars, cigarettes, troches, candy, underclothing, masks, towels, sponges, tooth-brushes, syringes, the implements used by glass-blowers, assayers, weavers, musicians, cooks, furriers, upholsterers, shoemakers, and servants.”—Indiana Health Circular.

Nelson’s Encyclopædia says:

“Too much stress can not be laid on the contagious nature of a syphilitic patient. His blood, secretions, and discharges may communicate the disease to those around him. Razors, pipes, tumblers, spoons, handkerchiefs, clothes, are contaminated by the use of them, and his kiss is more dangerous than the leper’s.”

We quote again from the Indiana “Health Circular”:

“Whichever way we look we see disease, sorrow, and disaster, as the result of sexual error. It fills the streets with unambitious, venerealized men, the penitentiaries with hopeless, syphilized criminals, fills our insane asylums, our institutions for the blind, homes for imbeciles and other delinquents, hospitals and divorce courts. It is probable with the venereal scourges gone there would be little need of the physician as we know him to-day, for many human ills would likely vanish as if by magic with the social diseases eliminated. But whether or not, there would be such a reinforcement of resisting power to the human body, freed from the venereal taints, that future generations would be largely immune to the diseases that now prey on and destroy the members of the human family.”

Shall information the public needs as to these fearful dangers be withheld under the old traditional convention of the medical secret? Some doctors do not so believe. This is what A. J. Rongy, M.D., gynecologist in Lebanon Hospital, New York, and attending surgeon in the Jewish Maternity Hospital, says in the “Medical Record” of February 18, 1910:

“Egbert H. Grandin, in his appeal for the safeguarding of marriage from venereal disease, said: ‘Until the so-called “medical secret” is relegated to the ash heap of other superstitions, marriage can not be safeguarded against the venereal diseases. This secret was born to protect the guilty at the expense of the innocent. Therefore, too, it makes of the physician an accomplice. Let us see how it works. Examples fortify facts. A young man, about to enter the state of matrimony, consults me because he has acquired the clap [gonorrhea]. I warn him against marriage until cured. I tell him of the dangers to health, to life, to which he, in all probability, will otherwise subject his wife. Possibly my interests are keener because I have reared this girl from birth. He declines my advice. The medical secret bars me from telling the parents, or the girl herself. I morally condone a crime. The pure girl, in loving faith, must link her destiny with the impure. A married man comes to me with the infectious lesion of pox [syphilis]. I warn him conscientiously of the danger he is to his wife and to others. He may not heed me. Usually he is too much of a moral coward to tell his wife. Because of the “medical secret,” I can not. The trusting wife must be inoculated by the “fond” husband.’ Have there ever been truer words spoken? I believe it is the duty of the medical man individually, and of medical societies in particular, to raise this question as a matter of public protection. The general public must be made familiar with existing conditions. They have a good deal at stake; and if a proper campaign of education is carried on, it will be finally crowned with success.”

There are many others like-minded. But how can a society or generation be reformed when the greater part are more or less secretly affected by the very thing which demands publicity? It is at the very best a dark outlook. Politics neither can nor will cure it. Nothing but the healing, regenerating power of Christ applied individually to the moral leprosy of the human heart can effect a change. But the infidelity of the age, the science that is powerless to cure the physical ills, is used to take from humanity the world’s Saviour and Healer. But these awful conditions confirm mightily the words of Jesus when He said, looking to these days:

“As it was in the days of Lot [Lot lived in Sodom], . . . even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man shall be revealed.” See Luke 17:28-37.

“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw good.” Eze. 16:49, 50.

The passing revelations of deeds open and secret reveal to us the awful condition of a large part of humanity. Will we heed God’s warning, or will we go madly on to destruction as did the rich and pleasure-loving, lust-loving Sodom of old?

We appeal to men who have yielded to sin and vice, to come to Christ, the Master of all the potencies of good, and become men indeed, for their own soul’s sake, for their children’s sake, for humanity’s sake.

We plead with the mothers for their sons’ and daughters’ sake, teach them purity and strength of manhood and womanhood.

We appeal to young men and young women to rise above, strike clear of, the fierce devilish undertow of sin which is sweeping so many into the eternal depths of misery, infamy, and destruction.

We appeal to Christian ministers to let God’s law have its place in their preaching, without which a spiritless, perverted gospel but heals the hurt of the daughter of God’s people slightly. That gospel saves from sin, and sin is the transgression of the law. The gospel, if it saves at all, saves to obedience.

We appeal to the sinner, whoever he may be, however low he has fallen, to come to Christ, who is able to save. He will do for you as He did for the sinners of Corinth, as He is doing for sinners to-day. Take this message home: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And SUCH WERE SOME OF YOU: but ye are WASHED, but ye are SANCTIFIED, but ye are JUSTIFIED in the NAME of the LORD JESUS, and by the SPIRIT OF OUR GOD.” 1 Cor. 6:9-11.