"But is it that the police don't want to?"
"No doubt they have the same excuse as all the rest--they don't
know. Take courage, sir; we have cured worse cases than your
son's. And some day, perhaps, we shall be able to change these
conditions."
So he went on with the man, leaving George with something to
think about. How much he could have told them about what had
happened to that young fellow when only fifteen years old! It
had not been altogether the fault of the women who were lurking
outside of the college gates; it was a fact that the boy's
classmates had teased him and ridiculed him, had literally made
his life a torment, until he had yielded to temptation.
It was the old, old story of ignorant and unguided schoolboys all
over the world! They thought that to be chaste was to be weak
and foolish; that a fellow was not a man unless he led a life of
debauchery like the rest. And what did they know about these
dreadful diseases? They had the most horrible superstitions--
ideas of cures so loathsome that they could not be set down in
print; ideas as ignorant and destructive as those of savages in
the heart of Africa. And you might hear them laughing and
jesting about one another's condition. They might be afflicted
with diseases which would have the most terrible after-effects
upon their whole lives and upon their families--diseases which
cause tens of thousands of surgical operations upon women, and a
large percentage of blindness and idiocy in children--and you
might hear them confidently express the opinion that these
diseases were no worse than a bad cold!
And all this mass of misery and ignorance covered over and
clamped down by a taboo of silence, imposed by the horrible
superstition of sex-prudery! George went out from the doctor's
office trembling with excitement over this situation.
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