countries, is unanimously of the opinion, so far as the experience of
these countries is concerned, that the legal and official toleration of
professional prostitution has been found to be medically useless as a
check on the spread of venereal diseases, and may even prove positively
harmful, tending as it does to give official sanction to a vicious
trade."

On the same point Flexner says: "It is a truism that physicians
requiring to equip themselves as specialists in venereal disease resort
to the crowded clinics of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, all regulated
towns, because there disease is found in greatest abundance and richest
variety--a strange comment on the alleged efficacy of regulation."

Dr. Clarkson, in "The Venereal Clinic," already quoted, says, in
reference to the fancied security of licensed houses, "It may strengthen
the hands of practitioners to be able to tell interrogators in this
subject that in the opinion of leading venereologists, &c., no
foundation exists for any such feeling of confidence or security. In
other words, the system of licensed houses is a failure, and the 'red
light' of lust shines out as the lurid signal of disease and death."

It is surely hardly necessary to urge the moral objections to the
proposal. The United States Public Health Service not long ago sent out
a _questionnaire_ to representative citizens in various walks of life
asking for opinion in regard to open houses of prostitution. There was
an overwhelming preponderance of replies against the system on moral as
well as hygienic grounds. One Illinois miner answered: "The life of a
prostitute is short, and her place must be filled when she dies, and,
being the father of two girls, I would not want mine to fill a vacancy,
and I think all parents think the same." A Colorado carpenter replied: