to make as its quite frequently reiterated converse.

If in any case we are in a position to intervene and definitely forbid
increase, it is in the case of certain specific diseases, which I am
told are painful and disastrous and inevitably transmitted to the
offspring of the person suffering from these diseases. If there are
such diseases--and that is a question the medical profession should be
able to decide--it is evident that to incur parentage while one suffers
from one of them or to transmit them in any avoidable way, is a cruel,
disastrous and abominable act. If such a thing is possible it seems to
me that in view of the guiding principle laid down in these papers it
might well be put at the nadir of crime, and I doubt if any step the
State might take to deter and punish the offender, short of torture,
would meet with opposition from sane and reasonable men. For my own
part I am inclined at times almost to doubt if there are such diseases.
If there are, the remedy is so simple and obvious, that I cannot but
blame the medical profession for very discreditable silences. I am no
believer in the final wisdom of the mass of mankind, but I do believe
enough in the sanity of the English-speaking peoples to be certain that
any clear statement and instruction they received from the medical
profession, as a whole, in these matters, would be faithfully observed.
In the face of the collective silence of this great body of
specialists, there is nothing for it but to doubt such diseases exist.

Such a systematic suppression of a specific disease or so is really the
utmost that could be done with any confidence at present, so far as the
State and collective action go. [Footnote: Since the above was written,
a correspondent in Honolulu has called my attention to a short but most
suggestive essay by Doctor Harry Campbell in the _Lancet_, 1898,
ii., p. 678. He uses, of course, the common medical euphemism of