After the earlier performances, we learn again from Moore, "syphilis even began to be mentioned, though rarely, in the public press." But "rarely" is the word to emphasize. Surgeon General Thomas Parran, of whom we will hear more, was not allowed to speak of syphilis on the radio in 1939. It was only in his time that the word "syphilis" finally appeared openly in the newspapers, some twenty five years after Richard Bennett's crusade. After another thirty years and more, we are still trying.

The central character in Damaged Goods is the doctor, who belongs to a species that now seems in danger, of becoming mythical. He has the time and the inclination, the patience and clinical skill, and the compassion, to serve as a foundation upon which the other characters and the plot are built. He is off stage only for brief intervals that serve to fill in background or color. In contrast to Ghosts, this play is medically authentic and credible; and despite its age and its appearance before scientific diagnosis and effective treatment, it is less dated than one might expect. In fact, I found in it only one really egregious blunder that would be laughable today, although only perhaps in the light of much later experience: the brief passage in the third act in which the doctor recommends prohibition as a preventive of alcoholism. Yet this is itself part of an aspect in which the play is an undisguised period piece. The underlying mores of upper middle class Paris in relation to marriage and servants are vintage 1900. But allowing for this the play might be staged today with little or no modification.

The action concerns a young man whom the doctor confronts with the fact that he has syphilis. The doctor advises him not to marry, but he is too far committed the arrangements are firm, and there is a dowry and he goes against the doctor's advice. The result, unknown to wife and to husband's mother before the explosive climax at the second act curtain, is a baby with congenital syphilis showing as mild early secondary symptoms. There is a wet nurse, and the climactic problem is the likelihood that she will be infected by the baby. In the third act, the marriage having broken up, the wife's father, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, is in the doctor's clinic in a mood of vengeance. The play is resolved by the doctor's gentle exposition of the fact that, first, the deputy himself has escaped his son in law's plight only by luck; and second, that the damage having been done, the best solution lies in reconciliation rather than vengeance or open scandal. Here are some of the doctor's words in the last act:

This disease is like other diseases: it is one of our afflictions. There is no shame in being wretched even if one deserves to be so. (Hotly) Come, come, let us have a little plain speaking! “There is nothing immoral in the act that reproduces life by means of love. But for the benefit of our children we organize round about it a gigantic conspiracy of silence. A respectable man will take his son and daughter to one of these grand music halls, where they will hear things of the most loathsome description; but he won't let them hear a word spoken seriously on the subject of the great act of love.”

These were strong words in 1901, and not less so in 1913. Are they appreciably weaker today? Have we uncovered the problem or only changed its clothes? The Victorian moralism of Damaged Goods is old fashioned but not altogether extinct. The doctor's implied solution of the VD problem is that by education it will be possible to promote abstinence for both sexes except in marriage. But put that way, does the idea sound so old fashioned? (see VENEREAL DISEASES AS A SUBJECT FOR PERFORMANCE PART III)