This is a frankly-written penetrating study of flagellation in all its aspects: penal, religious, educational and erotic. Represented here are soldiers and sailors, thieves and prostitutes, schoolboys and schoolgirls, slaves and servants, and the various forms of flagellation used on these groups throughout the ages.

This survey of the history of prostitution from antiquity to the twentieth century is one of the first comprehensive studies of this phenomenon. George Ryley Scott writes this treatise in reaction to the lack of literature on the subject at his time, dismissing the only volumes available as outdated, fragmentary, or prejudiced, as they were often sponsored by reformist groups. Thus, Scott presents us with a refreshingly honest and nonbiased view of prostitution.