The Knife (1918)

Kate Tarleton grows up on a Southern plantation and becomes engaged to her guardian Dr Robert Manning a famous surgeon When Robert Kate and her younger sister Mary Lou visit New York where the doctor wishes to conduct medical experiments the superstitious Kate goes to the home of a fortuneteller named Stella Hill Stella whose principal business is white slave trafficking drugs Kate and forces her to work in a den of vice run by Stella and her accomplice Jimmy Bristol where she contracts syphilis and goes insane Robert Detective Ellis and a lawyer named Billy Meredith rescue Kate who recovers her sanity but remembers nothing of her bondage