We do not forget the plague, because it takes very good care of that, and is still, though we have long purses, the nightmare of health officials who keep their silent watch over the health of mankind.
But, in dealing with epidemic diseases that have affected civilisation we must not forget malaria. Like syphilis itself, its social effects have been prodigious. Malaria was undoubtedly, with typhus and possibly smallpox, one of the real causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. The work of Sir Ronald Ross in discovering that it is spread by the anopheles mosquito, is one of the great epoch-making discoveries of history. There are few countries in the world which are free from malaria to-day. Unquestionably it is the cause of the anæmia and poor physique of the inhabitants of most tropical countries; and Australia is fortunate in having so few anopheles mosquitoes, though we have so many other varieties of the abominable little pests. That the numerous returned soldiers who were infected with malaria in Palestine have comparatively rarely spread their disease is due to the rarity of the anopheles in Australia; but doctors are always on the lookout for this particular pest and let us hope will keep it to its natural habitat in moister countries. Probably the real reason of the good physique of Australians is that the British race, for the first time in history, has had the chance of developing in a warm climate with no malaria. We are making a mistake in concentrating on the search for the discovery of the will-o’-the-wisp cause of cancer, which, though a very terrible and horrible disease, possibly associated into the very mystery of life itself, has probably less important social effects than either syphilis or malaria. I do not merely refer to the actual death-rate from these diseases, though it is probable that syphilis indirectly causes more deaths than cancer, tuberculosis or overeating. The trouble is that syphilis works in so mysterious a way; it is sly and subtle in its effects; it lies long latent and springs up again to the slaughter after the man who is its victim has long forgotten that he ever had it; and it conceals itself under innumerable guises. The great problem before the civilised world to-day is not the cure of cancer; it is the prevention of syphilis.
We know exactly how to prevent syphilis in the male. Metchnikoff and Calmette have shown us by experimental proof that is irrefragable. That their method is impossible to apply satisfactorily in the female owing to anatomical reasons is no reason whatever for so solemnly concealing its existence from young men, because, if it were generally known to the male, the females would not be affected and the contagiousness of the disease would die out in one generation. It is painful to think of the vast mortality and misery that is caused by this one disease when every decent doctor knows exactly how to prevent it. With moral education in self-restraint together with application of Metchnikoff’s discoveries, which are known to every doctor, there is no reason whatever why syphilis should not be entirely abolished from the educated world. The other venereal diseases though serious are of comparatively minor importance; even gonorrhœa, which sterilises so many women and blinds so many babies, is less important because it does not affect the brain.
My own opinion is, that while moral education should certainly be attended to, every boy should have a quiet talk with his doctor before he goes to boarding-school and still better perhaps before he goes to the university. It is common experience that more lads become infected while they are young and ignorant, during the time of their university life, than at any other time.
We have apparently got over our post-war epidemic of influenza, which sensationally minded people called the Black Death without knowing what they said. But has fate altogether done with us? Has the war really left no other sequel than the influenza? Only this morning I was reading an article by Mr. Stephen Graham in the Nineteenth Century and After, in which he refers to the frightful post-war corruption of women in London, as shown by the mad competition among prostitutes for the favours of men. I can corroborate that article fully, for last year I went travelling over many parts of Europe, and I was impressed and horrified by exactly the same thing. A man cannot leave his hotel unaccompanied without being set upon by these women, who are evidently starving and desperate. London, Paris, and Rome are all the same; there is nothing to choose between them.
Nothing seems to be done about this frightful menace. Let us take care lest a rival to the Black Death may ruin the people of Europe. Immorality must be paid for somehow; and it does no good for politicians to wrangle over trifles such as the German restitutions when there is a very much more dreadful menace knocking at the world’s doors.
During Tudor times, when the world seems to have been almost at its lowest stage of filth, there were great epidemics of typhus fever in Europe, especially in Italy; thus reviving memories of Athens and the Roman Empire, which to the eyes of modern men seem to have been an age of beauty. Typhus is beyond all other diseases the disease of filth, war, and misery; and that it spread so vigorously in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries seems to show that things at that time were less romantic than people try to depict. Probably, if we could get at the real truth, throughout recorded history, typhus has slain more people than any other epidemic disease, possibly even more than the plague itself.
There can be little doubt as to the identity of the “Sweating Sickness” of Tudor times. It seems to have begun with the bloodshed of the Wars of the Roses, as the army of Henry VII marched in misery, slush, and triumph after the battle of Bosworth. Very soon after the king’s entry into London the sweating sickness began to spread among the overcrowded houses of the capital. It ravaged high and low; at first it spread largely among young and vigorous men; in one week it took two lord mayors and six aldermen. The coronation of Henry VII was postponed by reason of the general distress, and the disease spread without interruption over the whole country. Nobody seemed to be immune; and when it attacked Oxford the professors and students fled alike in a common terror, so that the ancient university was as deserted as it was, for a more worthy reason, during our late war.
After its first appearance, sudden and savage, the English Sweat for a time abandoned its victims, and the mediæval world resigned itself to its normal accompaniments of epidemic typhus, smallpox, and plague. Soon after the return of Columbus we begin to hear of a new and terrible disease, syphilis,[22] though there has been great argument as to whether it may not have been yaws, which is a comparatively mild tropical long-continued ailment. To my mind the fact is convincing that we find no real traces of syphilis in the bones from ancient burial-places. If it had existed in the ancient world we should certainly have found such evidences.