1st. On the growing and dangerous character of this sexual evil, which produces venereal disease.
2nd. On the error of Governments in their endeavours to cope with disease.
3rd. On the right principle which must guide all practical methods of dealing with it.
I.
On the Gravity of the Evil of Venereal Disease.
The Royal College of Physicians—our highest medical authority—makes the following statement:
‘The increase of venereal disease appears to us to be a matter of serious moment, and to call for the gravest consideration. The constitutional form of the disease is one of the most serious, insidious, and lasting of all the contagious diseases that afflict humanity. Other contagious complaints—e.g., smallpox or scarlatina—are transmissible only for a limited time, and not by inheritance. With syphilitic disease it is far otherwise: it is the most lasting in its effects, and most varied in the character of its specific manifestations; it frequently gives rise to consequences far removed from its initial symptoms, most seriously implicating and affecting various organs of the body; it complicates other diseases; its contagious properties extend over lengthened periods of time, during which the sufferers are often a source of danger to innocent people, while they may be, and frequently are as parents, the source whence specific infection is transmitted to their children....
‘About 13,000 soldiers return to England from India ever year, and of these, in 1894, over 60 per cent. had suffered from some form of venereal disease.’[7]
Lord George Hamilton’s despatch quotes from a War Office Report:
‘Of the fatal character of this form of disease’ (syphilis) ‘the committee, after a visit to the military hospital at Netley, where invalids from India are sent for treatment, have drawn a dreadful picture. During their short term of military service a great part (in some cases more than half) of their time has been spent in hospital, either in India or at home. Before reaching the age of twenty-five years these young men have come home presenting a most shocking appearance: some lay there having obviously but a short time to live; others were unrecognisable from disfigurement by reason of the destruction of their features, or had lost their palates, their eyesight, or their sense of hearing; others, again, were in a state of extreme emaciation, their joints distorted and diseased. Not a few are time-expired, but cannot be discharged in their present condition, incapacitated as they are to earn their livelihood, and in a condition so repulsive they could not mix with their fellow-men. Their friends and relatives refuse to receive them, and it is inexpedient to discharge them only to seek the asylum of the poor-house, so they remain at Netley in increasing numbers.’
The Government Departmental Committee (p. 11) uses almost the very words of the French surgeon Diday, who, in writing some years ago of the dangerous prevalence of venereal disease, so widespread in Paris, warns his readers how this most insidious disease may be spread by ordinary contact, by wet-nurses to infants, or by infants to nurses, by public conveniences, by unsuspected touch, and even by the kiss of relations.