A SOCIAL PLAGUE

The announcement of meetings for men and women of the European community in connection with the visit to the Colony of a Commission sent out to the Far East by the National Council for combating Venereal Diseases, calls attention in a forceful manner to an important movement which has been inaugurated under national—we believe we may say international—auspices, to check what is unquestionably a grave social plague throughout the world. Not so long ago people would have been shocked to read "these things" in the papers, but of late years the need for the enlightenment of the general public at home on the gravity of the evil has become so widely recognised that there is no longer much false modesty shown on the subject. Press and placard are being freely used in an educational campaign, and men and women are co-operating in an organised effort to fight this deadly plague, which we are given to understand has a very strong grip in this Colony, and not only among the Chinese population.

In the early periods of its history this disease was regarded as incurable and it was only after centuries of research that a remedy was found. The position now is that, taken early, syphilis is regarded as nearly always easy to cure. But attention is required from an expert during the whole time that the patient is infected. Any carelessness leads to incalculable trouble, and too often means that subsequent generations have to face the penalty for the sins of their parents. The great fact that has to be remembered about this disease is that it is very often caught by kissing an infected person, or coming in contact with the towel or clothing of an infected person, drinking from an infected glass, or as the result of the germs released by coughing. With all these various ways of infection it is easy to see that infection may be taken innocently, and it is by no means a sign of moral depravity. The best way to attack it is to tell the public everything there is to know about it and to educate children in the schools in its dangers when they have reached a discriminating age. It is the same with the companion disease. More of these are made acute through ignorance than from any other cause. Taken at the outset constitutional danger is eliminated and the ravages of the germs confined. But to allow a quack to handle such a complaint, or for patients to treat themselves, is in nine cases out of ten disastrous. These complaints call for skilled medical attention, as their characteristic is to go into the system, giving the outward appearance of a cure while they continue to be highly infectious, and finally involve the patient and his or her particular intimates with one or more stubborn and ravaging different forms of the same complaint. As long as ignorance and quackery prevail, infection will continue to spread, but let the subject be openly and decently discussed by persons qualified to do so and a check will be administered in a very brief space of time.

The Commission which is at present in Hongkong, has come out from home by the Pacific route and has carried on investigations in Japan and in Shanghai. In the latter port the Commission, which enlisted the support of the Municipal Council, held meetings and organised committees to carry on the campaign in the same way as they are doing here. We understand that the aim is to establish here free clinics under the direction of an expert in the disease, where patients may be treated by a staff which has taken a post-graduate course. The idea has widely prevailed that a successful way of fighting the plague is by licensing social vice, but one of the things the Commission learnt in Japan, where the question is being dealt with from a purely hygienic, rather than a moral, point of view, is that an experiment in one of the prefectures of Japan where the "Yoshiwara" system was abolished, showed that the incidence of the disease among young men called up for service with the colours has fallen from something like 40 per cent. to 15 per cent. This explodes the argument that abolition of so-called "controlled resorts" results in a wider spread of clandestine intercourse and the consequent increase of the dangers of infection.

In many countries of Europe, including Great Britain, as well as in the governing colonies, a legal obligation is now imposed on people suffering from the disease to procure proper medical treatment. The public hospitals maintain free clinics for this purpose. In short there is organised warfare on the disease by publicity and the profession of healing, and it is desired to bring the ports of the Far East into line with the rest of the world in this matter. It is a subject, we understand, which is shortly to engage the attention of the League of Nations with a view to international action, and the British National Council for combating Venereal Disease, desires, through the work of such Commissions as that now visiting Hongkong, to be able to show that Great Britain, which is taking an active part in stimulating a world-wide interest in the subject, is endeavouring, throughout her wide dominions, to set her own house in order.

The Hongkong Daily Press, January 10th, 1921.