CO129-472 - Others - 1921 — Page 479

E HEALTH COMMISSION.

visit of Dr. Hallam and Mrs. Rolfe Hur to give an impetus to the move- for combating the dreadful havoc ght by venereal disease. Dr. Hallam that the whole subject should be ed simply from the point of view of health, and Mrs. Rolfe says that hili and gonorrhoea must be dealt Juke tuberculosis and smallpox." That recisely the point of view we have tly insisted upon in contradistinc- to the moralist view that on no ac- must anything be done that would "public recognition" of immorality. half the patients in lunatic asylums, hospitals are there in consequence nereal disease, and when thousands rfectly innocent women are victims je scourge, it appears to us to be nonsense to talk of "public recog-

The simple truth is that the abe ignored, and if anything tundone that will tend to check wages, those who are responsible for glect are really guilty of a crime the community. One point will Li. illustrate what we particularly The moralists insist that all bro- hould be closed because it is im- to tolerate them. Dr. Hallam, we an, is also of opinion that they) be closed but his reason is quite pt.

He holds, speaking, of course, uropean experience, that the toler of these houses, even when they der medical inspection, tends to incidence of the disease, and of every reasonable man will say that view can be substantiated, the must go. Practically, the moralist view is quits the opposite, be- the moralist holds that even if uses, conducted under a system of inspection, lowered the incidence of they ought to be closed in order bere may be no public recognition Frankly, our views is that the As have been blind obstructors of es essential for the preservation public health. We fight smallpox pelling notification of every case isolating the sufferer until he Fincapable of contaminating others, following Mrs. Rolfe, we are to hereal disease in the same way, ideas about non-recognition must he wall. Consider what the pre- te of the law is. An immoral may be known to be reeking with and almost every man who has to do with her may become a tre of infection. The woman is danger but there is no power e her and put an end to the mis- is doing. We are told that fer of conveying Infection is very reater in women than in men, is a technical question which we ent to leave the doctors to deal rtainly, it is a fact that one oman infects scores of pure men, ould be rather an extreme as- that one impure man infects pure women. He can do mis- gh in all conscience, but not such as the woman. Once we the matter on a perfectly sane. itation basis, medical science! have a fair chance, and of late great advances have been made of treatment. The nature of has been proven, and the elleved to be available. What, a_the opportunity of apply- Lundoubtedly is a matter

the whole natural tendency is to concea injury suffered in the pursuit of vice.

We believe that local conditions differ widely enough from conditions elsewhere to warrant most careful investigation be- fore action is finally determined upon. Therefore it is wholly to the good that the medical conference which met on Thursday under the presidency of Dr. Watson passed a resolution in favour of a local Commission being formed. The report of the Royal Commission to which Dr. Hallam has made frequent reference is a most valuable document and may: be taken as full and authoritative as far as it goes. A local Commission need not traverse the same ground. Its chief function would be to discover any cir- cumstances, purely local, which may warrant contraction or expansion of the mothods the Royal Commission has sug- gested for combating the disease. Apart from anything that such a commission may recommend, we have no doubt what- ever that there is room here for all that the S.C.V.D. or the S.P.V.D. can do. There is room, also, for much more education, and for our own part we would like that to be systematised to a degree which has never, so far as we know, been at- tempted outside the American army. There is absolutely no reason why every tad who has reached maturity should not be legally required to attend a course of bealth lectures-say a dozen or twenty at which full and accurate information would be given to him, and no employer should be allowed to have a lad of a certain age in his service unless he possesses a certificate of having passed the Course. With the aid of the film, every thing could be made clear and plain to the meanest understanding, and the effect, supplemented by free treatment, would be incalculably beneficial. We are not in the very least degree hostile to the opera- tion of moral agencies. They should be used to the uttermost to emphasise the advantages of chastity, and to exalt men's. conceptions of themselves and of their duties in life. But it is from the public health point of view more especially that we urge the giving of lessons bearing upon the care of the body. It is no ex- aggeration to say that thousands of young men are ruined through sheer ignorance.. Certainly it is trte of Europeans, and we do not think it is less true of Asiatics. Few parents are really capable of giving their sons the information and the warn- ings that every young man ought to have, but a health course might be made pro- foundly interesting, and it would give every man a chance of acquiring ledge of how to safeguard his own body and the safety of his wife and children. One of the most dangerous characteristics of the worst form of venereal disease is that it incubates very slowly and that it gives very little trouble to the sufferer in its earlier stages. It may be quite innocently neglected until the whole body is corrupted to a degree that leads ulti- mately to mental and physical destruc-, 'tion. If it were sudden and violent, medical aid would, of necessity, be called for earlier, but being slow and insidious, even the provision of free treatment may fail unless the young man has been pre- pared by education to recognise the arbest signs of danger, or to take pre- cautions even before there is knowledge that injury has occurred. Our visitors, have given . vigorous rousing up to

a know-

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local opinion and we think the public owes roetness and the skill with which, thanks to them for their efforts. We all its broader aspects, the grave mulh want to solve our own problem but we can fully and

has been expounded by Dr. Hilan

appreciate the and Mrs. Rolfe.

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