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20
Prevention of Venereal Diseases.
Venereal Diseases cause untold misery, suffering, and early decay and
death. Still worse they cause lifelong suffering to innocent wives who are
frequently made either childless or have dead, diseased, blind, deaf, deformed
or imbecile children.
Although the methods of treatment of these diseases have been improved their
permanent cure is still very frequently not effected, because of the difficulty of keeping
patients under observation and treatment long enough to render them innocuous to
other people. These treatment centres are also very costly.
The most effective method of preventing infectious disease is to attack the chain
of infection at its weakest link. The weakest link is when the germs are on the surface
of the male organ before they have had time to penetrate into the tissues of the body.
The germs of these diseases have been scientifically proved to be easily destroyed by
disinfectants. Therefore the most effective way of preventing these diseases is by
immediate self-disinfection.
I was therefore very glad that the Society for the Prevention of Venereal Diseases
was formed in the latter part of 1919, and on account of my known adherence to the
above most effective method of prevention, I was invited to become a Member of the
Grand Committee. The S.P.V.D. while advocating that no moral measures should
be neglected, recognises the plain unsavoury fact that a large proportion of the adult
population (notwithstanding all these measures) has practised irregular sexual intercourse,
and it therefore recommends the teaching of simple but efficient methods of
self-disinfection ; also that the prevention of disease by all practicable methods is the
paramount duty of Sanitary Authorities.
The older Society, the National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases, while
advocating principally only moral measures which have obviously been ineffective,
has, however, recommended the use of disinfectants at so-called early treatment
centres which are really delayed disinfecting centres. In addition to the great cost of
such centres there are also grave reasons rendering their provision by Sanitary Authorities
impracticable.
I am therefore glad that the Holborn Council has adopted not only the most
efficient but the most inexpensive system, namely, education by means of posters and
leaflets placed in men's underground conveniences. 50,000 of the leaflets are supplied
at a cost of about £19, that is, less than Id. for 10. For aesthetic reasons also a man is
much more likely to adopt self-disinfection than to go to a centre for disinfection by
a skilled attendant.
The Holborn leaflet gives concise information—" What Every Man Should Know "
—respecting the terrible ravages caused by these diseases; that the only safe, right,
and manly course is to exercise self-control; that prevention is infinitely better
than cure ; and that it is therefore the bounden duty of any man who will indulge