Social disease and its prevention.

  • Robson, Henry Naunton.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Social disease and its prevention. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    and islands {vide Appendix A on page 102), the total distance being about 175,000 miles, including two voyages to the West Indies and one to South America as a ship's surgeon, the rest of the journeys being on my own account; and ever since the remark above mentioned I have studied the pre- valence of certain contagious diseases, and the possibilities of their prevention by prophylactic measures. In 1888 I joined St Thomas's Hospital, London, as a medical student, and was both alarmed and astonished at the amount of venereal disease pre- vailing amongst the working classes of either sex —men, women, and children. In the female ward were a number of patients suffering from com- plaints, the primary cause of which was originally contagious disease. One day, in 1890, I was in the out-patients' department when one of the surgeons held forth on the discovery of the cause of Gonorrhoea, the gonococcus of Neisser, found in 1879 ; and stated that it started at the entrance to the urethra and thence spread upwards along the urinary tract. The thought flashed through my student mind : Why let it ever get a start ? Why not kill it at once ? This was the first definite commencement