Observations on the majority report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1882.

Date:
[1882]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the majority report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1882. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ON THE MAJORITY REPORT of tee SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 1882, 'ON THE CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACTS. i. The Report, in considering the result of the Committee’s en- quiry into the hygienic effects of the Acts, practically ignores the evidence of all the unofficial medical witnesses, backed by the published opinions of a large number of professional authors, both English and Foreign, and also some Army medical authorities, who declared that the system is delusive and un- scientific, and must necessarily be a failure. It not only adopts a classification of disease scientifically false and practically mis- leading, but justifies the use of it by the Army Medical Department as a matter of necessity, “ for certain statistical purposes,” and adds that the departmental method “ does not appear to interfere with the value of the statistics.” The fact that the official practice in question is a deliberate departure from the more correct method originally adopted, and which could have been resumed for the purposes (at least) of the annual Reports of the Department, is left unnoticed, as well as the further fact that the existing method undoubtedly yields results apparently more favourable to the Acts than a more correct classification would. An erroneous classification being thus adopted and approved, it is then used in the Report as the basis of the ensuing deductions as to the hygienic effects of the Acts on the military forces “ protected” by them. Those deductions merely represent the calculations made from the official statistics by the principal official witness, and take no notice of the numerous and important discrepancies between the various departmental Returns which were abundantly proved before the Committee, and even admitted to a considerable extent by that witness ; while the many objections raised to the official calculations, and the doubtful nature of the deductions made from them, are entirely disregarded. How thoroughly onesided and unfair the Report is in this important respect may be fully demonstrated by an impartial examination of