The statistical results of the Contagious Diseases Acts : as deduced from all the Parliamentary papers which have been issued upon the subject, from the commencement of the Acts to the present time, shewing their total failure in a sanitary point of view : being a paper read before the Medical Society of London, February 19th, 1872 / by C. Bell Taylor.

  • Taylor, Charles Bell, 1829-1909.
Date:
[1872]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The statistical results of the Contagious Diseases Acts : as deduced from all the Parliamentary papers which have been issued upon the subject, from the commencement of the Acts to the present time, shewing their total failure in a sanitary point of view : being a paper read before the Medical Society of London, February 19th, 1872 / by C. Bell Taylor. 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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    iu frequency and virulence. It is significant to read in the Navy Medical Eeport for 1868, regarding the health of the men on board the flagship of the Channel Fleet (the Minotaur):—“ Gonorrhoea was a pretty constant accompaniment of venereal at Portsmouth,* with much more inflammation than usualand, in the very last published Statistical Abstract of the health of the Navy, respecting the Monarch : —“ During the Midsummer quarter of 1870 the Monarch was at Ports- mouth, and for some time on an experimental cruise. The diseases which contributed most to the sick list during this time were rheu- matic and catarrhal affections, venereal diseases, boils, and abscesses ; the disease which caused the greatest loss of service was gonorrhoea.” To return, however, to the only head of venereal complaints the much quoted figures do really deal with—primary venereal sores. Were the statement that the proportion of these sores had been reduced among the soldiers from 120 to 54.5, at the stations under theActs, completely true, I should yet hold that it mattered little, so long as the amount of secondary syphilis was untouched. But the statement is not com- pletely true. It is erroneous, and it is misleading. The figures for 1865 are derived from two stations only ; the figures for 1870 from 14. New stations, where the proportion of primary venereal sores was not 120 before the application of the Acts, have been added in to the account every year, and the result, as any sound statistician will admit, is worthless in consequence. Moreover, it is misleading to take 1865 as a year to start from. That was the first year of the first Act. Either the year before, viz., 1864, should be taken, or the year after, viz., 1866, the year preceding the enforcement of the oldest Act now in operation, — of the Act which embodied the full system. The number 120 is also incorrect in itself. To get it Portsmouth and Devonport have been taken. Either Portsmouth alone should have been taken, or Sheernesss and Chatham should have been in- cluded also ; for the Act of 1864 was applied to those stations, as well as to Devonport, in the year 1865. It will hardly be credited, after so much has been heard of this figure 120, that the proportion of primary venereal sores per 1000 men, at all the 28 stations of troops in the United Kingdom, was less than 100 in that same year 1865 ; and in the following year 1866 was less than 91, at all the stations, “ protected” and “ unprotected” alike The “ protected” stations were but four in number, while the “ unpro- tected” were 24. Nearly a whole half, therefore, of the great reduction in primary venereal sores ascribed to the Acts took place before any of the present Acts came into force, and was experienced * The stalioD which has been longest of all under the Acts.