Remarks on the recent report of the Royal Commission on the Contagious Diseases Act and its application to the voluntary hospital system / by John Morgan.

  • Morgan, John, 1829-1876.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the recent report of the Royal Commission on the Contagious Diseases Act and its application to the voluntary hospital system / by John Morgan. 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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    half. The strength of the garrison was nearly the same throughout these years. Taking the aggregate of twenty-eight stations of troops in the United Kingdom, at which the average strength amounted to 500 and upwards, the ratio per 1,000 of pri- mary venereal sores in 1865 was 120; in 1867, before the fortnightly examinations had commenced, except for a few months at Chatham, the disease had fallen to 86; it con- tinued to decrease from 86 to 72 and 60, until it fell to 54 in 1870, when the fortnightly examinations were generally established throughout the subjected districts. The returns of gonorrhoea are fluctuating, and the figures are nearly the same for the five principal stations in the year before the Act of 1866, and in the last year of its operation. Dr. Balfour was of opinion that so far as gonorrhoea was con- cerned, the Acts had been a failure. Dr. Balfour insisted that very erroneous inferences are liable to be drawn from the amount of disease existing among the small number of men stationed in any one locality, and prepared a table comparing the condition of the total number of soldiers in the protected with that of the total number in the unprotected districts. The result of this table is, that in the first or protected group the number of men per 1,000 admitted into hospital for primary venereal sores has steadily and continuously diminished during the seven years 1864-70; the successive numbers per 1,000 being 120, 90-5, 86-3, 72-1, 60-9, 54-5. In the second, or unprotected group, no such diminution presents itself, the corresponding numbers per 1,000 being io8-6, 99-9, 90-9, 108-0, 1067, 111-9, 1 r3'3- “A tabular return follows, showing the number of cases of venereal disease contracted by the crews of Her Majesty’s ships at home ports from 1856 to 1869 inclusive, with the ratio per 1,000 of force. In the latter half of 1865, the Act of the preceding year was partially in operation at Chatham and Sheerness. Legal difficulties had prevented its being put in force at Portsmouth, and at Devonport and Ply- mouth nothing had been done beyond a preparatory enumeration of the brothels and public women. In 1865, the cases of syphilis on the home stations were 1087 Per 1,000. In 1866, still under the partial though more ex- tended operation of the Act of 1864, the ratio per 1,000