A SOCIAL EVIL.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 909, 31 August 1910, Page 6

A SOCIAL EVIL.

An extremely important .statement by Dk. Findlay to a member of our staff is reported in another column. As the outcome of his conference with a.number of representatives of the medical and clerical professions he has decided to add to the list of notifiable diseases that one which is fostered by immorality. Few persons outside the medical profession are in a position to know the extent to which this disease has spread in the community, but precise knowledge on the point is not essential to competence to discuss the ' drastic proposals of the Attornoy-Gciieral. It is quite sufficient to know that the disease is so dreadful, so fearfully contagious, and unhappily so common, that its cultivation calls at least as loudly for repression as any of the diseases —scarlet fever, for instance—for the combating of which the elaborate machinery of the Public Health Act is thought necessary. The AttorneyGeneral has' satisfied himself that the evil is growing more intense, and he therefore proposes to make the disease a subject for compulsory •notification, and to apply to those suffering from'it at least some of the provisions for isolation and supervision existing in thc_ Public Health .Act. He .does not claim for his pre' posals that they will remove the evil,. but he does claim that they will reduce it, or check its growth. Ho adds that tho principle has been approved by the Wellington branch of the British Medical Association. The opinion of the Association is in this matter far more weighty than the medical opinion that has been given in favour of the operation of the Contagious Diseases Act, for whereas in tho_ second case the question involved is a question of morals as well as of public health, in tho present case what is involved is purely; a healthy question. The problem is, for obvious reasons, an extremely difficult, one, and the Attorney-General's proposod solution is a very bold one. Naturally its success will depend mainly on those who are entrusted with the difficult and delicate task of administering the law as so amended. If, however, Dr. Findlay can induce his colleagues to support him, he can rely upon the sympathy and assistance of most people who have given tho subject thougnt in what is plainly the only, correct and consU-

tutionai method of dealing with an undoubtedly serious social evil. Dr. Findlay is to be commended both for the courage he has shown in his attempt to grapple with the "question, as well as for the lines, upon which he has decided to proceed.