The Daily News. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12. A PAINFUL SUBJECT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 183, 12 November 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12. A PAINFUL SUBJECT.

Painful plainness is absolutely essential in the discussion of sexual disease, if the horrible condition of the people of New Zealand, illustrated in the speech of the Attorney-General in the Legislative Council, is to be mended. Until a few years ago the subject was never mentioned publicly. The newspaper that dared mention mere facts in connection with the matter was, in some unaccountable way, looked upon as being irreverent or immoral. One of the city papers fought prudery and ignorance. It commissioned a man to collect facts and to write them plainly, and it is on the facts then gleaned that possible legislation is to be based. Medical men, quite naturally, are not disposed to "give away secrets," but they were then so evidently becoming alarmed at the prevalence and spread of sexual diseases that they spoke plainly indeed. In our opinion, the most alarming fact elicited came from the past and present medical superintendents of the hospital dealing with the greatest number of patients in New Zealand. Both these experienced physicians said that sixty-five per cent, of the operations performed on women in that hospital were necessary because of sexual disease contracted by contagion. In plain English, this means that the majority of these women had been driven to the operating table by their husbands. It means, further, that the average man views with more or less unconcern the disease of gonorrhoea, because he himself apparently recovers from it. It is a very different matter with the woman, who is perfectly innocent, and who, because of the criminal ignorance of men, is driven to the surgeons. The effects are everywhere apparent. Most of the ills that afflict humanity, from infantile blindness to flat feet (this is a perfectly serious statement) are the results of somebody's sexual sin. And when one is told by men who see the dreadful state of affairs day in and day out that 35 per cent, of the out-patients attending hospitals do so because of sexual ailments, and when one knows that the figures are the lowest estimate, it is time to "take off the gloves" and attack the pestilence, to overcome the scruples of the misguided folk who say "hush!" and to make it impossible for any man to marry who cannot produce a clean bill of sexual health. The appalling conditions that will produce a decrepit race and augment the too large proportion of imbeciles and wasters are the most difficult to eliminate that one can conceive. The man who has been smitten with the pestilence is ashamed while he is suffering. The number of cases dealt with by hospital authorities is no criterion of the totals. It is certain that many cases are not dealt with either by medical men or chemists, and so the proposition to make sexual disease notifiable is met with a difficulty at once. In the Legislative Council an eminent doctor spoke of the medical etiquette that might restrain doctors from notifying these cases. This is a state of things in which medical etiquette might be trampled under foot by Sttate compulsion. The mischief done by such disease is infinitely more ghastly than that done by any other agency—disease, war, famine, flood, fire. There, are folk who. oblivious of the figures and the terrible facts, persist in believing that it is wrong to humiliate public women by systematised examination. Apa in to be frank. The awful percentages prove the prevalence of illicit intercourse. The world knows nothing about it, the mothers do not know their sons, and virtuous women, because of the general ignorance of the subject and the policy of "hush!" may cheerfully and unknowingly hand their daughters over to become legalised victims united by the Church and destined for the operating table. The sexual health of prospective marital partners is of more importance than any other social consideration. No enquiries are ever made, the State which grandiloquently talks about peopling the country with a strong virile race has been impotent, people disregard the facts or blush and say "hush!" and Nature struggles on meting out dreadful punishment not so frequently to the transgressor as to his victim. The transgressor's fearful ignorance is what the reformer has to fight. He must be told that if » he has ever had sexual disease he may transmit it even though he is apparently fin health. That is the gravest point of all. There is no physician in New Zealand who can contradict it—or who will. Is it worth while that you, the father of sons or the mother of daughters, shall study this matter reverently, without prudery and with the sole object of preventing crime against the race? Have (we any duty to the living children of | New Zealand or the children to be? Shall we make it impossible for a case of sexual disease to remain undiscovered, just to keep the coming mothers of the . race out of the operating theatre, and the coming race free from awful taints? Every day and in every town the man who has taken the trouble to understand '■ sees physical evidence of sexual sins, r The victims generally are unaware of t the causes of their imperfections. Tre 1 causes are the transmission of »; j .xi>-i i disease by persons as ignoran' a* the • victims. Now that the ma':.-- :!<••; been * ventilated in V:. , *" <='"- i cerely hoped that *'• -i.i- win not 8 hesitate to make i-.:■ ■■■.•ation imperative. Such nn would probably re--1 cluce f'.*- evil, and would be t absolutely The eternal "libf berty nf the stfcjwt" would present some

'i'fTK-tpities. A man or woman with venereal, disease should have no liberty, for such person,s are immeasurably the most dangerous element in society. If

discovered cases were not segregated no system could be effective, unless the Government published in its Gazette a list of the names of all persons so suffering. No measures are too stern in regard to this monstrous evil, and the politician who tackles it manfully and fights it to a finish will erect for himself an imperishable monument in the hearts of the mothers and fathers of the race.