Statement of the grounds upon which the Contagious Diseases Acts are opposed / Addressed to ... R. A. Cross ... Secretary of State for the Home Department, and to ... G. Hardy ... Secretary of State for War, by J. B. Nevins.

  • Nevins, J. Birkbeck (John Birkbeck), 1818-1903
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statement of the grounds upon which the Contagious Diseases Acts are opposed / Addressed to ... R. A. Cross ... Secretary of State for the Home Department, and to ... G. Hardy ... Secretary of State for War, by J. B. Nevins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    No attempt was made to call in question the proofs of sanitary failure in the-Navy, nor the increase of gonorrhoea in the protected stations in the Army; but bhe statements as to the increase of secondary syphilis by one-twelfth in the Army and the comparative rate of fall in primary venereal sores in the subjected and the unsubjected stations were fully discussed. The paper and the subsequent debate were reported in the medical papers, and as the speech of Inspector-General Lawson appears to embody all the objections, and both from its own merits and his official position is the most important answer that the writer is yet acquainted with, it is here reprinted from the Medical Times and Gazette, May 8, 1875, which has been corrected by Mr. Lawson previous to publication. Mr. R. B. Carter at the same discussion objected that If Dr. Nevins's observation proved anything they were an endeavour to shew that there had been an increase of venereal disease since the Acts had come into operation. But was it consistent with common sense to admit this 1 The question to be decided was whether they diminished disease sufficiently to make it worth while to keep them in force. The real question to be decided is whether the increase of disease is or is not consistent with fact, and this is the question discussed throughout this Statement. It appears to the author to be more than consistent with common sense that there should be an increase of disease when the soldiers and sailors entertained the belief that the Acts were passed by the Government for the purpose of furnishing clean girls for the Anny and Navy,—Rep. Roy. Com. S. 55—and they were told that the Acts sought to render the practice of prostitution much less dangerous— Report S. 13—and that amongst men it was merely an irregular in- dulgence of a natural impulse (Report S. 60)., With such apparent encouragement the men not unnaturally consorted still more freely with prostitutes (parag. 85), and as these are considei1- ably more frequently diseased than they were before the Act was in force in 1866 (parag. 84), increase of disease amongst the men would seem to be the natural consequence, and to be by no means inconsistent with common sense. The question, however, is a question of fact, and not one of a-priori probability or improbability. Inspector-General Lawson's Speech and Objections to the Sanitary Results put forward in the following Statement, (corrected by him- self, but italicised by the author of the Statement). Inspector-General Lawson : Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I have one or two remnrkg to make. One general feature of Hit address we have just heard hat been comparing tingle years. The speaker (Sr. NevinsJ has referred, pretty constantly to the year I860, and compared that with the year 1S7l>. Ho has put before you that, at certain stations which had reduced a certain number per annum before
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