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.

Bell Taylor

Date:: [1872]

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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excoriation, and inattention to cleanliness. A diminution in the gross number of these may easily be brought about, either by omitting to classify such trifling ailments, or by providing, and enforcing recourse to, means.of cleanliness among the men. We know that every effort has been made, in the latter direction, since the passing of the Conta- gious Diseases Acts ; and, with regard to the former, it appears that since 1869 such a change in the classification of enthetic diseases has been adopted, the effect of which, in lessening the totals given, cannot fail to be considerable. I might very well conclude at this point, but I wish, before sitting down, to direct your attention to some very decisive statistics, ex- tracted from the Army Medical Eeports for the last four years for which those volumes have been issued. One table refers to the total number of cases of enthetic disease in the whole Home Army; the other to the total number of cases, and to the number of each special disease, or group of diseases, in the eight or nine principal branches of the service. The first table is drawn from the Eeports at the com- mencement of the several volumes, the second from one of the Appendices in each volume. Any gentleman possessing the Army Medical Eeports can verify the correctness of the figures for himself. In the first table I can only give the figures to the year 1868, as, in consequence of the new mode of classification, corresponding figures are not given in the volume for 1869. In the second table I am able to give the particulars, under the heads of greatest interest, for all the years.* Now, Dr. Balfour’s words indicate, with sufficient plainness, that true syphilis has not diminished in the English Army since the intro- duction of the Contagious Diseases Acts. But what do we find from • this table ? We find that it has increased. We find that, in 1866, the number of men per 1000 (in a total of nearly 60,000)), affected by secondary, or true, syphilis, was 23-39, while, in 1869, it was 26-33. So that, notwithstanding every effort that had been made in the three years, during which the Act of 1866 had been in force, secondary, or true, syphilis, the only really “ serious form of disease,” was higher by three per 1000 than it was in the year before the Act was introduced. The same, we find, was true of all other enthetic diseases. Every class of disease was higher in its ratio in 1869 than in 1866. Primary syphilis, in 1866, was 78.53 per 1000 ; in 1869 it was 78-72 : gonor- rhoea, in 1866, was 98-43 ; in 1869, 103-11: other enthetic diseases, in 1866, were 36-19 ; in 1868, 37-88. The new mode of classification prevents my being able to give the number for the latter in 1869. The same thing was true of the total number of cases of enthetic dis- * Since writing the above I have enlarged the former table by including the years from 1859 to 1865.

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