Report as to the practice of medicine and surgery by unqualified persons in the United Kingdom.

  • Great Britain. Local Government Board
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report as to the practice of medicine and surgery by unqualified persons in the United Kingdom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    16/92 (page 14)
    SALE OF AUORTIFACIENTS AND PRACTICE BY ABORTIONISTS. (a) Extent of Practice. The sale of drugs intended to produce abortion and practice by abortion mongers, is shown by the replies to be very prevalent and to be increasing considerably in many parts of the country. The traffic is centred very largely in the greater and particularly the indus- trial towns. One Medical Officer of Health states that the use of instruments and the sale of drugs for the purpose of procuring abortion goes on in towns, especially manufacturing cities, to an extent which only medical men practising in such places can appreciate. The replies from the Midlands and the North of England, and especially from Lancashire, Northumberland, Durham, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and Nottinghamshire, make constant reference to these practices. The sale of abortion-producing drugs, often at exorbitant prices, is extensively carried on by herbalists, and unqualified drug sellers. That some qualified chemists, however, do a secret traffic in aborti- facients, many Medical Officers of Health bear witness. One states that diachylon is sold by chemists and druggists in bulk, and that several keep it ready for sale in 2cl, packets, from which pills are made and sold by old women. Persons ' touting' from door to door have been known to induce married women to take drastic medicines to produce abortion. A large proportion of this trade is stated to be done by itinerant hawkers, by women garbed as nurses, and by market quacks, who describe their medicines as intended to cure 'female irregularities.' Advertisements of abortifacients appear in newspapers to an increasing extent. One Medical Officer of Health reports that abortifacients are freely advertised in thinly-veiled language, which evades the law, but is patent to everybody, and that the evil exists throughout the country. These advertisements are really adver- tisements of abortionists. After one or two bottles containing harmless substances have been used, of course unavailingly, the serious offer of an operation is mooted. The same observations apply to ladies' ' outfitters,' places where syringes, douches, quinine pessaries, &c., are sold .... and it would be well to take comprehensive and energetic measures to put an end to this sort of thing, not only on account of its criminality, but also on account of its infiuencc on the birthrate and on the moral character of the nation. The advertisements and appliances are sufficiently obvious to do harm in many directions. They are wholly deleterious. The same Medical Officer of Health, in instancing the prevalence of the practice, stated that in a recent case a midwife kept a ledger of patients on whom she had performed illegal operations, in some cases more th;m once, resulting in evidence being given in court by these patients. The midwife was sent to prison for 10 years' penal servitude. He concludes It were worth while for the State to ])rovide machinery for systematically stamping out such unregistered, unqualified, and illegal practice.