The Contagious Diseases Acts (Women) from a sanitary point of view : showing how and why such despotic measures not only fail to repress venereal disease, but tend to increase its most serious manifestations : containing the substance of a paper read before the Medical Society of London, Jan. 17th, 1870 / by Charles Bell Taylor.

  • Taylor, Charles Bell.
Date:
1870
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Contagious Diseases Acts (Women) from a sanitary point of view : showing how and why such despotic measures not only fail to repress venereal disease, but tend to increase its most serious manifestations : containing the substance of a paper read before the Medical Society of London, Jan. 17th, 1870 / by Charles Bell Taylor. 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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    IT. who are treated in hospitals as repreienting certainly not more than one-fifth of the venereal patients of Paris. We thus reach a total number of 47,500, a formidable number, although it is probably below the truth:' — See p. 57. I contrast this statement with the one already quoted from The British and Foreign Medico- Chirtirgicxl Review, and remind my readers that the population of Paris and its suburbs is not more than one-half that of London. Third : That other means, entirely unobjectionable, Christian, merciful, and in full aecord with the free spirit of English institutions, would suffice to check the spread of disease, in proof of which I have quoted a mass of evidence to show that women are most eager to apply to hospitals for treatment when diseased; and that there is no need whatever for police spies, disgusting periodical examinations of healthy women, or the infamous degradation of the sex generally, such as is too surely accomplished by the present law. I quote the following from evidence taken before the Venereal Commission in 1864 : Much more good may be done by free hospitals than by police inter- ference. Police regulations can get only a certain number of women, whereas free hospitals would attract all suffering from disease, even those who had contracted it clandestinely, and who would escape the police. J. R. Lane, surgeon to the London Lock Hospital. (See p. 60 ) Before the enactment of this disgusting law, no subject of this realm could be imprisoned without some high and felonious crime were sworn against, him or her. Suspicion was no warrant for suspension of habeas corpus; facts only were accepted as proofs; and of these facts judge and jury formed their opinion. This, as that great constitutional historian Haliam haa observed with regard to private persons, is the foundation of all our liberties ; remove but a corner-stone, and you upset the whole fabric. Under the provisions of the Contagious Diseases Acts, British subjects, not even suspected of any crime, are deprived of their liberty for months, and periodically sub- jpoted to personal violation of the very grossest kind, at the mere suggestion of policemen. Surely the authors and promoters of this law, who have thus abolished all legal safeguards of woman's honour, and sanctioned the perpetra- tion of the most atrocious indecencies upon helpless women and children, have but small claim upon our forbearance when they advance the puerile plea of decency or delicacy as a reason for hearing only one side of this unspeakably important question. Those who make sanitary laws are bound to learn something of sanitary matters, and not jump to conclusions from garbled and one-sided statements emanating from interested sources, or anony- mous writers in sympathizing journals, whose editors dare not publish replies. What I have written now passes from my control. Some of the facts adduced Mil be perhaps best appreciated by medical men, but they are so expressed fehat all may understand, and there are few who will not, on reflection, be able to verify the greater portion.