The Contagious Diseases Act : a paper read by Francis Cadell, Esq, F.R.C.S.E., lecturer on syphilology, Edinburgh School of Medicine, before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, January, 1881, on the hygienic and legislative failure of the acts, with the discussion of the Society.

  • Cadell, Francis.
Date:
[1881]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Contagious Diseases Act : a paper read by Francis Cadell, Esq, F.R.C.S.E., lecturer on syphilology, Edinburgh School of Medicine, before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, January, 1881, on the hygienic and legislative failure of the acts, with the discussion of the Society. 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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    practised with safety, and this, too, without any change in the condition of her genital organs perceptible upon the most minute examination with the speculum. I am constantly meeting with cases in which one or more men have cohabited with impunity with a woman both before and after the time when she has occasioned gonorrhoea in another person ; or, less frequently, in which the same man, after visiting a woman for a long period with safety, is attacked with gonorrhoea without any disease appearing in her, and after recovery resumes his intercourse with her and experiences no further trouble. The frequency of such cases leaves no doubt in my mind that gonorrhoea is often due to accidental causes, and not to direct contagion. If this view of the causes of gonorrhoea is accepted, it will explain the total failure of the Acts in lessening the number of cases of this disease. In the home and Mediterranean navy there had been a remarkable increase of the disease between the years 1866 and 1875. This is accounted for in the Navy Keport, 1874, in the following manner :—That there has been no increase of gon- orrhoea at all, and that the ajoj^arent increase to nearly treble its amount, both in the home and Mediterranean navy, is simply due to the medical ojfficers having. been desired by the Admiralty to record their gonorrhceal cases more regularly than formerly. If this be the correct explanation of the extra- ordinary increase of gonorrhoea alluded to, it only tends to show the lamentable inexactness of the official records on the subject. It is quite possible, however, that the Acts might account for a small increase in the ratio of gonorrhceal cases by the mechan- ical irritation caused by the periodical examinations with the speculum, assisted by the irritating injections and other means used by the women themselves in order to appear healthy at the time of examination, and so increasing the ordinary causes of gonorrhceal infection. Gonorrhoea is not the trifling disease many suppose, and accounts for a great deal of that loss of service in the army and navy to prevent which these Acts were instituted. In fact, during its acute stage I should say that gonorrhoea was more likely to interfere with a soldier's active duty than syphilis itself It seems to me that the impotency of the Acts to prevent gonorrhoea takes away one reason for their existence. As regards the second variety of venereal disease, the soft chancre or local sore, which is not followed by constitutional symptoms, I should expect the Acts to have a very decided beneficial effect. This form of sore is rapid in its action, and painful in its progress, and could be readily detected even by a cursory examination. The ratio of so-called primary sores per