Objections Against Instrumental Examination.

Dr. Taylor alleges that disease is communicated by the speculum. This is a question of fact. I may observe, that Dr. Taylor has given no instance that has come under his own knowledge. During the last thirty years I have had some personal experience, and I fearlessly assert that if ordinary and proper precautions be taken, no qualified medical man will thus spread contagion.^*

I have personally seen all the classes of registered and unregistered filles clandestines and public women examined in Paris on several occasions, and I may refer the sceptical to page 119 of my last edition on Prostitution, where I state that I recently assisted at the examination of at least fifty registered prostitutes, brought promiscuously from different parts of Paris, and not a single one was found diseased—this arising from the efficiency of the police regulations in that city; similar visits have corroborated these views. How contagion can be spread where precautions are taken to cleanse the instruments, I am at a loss to conceive.

The officers of the different Lock Hospitals will, I am sure, bear me out in saying that contagion ought not to, and, in fact, does not take place in this manner. Dr. Taylor further objects that in a large proportion of cases it is impossible to say with certainty whether a woman is diseased or not. This, again, is a question of fact. If this assertion proves anything, it shows only that incompetent men must not be appointed to these responsible situations. I think men conversant with the subject will agree with me that if a woman presents to the practised eye no recognizable traces of disease, the instances are rare indeed in which she will prove a source of contagion.

It is worthy of remark that Dr. Taylor does not page 26 assert that be believes in these statistics, or has authenticated them, but quotes a clergyman, who believes he has proved by tables—which he gives us no means of referring to—that disease had increased;^* if this is not disingenuous conduct, I know not what is. I take upon myself to deny in toto the assertion, and my medical opponent ought, I think, to have discovered that he was misquoting the Parliamentary reports.

Those who maintain that the Contagious Diseases Act has not been attended with satisfactory results, forget to state that many of the soldiers said to be diseased, and

^* Since the discussion took place on my paper I have been at some trouble to discover where this Reverend gentleman could have obtained his information, as the latest official returns of the army only come down to 1867, although published in 1860. I obtained my latest statistics from the valuable treatise of Dr. Parks on Hygiene, prepared especially for the army. At page 503, that accurate observer remarks—"Taking all the stations, namely, Aldershot, Chatham, Plymouth, Devonport, Portsmouth and Woolwich, the mean admissions for Syphilis were, in the year 1867, 84.98 per 1000 men, and in the year 1868, 65.95 per 1000 men. It seems therefore clear that a good effect has been produced, and I think in the stations where it would have been anticipated."

page 27 who swell the statistics, are merely instances of relapse, and in other cases the diseases from which they suffer have been contracted beyond the protected district.

The Westminster Review, one of our most logical and powerful opponents, objects that the English Contagious Diseases Act confounds all prostitutes of every grade into one indistinguishable crowd of common prostitutes, and forces all the prostitutes to become inhabitants of brothels, in order that the hold upon them may be more secure.

The answer I have to make to this objection is, that the Contagious Diseases Act, as at present carried out at Aldershot and Woolwich, has no such tendency as this. Those who will read my description of these garrison towns, will see that the brothel proper is a house almost unknown in London! and in the above-named garrison towns the women live in lodgings, for which they pay a rent like any other lodger. My object—as the following extract from a letter I have recently written will show—is to abolish the brothel proper.

"I have so recently pointed out the objections to tolerated brothels in London, particularly if modelled on the French system, that I will not now repeat my objections to them. I may, however, remind ray readers that a brothel (proper) is a house almost unknown in London, the police returns only giving two for the whole metropolis, thus showing that the institution is alien to English feelings. In any future legislation, therefore, society must consider how we are to deal with clandestine prostitutes—that is, girls living in their own lodgings—as no one desires to introduce the French system or allow man or woman to profit by the prostitution of another. A further fundamental difference between the present system in France and that which I desire to sec introduced into England is that, whereas in France it is the object of the police to register and confine in a brothel every woman gaining her livelihood by prostitution, all that is proposed for England is to give authority to medical men by the Contagious Diseases Act to examine periodically all women who are known to be common prostitutes, and, if they find that they are diseased, to confine them in hospital as long as they are capable of communicating venereal complaints to those who may have relations with them. This interference with the liberty of the subject in England seems necessary, not only for the prevention of disease page 28 in the soldier or civilian, but even for the sake of the woman herself, who will in a few years give up a life of profligacy, and gain her livelihood by some other means.

"The English plan will not use up the prostitute, as must necessarily be the case if she enters a brothel; for, as I have shown elsewhere, girls once inmates of these dens of iniquity in Paris gradually descend from a higher to a lower grade of house, until they are useless for even the vilest of them. Under the foreign system there is no hope for the amelioration of the prostitute, we in England profess to believe that we can assist the girl in redeeming her position at the same time that we do so on purely sanitary grounds, without legalising vice."—Medical Times, January 15th, 1870.

As our opponents reiterate in different forms these assertions, I think I cannot give the reader too many authentic statements proving the contrary.^*