VENEREAL COMMISSION.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 232, 13 September 1922, Page 6

VENEREAL COMMISSION.

SYPHILIS AND INSANITY. DR. FRANK HAY’S EVIDENCE. ONE IN EVERY 38 INFECTED. Wellington. Sept. 13. Dr, Frank Hay, Inspector-General of Mental Hospitals, gave remarkable evidence to-day at- the venereal diseases inouiry. He said syphilis, directly or indirectly, is the cause of a large proportion of mental diseases, and its average distribution corresponded more or less with the proportion .of mental disease, but mental disease lagged ten or fifteen years behind. Infection in the primary stage, in spite of the mental stress created, rarely caused insanity, except among those inhereditly unstable. Among those admitted were some of the devil-may-care class, who failed or refused to recognise the seriousness of infection. These were a greater danger- to the community than merely the ignorant who placed themselves under treatment. In the secondary stage prolonged mental stress lead to a mental breakdown. Hereditary syphilis accounted for sia to eight per cent of all idiots and imbeciles. Calculating from a known number of 40 and the proportion of syphilitically caused deaths, Dr. Hay arrived at 1320 as the anntufi number of infections, and assuming the average duration of life after infection was 25 years, this meant that the number of people in New Zealand who hail, or have had syphilis would be 33,000 or one in 38.