The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 1914. THE SOCIAL EVIL.

Southland Times, Issue 17547, 10 January 1914, Page 5

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 1914. THE SOCIAL EVIL.

The unusual case which came before the Magistrate’s Court at Christchurch a few days ago was very properly reported at some length since it directs public attention to a problem for which a solution is being more and more urgently demanded. The case was that in which a woman suffering from venereal disease was taken before the Magistrate by the police with the object not so much to obtain a conviction against the unfortunate woman as of protecting the public. It came out in Court that in the present state of the law neither the police nor the health authorities have any power to deal with these cases, and a woman who is suffering from the disease and practising prostitution is, therefore, a dreadful menace to society. For a very long time this unsavoury subject has been tabooed in the press, but the growth of the evil and sheer necessity for checking disastrous consequences has forced both public men and newspapers to speak plainly. Everybody knows what is meant by “the social evil,” “the secret vice,” and “venereal disease,” but it may become necessary to use still plainer terms. The fact is that the social evil has become so appallingly prevalent that it has attained the dimensions of a problem of government, and when It was discussed last September by the International

Medical Congress in London, and by Dr. R. W. Johnstone In a voluminous report issued by the Local Government Board the London newspapers proceeded to arouse the public to a sense of their danger and to the necessity for protective legislation. The consequences which follow' upon venereal disease are. not so widely understood as they should be. In the great centres of population no less than 90 per cent, of the respectable married women admitted into hospitals suffering from diseases of one kind or another are suffering through no fault of their own from the after effects of this hideous malady, and though the moral tone of New Zealand towns is comparatively high Dr Batchelor, in a public lecture at Dunedin some time ago, put It on record that fully fifty per cent, of the decent married women who enter the women’s w r ard in the Dunedin hospital do so as the result of these diseases, from which they are innocent sufferers. It is not only the women who suffer. The dreadful heritage is passed on to the children and the children’s children, pr Symes, writing to the Christchurch Press not long ago, endorsed Dr Batchelor’s statements, and added:—’’There are at the present moment not hundreds, but thousands of innocent women in New Zealand suffering from the effects of these loathsome maladies; lives innumerable have been lost, and desperate operations are performed almost daily in this dominion - to relieve some unfortunate sufferer: Wives are rendered childless, life-long sufferers and invalids—yet our tongues are tied.” The problem is one. of extreme urgency, and to ignore it or to falter in dealing with it would bo national folly. The remedy is admittedly a difficult question. Dr Johnstone, whose report has already been referred to, was not prepared to recommend notification, but very strong arguments can be advanced in favour of the contention that the disease should be made notifiable. In any c«tse, however, the police and the public health authorities should be invested with some power to deal with cases that come within their knowledge, and to protect the public from the grave risk of indescribable misery and suffering.