The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, JULY 22, 1916. VENERAL DISEASES.

Southland Times, Issue 17792, 22 July 1916, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, JULY 22, 1916. VENERAL DISEASES.

Among the many reforms, the solution of which would have been long delayed but for the war, it now seems probable we shall be able to include one of the most vitally important of all, yet one that has been skilfully avoided by legislators and prudishly ignored by the great body of social reformers. In a recent article we pointed out that the increase in venereal disease, an invariable consequence of war conditions, had become so serious both from a civil and a military point of view that the question could no longer be burked, and that preliminary investigations in Britain and Australia had more than confirmed the necessity for taking prompt and effective measures for checking the ravages of the disease. In Parliament on Wednesday night the Hon. G. W. Russell, explained the provisions of the War Regulations Bill dealing with the subject, and submitted figures which showed that New Zealand, a country where there are no large cities, where there are practically none of the more vicious haunts of older and more populous countries, is exposed with other parts of the Empire to this grave menace. New Zealand can again claim to have taken the lead in an important social reform, but on this occasion Australia seems likely to follow closely after, and the recommerdioou of the Committee on the

causes of invalidity and mortality, cabled on Thursday night, indicate that in some respects the Commonwealth will propose more drastic measures than are contemplated in New Zealand. The debate in Parliament on Thursday revealed an almost unanimous desire on the part of members to assist the Minister of Public Health to make the provisions of the Bill as perfect and as practicable as is possible in dealing with a question that bristles with difficulties and complexities. There will be few in New Zealand who will endorse the opinion of Mr T. M. Hornsby that soldiers do not require so much safeguarding as is alleged, or who will understand his amazing view that the regulation of prostitution will “tend to degrade womanhood.” Mr Hornsby, when in Invercargill, was eloquent on the sufferings caused by the war, and there were tears in his voice when he referred to the lives that were sacrificed at the landing on Gallipoli. We are not too greatly impressed by the ready tears and the scarcely repressed sob of the practised politician, especially when the untold misery and incalculable harm caused by venereal disease fail to arouse his sympathy and enlist his aid. That it is necessary and urgently necessary to adopt preventive measures is no longer a matter for argument, and in regard to our soldiers wa are once more indebted to the Y.M.C.A., which was early impressed, as the result of personal observation, by the necessity for action. This organisation has bent itself to the education of the soldiers in regard to the awful effects of the scourge, and set itself to counteract the temptations that beset them by providing recreation and amusement and by supplying the atmosphere of home environment which is a restraining Influence in ordinary life. In a booklet on maintaining fitness, written by a medical' man of recognised authority, there is a store of invaluable advice, and one paragraph dealing with syphilis is worth reproducing in the interests of the campaign of education that will soon be inaugurated in this country. It reads:— “Most men have heard of the ravages wrought by syphilis. They know that there is no part of the body that can escape its corrupting influences. Th ny know that a man may be Infected in his youth, and that in his prime the latent microbe may spring an ambush upon him, and condemn him to a nervous wreck from which death is a merciful deliverance. They know something of the domestic disaster that follows when the innocent ■ wife becomes infected too. They know that the earlier children may be killed before they are born, and that ■the later children may be bom diseased. They recognise the tragedy of visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations when fathers themselves were little more than children when they fell victims to the disease. Medical men are always learning, and the work of recent years has added mnch to our knowledge of both forms of contagious disease. For one thing modem science has done much to mitigate the severity of the old Mosaic curse. But medicine is not yet able to rid a patient wholly of the syphilitic microbe, nor to relieve him completely from its devastating effects.” We do not propose to discuss the details of the proposed legislation at this stage. It is sufficient just now to express gratification that the problem has been faced, and to endeavour to enlist the sympathy and assistance of the public in dealing with it.