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measures are required to check its progress. This incongruity would 

 by itself be a sufficient proof of the extent to which, on the one side ot 

 the other, evidence must have been vitiated. What, then, shall we 

 say of the incongruity on finding that the first of these statements has 

 recently been repeated by many of the highest medical authorities, as 

 one verified by their experience ? Here are some of their testimonies : 

 The Chairman of the late Government Commission for inquiring 

 into the treatment and prevention of syphilis, Mr. Skey, Consulting- 

 Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, gave evidence before a House 

 of Lords Committee. Referring to an article expressing the views of 

 the Association for promoting the extension of the Contagious Dis- 

 eases Acts, he said it was 



"largely overcharged," and "colored too highly. . . . The disease is by no 

 means so common or universal, I may say, as is represented in that article, 

 .... and I have had an opportunity, since I had the suminons to appear here 

 to-day, of communicating with several leading members in the profession at the 

 College of Surgeons, and we are all of the same opinion, that the evil is not so 

 large by any means as it is represented by the Association.'' 



Mr. John Simon, F. R. S., for thirty-five years a hospital surgeon, 

 and now Medical Officer to the Privy Council, writes in his official 

 capacity : 



"I have not the least disposition to deny that venereal affections constitute 

 a real and great evil for the community; though I suspect that very exagger- 

 ated opinions are current as to their diffusion and malignity/' 



By the- late Prof. Syme it was asserted that 



"It is now fully ascertained that the poison of the present day (true syphi- 

 lis) does not give rise to the dreadful consequences which have been men- 

 tioned, when treated without mercury. . . . None of the serious effects tha 

 used to be so much dreaded ever appear, and even the trivial ones just noticed 

 comparatively seldom present themselves. We must, therefore, conclude either 

 that the virulence of the poison is worn out, or that the effects formerly at- 

 tributed to it depended on treatment." 1 



The British and Foreign Medico- Chirurgical Heview, which stands 

 far higher than any other medical journal, and is friendly to the Acts 

 as applied to military and naval stations, writes thus : 



"The majority of those who have undergone the disease, thus far" (includ- 

 ing secondary manifestations), "live as long as they could otherwise have ex- 

 pected to live, and die of diseases with which syphilis has no more to do than 

 the man in the moon." " . . . . "Surely 455 persons suffering from true syphi- 

 lis in one form or another, in a poor population of 1,500,000 " (less than one in 

 3,000) .... "cannot be held to be a proportion so large as to call for excep- 

 tional action on the part of any government." 3 



1 "Principles of Surgery." Fifth edition, p. 434. 



2 British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, January, 1870, p. 103. 

 Ibid., p. 106. 



