652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



its passage. It is impossible to lay too much stress upon this point. At th4 

 present day especially, when syphilis still inspires exaggerated fears, it should 

 be known that this disease becomes dissipated completely in a great number of 

 cases after the cessation of the cutaneous eruptions, and perhaps sometimes 

 even with the primary lesion." * 



It will, perhaps, be remarked that these testimonies of medical men 

 who, by their generally high position, or their lengthened experience, 

 or their special experience, are so well qualified to judge, are selected 

 testimonies ; and against them will be set the testimonies of Sir James 

 Paget, Sir "W. Jenner, and Mr. Prescott Hewett, who regard the evil 

 as a very grave one. To gather accurately the consensus of medical 

 opinion would be impracticable without polling the whole body of 

 physicians and surgeons ; but we have a means of judging which 

 view most truly meets with " the emphatic concurrence of numerous 

 practitioners : " that, namely, of taking a local group of medical men. 

 Out of fifty-eight physicians and surgeons residing in Nottingham and 

 its suburbs, fifty-four have put their signatures to a public statement 

 that syphilis is " very much diminished in frequency, and so much 

 milder in form that we can scarcely recognize it as the disease de- 

 scribed by our forefathers." And among these are the medical men 

 occupying nearly all the official medical positions in the town Senior 

 Physician to the General Hospital, Honorary Surgeon ditto, Surgeons 

 to the Jail, to the General Dispensary, to the Free Hospital, to the 

 Union Hospital, to the Lock Hospital (four in number), Medical Offi- 

 cers to the Board of Health, to the Union, to the County Asylum, etc., 

 etc. Even while I write there comes to me kindred evidence in the 

 shape of a letter published in the British 3Iedical Journal for July 

 20, 1872, by Dr. Carter, Honorary Physician to the Liverpool South- 

 ern Hospital, who states that, after several debates at the Liverpool 

 Medical Institution, " a form of petition strongly condemnatory of the 

 Acts was written out by myself, and .... in a few days one hundred 

 and eight signatures" (of medical men) "were obtained." Meanwhile, 

 he adds, " earnest efforts were being made by a number of gentlemen 

 to procure medical signatures to the petition in favor of the Acts 

 known as the ' London Memorial ' efforts which resulted in twenty- 

 nine signatures only." 



Yet notwithstanding this testimony great in quantity, and much 

 of it of the highest quality, it has been possible so to present the evi- 

 dence as to produce in the public mind, and in the Legislature, the 

 impression that peremptory measures for dealing with a spreading 

 pest are indispensable. As lately whites a Member of Parliament : 



1 "A Treatise on Syphilis," by Dr. E. Lancereaux, vol ii., p. 120. This testimony I 

 quote from the work itself, and have similarly taken from the original sources the 

 statements of Skey, Simon, Wyatt, Acton, and the British and Foreign Mcdico-Chirurgical 

 Review. The rest, with various others, will be found in the pamphlet of Dr. C. B. Taylor 

 on " The Contagious Diseases Acts." 



