1 86 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



tion of Vice," by which they meant, not the State 

 recognition of vice as an institution, but merely 

 the common-sense recognition of its indubitable 

 existence ; not the promotion of vice, but merely 

 the attempt to minimise some of the worst effects 

 of unpreventable vice ; about the " Degradation of 

 Woman," by which they meant the placing under 

 sanitary inspection of an already degraded class, 

 who were sowing the diseases broadcast ; about 

 the interference with liberty — the liberty of prosti- 

 tutes to disseminate disease, to wilfully poison, to 

 commit heinous crime ; ^ about the danger of 

 confounding the innocent with the guilty, and of 

 blackmailing by the police,^ as if that did not face 

 us in the case of every other law. It was even 

 stated that the attempt to check the disease had 

 caused the spread of it. It was argued that the 

 isolation of some diseased women left the re- 

 mainder with a greater power of disseminating it. 

 In other words, it was argued that if we remove 

 one focus of disease other foci have greater scope, 

 {e.£: if we remove one case of small-pox, other 

 cases have greater scope) for infection, and the 

 whole amount of disease is greater. The statistics 

 of the period sufficiently disprove this deplorable 

 nonsense.^ The claptrap "caught on." One- 

 half of the community apparently went mad, and 



^ Vide Appendix K. ^ Appendix L. ' Vide Appendix J. 



