VENEREAL DISEASES.
(To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Some of your readers appear to be horrified because energetic measures are to be taken to provide for the treatment and cure of these diseases. May I commend to their attention a case I saw not long ago in one of our London hospitals? The patient was a young police-sergeant who bad recently married a nice young wife. In the course of his duty he had to arrest a " drunk and disorderly" woman. She bit him on the thumb, and thereby inoculated him with the worst form of the disease. Probably the " unco' grid " would be astonished if they knew how many doctors and nurses contract these diseases in the performance of their
[In view of such things, it seems incredible, and yet is a fact, that there are people still averse from insisting that this dire plague shall be cured, not spread, and who talk of syphilis as being " God's punishment for vice." Have these blind leaders of the blind never asked themselves how, if it is God's punishment for vice, it comes about that the man who corrupts a married woman or seduces a virgin escapes, while the man whose offence is not enhanced by treachery and lies, or the innccent doctor or nurse, receives so awful a punishment? More criminal folly Las been talked, and is talked, about venereal disease than about any other question in the world. The doctor's way of looking at the matter is the sound one: "Cure the disease, stop it spreading, and prevent the conditions which create it." Do this sincerely and you cannot go wrong. He who allows a disease to be propa- gated for religious and moral reasons is a criminal sophist.—ED. Spectator.]
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