The Nation's Health; The Stamping Out of Venereal Disease

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII Should Venereal Diseases be Notifiable ? The question whether these diseases should be made compulsorily notifiable is one that demands serious attention. The Royal Commission took a great deal of evidence bearing upon it, and gave it careful and even anxious consideration, with the result that, subject to a qualification to be mentioned presently, its members unanimously decided not to recommend any system of notification, even of a confidential nature. In some quarters this decision has caused acute disappointment, and it is necessary, therefore, to review the reasons that are to be urged for and against notification. Results of notification. ? Undoubtedly there is a strong prima-facie presumption in favour of notification. This policy has been applied to one infectious disease after another, with great benefit to public health in not a few instances, as is recognised by the Local Government Board. Inmeasles and whooping-cough the results have been inconsiderable, because these diseases are infectious in a high degree before their nature can be determined. But in typhus and typhoid fever, smallpox, scarlet fever, and diphtheria notification has yielded excellent results, and it is proving to be of great value in tuberculosis, to which it was fully extended so recently as 1914. It is natural, then, that many who feel strongly about the prevalence of venereal diseases should desire that a policy which has answered so well in some other diseases should be extended to these. What notification does. ? Let us see precisely how notification tends to check the dissemination of infectious disease. When a Medical Officer of Health is notified of a case of acute infectious fever?say scarlet fever? he is able not only to carry out an investigation as to the channels of ...