Before I venture to criticise any procedure or suggestion of the Government, I ask your consideration of certain scientific axioms which must be laid down as necessary data before any wise course of practical action can be initiated with rational hope of success. The first refers to the causes of disease.

Axiom 1.

‘In combating serious disease it is essential to ascertain the chief cause of the disease, which must be directly attacked and steadily removed, or no cure is possible.’

We may as well expect to cure typhoid fever whilst allowing sewer gas to permeate the house, or cholera whilst bad drinking-water is being taken, as try to cure venereal disease whilst its chief cause remains unchecked.

I shall show later that Promiscuous Intercourse, or the resort of many men to one woman, is a prolific source of venereal disease.

The second axiom refers to the physiological rank and scope of our human faculties.

Axiom 2.

‘The sexual organs are not essential to individual life, although they are essential to the continuance of the race. Neither is their full exercise by sexual congress indispensable to individual health.’

The blind obstinacy with which these scientific facts are ignored in education, in social sentiment, and in Government organizations, is a potent cause of national degeneracy, of impaired procreative power, and enfeebled offspring.

Hunger is the primary instinct and indispensable condition of human life. It is that which insures the continuance of the individual. The sexual instinct, with all its grand power to perpetuate the race, is only a later development, growing with the unfolding of the intellectual and moral nature. It is shared equally under varying aspects by each of the two necessary factors in procreation, woman as well as man.

This fact of the powerful sexual attraction necessarily existent and dominating in woman, as mother of the race, seems to be quite overlooked. In any true meaning of the word ‘strength,’ this potent social force in women demands far more serious study than it has yet received, although it may exhibit itself in less spasmodic form than in men.[9]

There are two branches of the medical art which urgently require fuller consideration. These are:

The susceptibility of our sexual nature to mental control and direction to noble ends is a great and encouraging scientific truth.

From these data of true physiology the possibility of continence is evident. With further physiological study, its great advantage, up to the full consolidated adult age, can be proved. By scientific study of the biological facts that underlie these data, it can be shown from positive medical experience that promiscuous intercourse between the sexes, or the resort of many men to the same woman, cannot be made physically safe. The gradual elimination of this destructive practice is essential to the progress of the race.

These statements are supported both by historical experience and sound medical knowledge.

The human race, in advancing through lower stages of development, passes from polygamy and concubinage to the higher state of Christian marriage. The scientific basis which underlies this advance has not yet been realized.

Polygamy, although morally degrading to both parties from its injustice, tyranny, and impairment of vigour, does not produce the special physical curse of syphilitic disease.

But promiscuous intercourse inevitably tends to give rise to varying forms of venereal disease, no matter what precautions may be taken.

In the female subject, irritation, congestion, or inflammation of the parts are the result of unnatural repetition of the sexual act. By such irritation the natural and healthy secretions of those organs are rendered morbid.

The natural secretions of the male organs also become morbid in licentious men, developing into blennorrhagia, or purulent gonorrhœa, and thus the danger of promiscuity is intensified.

Neither is it possible, when such injurious practices are allowed, to cleanse or disinfect the female parts as if they were a plane surface. The woman’s structure is designed for the passage of a child’s head. It is consequently composed of immensely distensible or elastic tissue, forming folds or rugæ, which may retain diseased products. It is also abundantly supplied with active secretory and absorbent glands, whose action may become unhealthy.

The special danger of specific disease also arising from the congress of different races is a well-known fact. The alarming epidemic of venereal disease, which spread like the plague through Europe in the fifteenth century, was brought from America by the licentious conquerors of Peru. This gravest form of racial injury is now being emphasized by the contrast between the condition of our white and coloured troops in India.

Although medical investigation has failed to determine precisely the originating cause of the specific virus which produces the form of venereal disease named syphilis, yet it is always connected more or less directly with promiscuous intercourse, especially with the advance of armies.[10]

We know, however, that morbid changes may take place in the natural secretions of the male and female organs under impure sexual intercourse, leading to advanced forms of degeneration in the various results of gonorrhœa, producing, particularly when the epidermis is abraded, sores, ulcers, etc. And the poison of diseased secretion is thus conveyed from one to the other partner in vice.

Nor can the presence of infectivity, once acquired, be detected by inspection; and no infected immoral person, still carrying on impure sexual relations, can ever be pronounced healthy or ‘sound’ by means of examination or ocular investigation. Neither can the absence of the so-called venereal germ gonococcus be relied on as proving health. Its specific significance is denied by many competent investigators, and it is absent in some of the worst forms of disease.

‘Mediate contagion’ is also an important and well-established medical fact. Thus a famous French harlot, called ‘Casse-noix,’ presented none of the grosser signs of venereal disease, yet continued to infect the men who resorted to her.

When to the difficulty of pronouncing the parts with their secretions healthy, is added the existence of uncleanliness, of drunkenness, etc., in either party, the danger of these promiscuous relations is evident.

Now, these positive medical facts appear to be unknown in their full significance to our Government advisers, judging from the latest reports and proposals with regard to disease in the Indian army, which seemed designed to allay national panic rather than to reach the source of the evil. A mistake was certainly made by Government in withdrawing a subject of such vital importance to the nation, from full consideration by our Parliamentary representatives, on account of its painful character. The consequence is that an active but irresponsible Press has thrown a mass of unsifted and shocking statistics broadcast amongst the people, creating widespread alarm.

The army statistics imperatively demand a far more searching examination, both into facts and their causes, than has yet been given, before rational or permanent legislation can be adopted. Any thoughtful person examining the reports referred to, will see that such facts as the following require elucidation: the actual number of individuals affected (not the repeated return of the same soldier) and the varying category of their complaints; the variations in different cantonments, with the causes of such difference; the effect produced by the introduction of the short-service system and by increased restrictions on marriage; the closure of voluntary hospitals and dispensaries; the influence of malaria and tropical climate on the constitution; the mixture of different races; and the causes which have produced the improved health results which are obtained in the army in England.

These points have not been sufficiently investigated by unprejudiced inquiry. The well-meaning effort of Government to meet a very serious state of things must inevitably fail, because the necessary bases for legislation are not yet established.

It is clear that, until all these essential facts have been carefully looked into by a competent Commission and the results presented to Parliament, no legislation—which apparently destroys the foundations of morality, which perverts and weakens our youth, and which, under the misleading phrase ‘voluntary submission,’ reduces our helpless Indian sisters to virtual slavery of the most destructive character—can be permanently accepted by the British nation. We must look forward, therefore, to a longer and more arduous struggle than the one that was prematurely quieted in 1888. Neither can the struggle between right and wrong methods of practical action be confined to our Indian army. It concerns our work in Great Britain as well as in India and in Africa. The dire diseases in question are connected with all large towns as well as with every military station, and as physicians we must study them in these two relations.