Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) | Page 8

Contagious Diseases Acts have been proved to be useless as measures towards the prevention of venereal infections; and it is the Committee's individual and collective opinion that anything involving a return to the administrative procedure of the Contagious Diseases Act should have no part whatever in any new legislation in this Dominion.
(B.) _Examples of Difficulties--Concrete Cases._
Before proceeding to refer to present and suggested legislation, a few incidents and cases taken from the evidence may help, as concrete examples, to indicate the difficulties to be contended with:--
_Case 1._--A man--young and married, a municipal employee in a city--associated sexually with a female employee in an eating-house frequented by himself and co-employees. In due time he sought the advice of the Medical Officer of Health for (what he suspected) severe syphilis. Steps were taken to obtain his speedy admission to the local hospital. The woman continued in her employment.
_Case 2._--A social-hygiene worker in her evidence said: "I think the majority of cases I deal with (girls attending a hospital clinic) are caused through mental depravity, and in some instances you cannot convince them--they continue to carry on. I have tried all I know how to show them the dangers, but they just laugh at me. I think it is really in many cases just a mental condition--mental degeneration, possibly." This officer explained that even while actually attending the clinic some of these girls (affected with gonorrhoea), without any semblance of reserve or decency, would discuss arrangements for further intercourse with men, and on leaving the clinic (still in an infectious state) were even seen to go off with young men waiting for them.
_Case 3._--Asked if he knew of any cases where the disease had been contracted innocently, a medical practitioner stated in evidence: "I know of a case where two girls in ---- were infected (syphilis) on the lip through a young fellow handing them a cigarette which he was smoking."
_Case 4._--A medical man in private practice, and Medical Superintendent of the hospital in a small country town, states: "Although, judging from an experience of over fifteen years, this district would appear to be peculiarly free from any variety of venereal disease, I think it may be of interest to your Committee to know what happened here in the early part of 1918. At that time there came to reside with her father in ----, a township about nine miles south of ----, a woman, ----, who, shortly after her arrival consulted the late Dr. ----, and was found to be the subject of secondary syphilis.... In all, three cases of gonorrhoea, four of soft chancre (three of whom suffered from phagadoemic ulceration which laid them up for weeks), and six cases of purely syphilitic infection came under my care, all traceable to this same woman. As every case of gonorrhoea and soft chancre afterwards developed syphilis, ultimately I had thirteen cases of syphilis under my treatment alone. Others, I have good reason to believe, went to other towns, and doubtless some failed to seek any kind of help.... Having prevailed upon the woman to come to my surgery ... I told her that she was suffering from three varieties of venereal disease, which she was freely disseminating. I then read to her that part of the Act which deals with those who "knowingly and wilfully disseminate venereal infection." That same afternoon she left for ----, where she continued to ply her calling unhindered. Who can estimate the sum of the damage done by one such person? Not one of those men infected was properly treated, although I did all I possibly could to convince them of their own danger and of the risk of spreading infection to others. Gradually, as the obvious signs of active disease abated, they drifted away. I may say the Wassermann reaction proved strongly positive in every case.... One of these men passed on his infection (syphilis) to a young girl in this town, and she in turn infected other men, one of whom came to me, while others went to my colleagues. Another man of the first group, about middle age, and previously a very healthy, sober, hard-working fellow, has developed thrombosis of his middle cerebral artery as the result of a syphilitic endarteritis. He is totally incapacitated, and in the Old Men's Home at ----. He remains a permanent charge on the community."
(C.) _Hospital and Charitable Institutions Act, 1913, Section 19._
In 1913 the need for detention provisions, to cover any infectious or contagious disease, received the attention of Parliament, and these are embodied in section 19 of the Hospitals and Charitable Institutions Act, 1913, thus:
"19. (1.) The Governor may from time to time, by Order in Council gazetted, make regulations for the reception into any institution under the principal Act of persons suffering from any contagious