Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) | Page 9

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 or infectious
disease, and for the detention of such persons in such institution until
they may be discharged without danger to the public health.
"(2.) Any person in respect of whom an order under this section is
made may at any time while such order remains in force appeal
therefrom to a Magistrate exercising jurisdiction in the locality, and the
Magistrate shall have jurisdiction to hear such appeal and to make such
order in the matter as he thinks fit. An order of a Magistrate under this
subsection shall be final and conclusive.
"(3.) Regulations under this section may be made to apply generally or
to any specified institution or institutions."
The Committee are advised that this section was not aimed solely at
venereal diseases. In that year, and prior thereto, was prominent the
difficulty of detaining consumptives who refused to take precautions to
prevent the spread of their disease to others; and, again, much attention
was being centred on the chronic typhoid and diphtheria "carrier." It
seemed rational to compel isolation of such persons in hospital until
there was some assurance that they would no longer be a danger to the

community if allowed their liberty. Regulations under the Act were not
issued, owing to opposition manifested at the time, and consequently
the section never became operative.
(D.) _The Prisoners Detention Act, 1915._
This Act secures that individuals of one class of the community--viz.,
convicted persons--can be held until freed from venereal disease with
which they were known or found to be infected. The measure is of
value, but logically seems unsound, because the venereal diseases from
which such persons suffer are in no way a greater danger to the public
than the same diseases in the law-abiding subject of any class, and,
furthermore, the Committee have no reason to conclude from the
evidence that convicted persons, as a whole, show a higher percentage
of venereal cases than those who never enter a prison. The
Controller-General of Prisons submitted a schedule showing that the
number of prisoners detained under the Prisoners Detention Act from
its commencement in 1916 to 1922 was twenty-eight, consisting of
nineteen males and nine females.
(E.) _Social Hygiene Act, 1917._
In the words of the Commissioner for Public Health of West Australia,
who prepared the first comprehensive legislation on venereal diseases
in 1915, this Act "can hardly be classed with recent Australian
legislation, for the reason that it provides for no notification of the
disease and no compulsory examination." By this Act infected persons
are required to consult a medical practitioner and go under treatment by
him, or at a hospital; but no penalty is provided, and there is nothing to
compel such persons to do either of these things.
Reference to case 1 in the concrete examples cited above will show the
weakness of the Act. The waitress continued in employment, handling
cups and spoons and cakes, &c. The Medical Officer of Health had
every reason to believe she was infected with syphilis, but, not having
the power to insist on her obtaining medical advice, he could do
nothing to enforce the provisions of section 6 of the Act.

Section 7, making it an offence for any person not being a registered
medical practitioner to undertake for payment or other reward the
treatment of any venereal disease, has, in the opinion of the
Commissioner of Police, proved beneficial in restricting the operation
of quacks, but he suggests that it should be amended by deleting the
words "for payment or reward," as it is sometimes easy to prove the
treatment and difficult to prove the payment, and it is the treatment by
unqualified persons that is aimed at.
Section 8, which makes it an offence knowingly to infect any person
with venereal disease, is practically inoperative, as will be shown later
in this report, owing to the extreme difficulty, in the absence of any
system of notification and compulsory treatment, of proving that the
offence was committed knowingly.
The Committee desire to draw attention to section 13. Herein is
provided towards hospital maintenance a higher subsidy for venereal
patients than is receivable for the maintenance of patients suffering
from other infectious diseases. They think that it is inadvisable to