How Brown
11-02-2008, 06:20 PM
Mr. Begg found this and asked me to place it up on the boards. Many thanks to Mr. B for finding it......
THE SPREAD OF SYPHILIS.
To the Editors of THE CANADIAN PRACTITIONER.
Canadian Practitioner - Page 39 (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r91XAAAAMAAJ&q=Poplar+murder&dq=Poplar+murder&lr=)
Medicine (http://books.google.co.uk/books?q=+subject:%22Medicine%22&lr=) - 1889
DEAR SIRS,
In the account given of the Poplar murder
I find that the matron of the " Bromley Sick
Asylum " immediately recognized the remains
as those of Rose Millett, who had been an
inmate of the asylum on several occasions
suffering from a certain disease.
This woman had been allowed to go about
enticing men and even perhaps boys who
knew no better, to their ruin, to inoculate them
with the seeds of disease to be engrafted
on their future wives and handed down to a
miserable posterity. This is not a single
instance. In Canada there are hundreds of
these women. Take the records of any General
Hospital, and you will find yearly dozens of
cases of syphilis that go out in a dangerous condition — sodden with the germs of this loathsome disease. I remember seeing one who had come down from among the better customers who was now covered with syphilitic sores, and told me when asked what she did for a living, that she enticed small boys in the Queen's Park for what they could pay her. Whose boys ? — yours or mine — who knows ? But the hospitals at present have no power to hold such cases against their will any more than they can hold cases of diphtheria. The over-sensitive ideas and want of judgment of inexperienced matrons, the one-sided and self-glorifying views of the ministry, who have never fallen, should have no weight in the settlement of this problem. It is the sacred duty of our noble profession to deal with this matter from a sanitary standpoint. We harbor these infected ones in comfortable hospitals only as long as it suits their convenience, and allow them to go when they will into the streets to spread the plague on down to our sons and daughters. My son may fall ; your son may fall. Rev. John Isaac's son may fall, and they will fall just as often when syphilis is rife as they will when it is not so rife. Our daughters marry men with syphilis. Prostitutes will still exist till the end of time, whether amenable to sanitary laws or not. In Germany the whereabouts of every prostitute is known in the large towns, and they are continually under the eyes of the guardians of the public health. If people have filthy houses we do not say to them, "You can do as you like, because you will suffer for it"; but we say, " You shall not do as you like, because if disease comes on you it may spread to your neighbor." Then the cry comes that the simile is not complete because the neighbor would be an innocent sufferer. But what about the coming bride and the babes unborn ! Are they not innocent sufferers ? A great noise is made by ignorant egotists and goody-goody, duty-loving police sergeants about raiding houses of prostitution but what good results ? Are the prostitutes cleared off the face of the earth ? No ! Buffalo raids and they come to Toronto. Toronto retaliates and they go to Buffalo ; or if they do not leave their own city they hide away
quietly in private lodgings and parade the
streets of the better districts, doing more harm
than if the)' were congregated together where
many young men would be afraid to visit
them. When small-pox or cholera threatens
our medical board works admirably. Let
them move the wheels of the scientific and
unbiassed sanitary science of the future,
taking leaves out of the German book and
out of the book of the English experiences of
garrison towns. Letters in the daily press
from people who are ignorant of the vital or
medical aspect of this question are valueless
and therefore I wish to open the discussion
through your columns.
A CANADIAN FATHER.
THE SPREAD OF SYPHILIS.
To the Editors of THE CANADIAN PRACTITIONER.
Canadian Practitioner - Page 39 (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r91XAAAAMAAJ&q=Poplar+murder&dq=Poplar+murder&lr=)
Medicine (http://books.google.co.uk/books?q=+subject:%22Medicine%22&lr=) - 1889
DEAR SIRS,
In the account given of the Poplar murder
I find that the matron of the " Bromley Sick
Asylum " immediately recognized the remains
as those of Rose Millett, who had been an
inmate of the asylum on several occasions
suffering from a certain disease.
This woman had been allowed to go about
enticing men and even perhaps boys who
knew no better, to their ruin, to inoculate them
with the seeds of disease to be engrafted
on their future wives and handed down to a
miserable posterity. This is not a single
instance. In Canada there are hundreds of
these women. Take the records of any General
Hospital, and you will find yearly dozens of
cases of syphilis that go out in a dangerous condition — sodden with the germs of this loathsome disease. I remember seeing one who had come down from among the better customers who was now covered with syphilitic sores, and told me when asked what she did for a living, that she enticed small boys in the Queen's Park for what they could pay her. Whose boys ? — yours or mine — who knows ? But the hospitals at present have no power to hold such cases against their will any more than they can hold cases of diphtheria. The over-sensitive ideas and want of judgment of inexperienced matrons, the one-sided and self-glorifying views of the ministry, who have never fallen, should have no weight in the settlement of this problem. It is the sacred duty of our noble profession to deal with this matter from a sanitary standpoint. We harbor these infected ones in comfortable hospitals only as long as it suits their convenience, and allow them to go when they will into the streets to spread the plague on down to our sons and daughters. My son may fall ; your son may fall. Rev. John Isaac's son may fall, and they will fall just as often when syphilis is rife as they will when it is not so rife. Our daughters marry men with syphilis. Prostitutes will still exist till the end of time, whether amenable to sanitary laws or not. In Germany the whereabouts of every prostitute is known in the large towns, and they are continually under the eyes of the guardians of the public health. If people have filthy houses we do not say to them, "You can do as you like, because you will suffer for it"; but we say, " You shall not do as you like, because if disease comes on you it may spread to your neighbor." Then the cry comes that the simile is not complete because the neighbor would be an innocent sufferer. But what about the coming bride and the babes unborn ! Are they not innocent sufferers ? A great noise is made by ignorant egotists and goody-goody, duty-loving police sergeants about raiding houses of prostitution but what good results ? Are the prostitutes cleared off the face of the earth ? No ! Buffalo raids and they come to Toronto. Toronto retaliates and they go to Buffalo ; or if they do not leave their own city they hide away
quietly in private lodgings and parade the
streets of the better districts, doing more harm
than if the)' were congregated together where
many young men would be afraid to visit
them. When small-pox or cholera threatens
our medical board works admirably. Let
them move the wheels of the scientific and
unbiassed sanitary science of the future,
taking leaves out of the German book and
out of the book of the English experiences of
garrison towns. Letters in the daily press
from people who are ignorant of the vital or
medical aspect of this question are valueless
and therefore I wish to open the discussion
through your columns.
A CANADIAN FATHER.