any extended treatment of figures as to disease would be entirely out
of place in it, so we will content ourselves by saying that during
late years physicians of prominence from every part of the world have
assembled twice at Brussels for Conferences in regard to this matter.
These physicians are in large numbers Continental doctors, the very
ones who have had most to do in enforcing such measures. Each time
the number of opponents to the Contagious Diseases Acts has rapidly
increased, after listening to the testimony from all sides as to
their inutility; in fact, the whole force of opinion at each of these
Conferences, in 1899 and 1902, was against State Regulation, though
there was a division of opinion as to the substitute for it.

In 1903, the Minister of the Interior of France, the country where
these Acts originated, nominated an extra-Parliamentary Commission to
go thoroughly into these questions. This Commission held its numerous
sittings in 1905, and in the end by almost a two-thirds' majority
condemned the existing system of regulation in France, and furthermore
rejected the alternative proposal of notification with compulsory
treatment, by sixteen votes to one. In reporting on the Conferences
held in Brussels, the _Independence Belge_ said, in a leading article:
"Regulation is visibly decaying, and the fact is the more striking
because the country that instituted it (France) is at present the one
that meets it with the most ardent hostility."




CHAPTER 4.

MORE POWER DEMANDED AND OBTAINED.