[Footnote Q: In England the Ministry of Health refuses to authorise the
sale of v.d. preventives; refuses to authorise suitable printed
directions; recommends immediate and thorough cleansing but refuses to
explain methods or name disinfectants; and claims that persons who sell
v.d. preventives as such, with directions, are liable to police
prosecution and imprisonment. (_Vide_ Circular 202, Ministry of Health,
May 31st, 1921.) This may be mere "politics," but it looks uncommonly like
fooling with death.--E.A.R.]




IV.--COMPULSORY TREATMENT.


All women should be in favour of reasonable measures for ensuring the
voluntary, and failing that the compulsory, treatment of venereal disease
among men and among women.[R] It is troublesome to prevent a man getting
disease if he is running into a pool of infection, and such cesspools
should be cleaned up or cleared out of the community--_i.e._, cured or
quarantined. Similarly, it is even more troublesome to prevent a woman
becoming infected if she is having relationship with an active
gonorrhoeic or syphilitic man, and such men should be treated
voluntarily, or compulsorily if they refuse or neglect voluntary
treatment. Free treatment should be available to poor persons only;
providing free treatment for all and sundry, whether they can afford to
pay for it or not, is simply encouraging men and women to trust to luck
rather than to disinfection. This presupposes that the teaching of
self-disinfection has been done confidently and authoritatively. When
prevention has been properly taught, then it is fair to penalise those who