Contagious Diseases Acts (1866-1869) Repeal : summary of the debate on Mr. W. Fowler's motion, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts (1866-1869)", Tuesday, May 24, 1870.

Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contagious Diseases Acts (1866-1869) Repeal : summary of the debate on Mr. W. Fowler's motion, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts (1866-1869)", Tuesday, May 24, 1870. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    15/26 (page 13)
    our connection -with them was severed. If we go beyond the experience of our own Army, and take that of foreign nations, which pursue a like system, the evidence is conclusive. In England our troops lose seven days of service; while those of France lose only four days, and those of Belgium only three days. Hitherto I have confined myself to an- swering the allegations that the Acts have failed in their sanitary aspects. But this is a small part of the issue raised. The main contention is, that the Acts are opposed to religion, justice, morality, and public liberty. The reli- gious objection belongs more to a past than to the present age, but must still be combated, because even now a few men of knowledge are influenced by it. Thus a distinguished surgeon, a Fellow and Member of Council of the Eoyal College of Surgeons, announces his be- lief that this disease is not an evil but a blessing, and that it was inflicted by the Almighty to act as a restraint upon the indulgence of evil passions; and the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) whose honest and outspoken opi- nions are always valued by this House, seems to share these sentiments. I do not pause to remind him that it is strange thus to characterize a modern disease, only three and a-half centuries old, as the special punishment for profligacy; because it would follow that ancient pro- fligacy, which was certainly not less, escaped the infliction. But I prefer to re- mind the House that similar opinions in regard to disease have constantly prevailed from remote antiquity, and have as con- stantly been refuted by the progress of knowledge. It is a very old notion that diseases should not be combated be- cause they are Divine punishments for sins, relevant or irrelevant. Such views have become more rare in modern times, because we are constantly reminded, in the progress of science, that there is far more of mercy than of wrath in Divine arrangements. The angel who stood m the path of the prophet had a sword; but still we are told it was an angel of mercy. Yet, whenever we reach a stage when a disease is proved to be preventible, it is found that a few religious enthusiasts cling to the wrath and spurn the mercy. We need not go further back than Jenner's great dis- covery for a proof of this. Vaccination gave us a protection against a disease only less abhorrent and repulsive than that under consideration. But its intro- duction was fiercely opposed, because it was alleged to be repugnant to religion, morality, law, and humanity. Large as- sociations were formed to resist its ex- tension ; the pulpits resounded with at- tacks on the impious and presumptuous man who dared to interfere with a visita- tion from God. The introduction of a disease from a cow into the body of a man was thought to give him bovine and beastly propensities. Excited by this clamour, the people rose in riots and pelted the vaccinators with stones- just as the Scotch peasantry pelted their first benefactor who introduced potatoes with his own tubers, as being an irreli- gious crop, for they were nowhere men- tioned in the Bible. We have lived down all this clamour, and 80,000 lives of our present population are annually saved by Jenner's discovery. Misdi- rected religious zeal of this kind opposes many great benefits. When my lately deceased friend, Sir James Simpson, in- troduced chloroform—that great boon to suffering humanity—he, too, was de- nounced as irreligious, because he was interfering with a Divine punishment for woman's primeval sin, that in sorrow and travail should she bring forth child- ren. And so was it also in regard to these very contagious diseases in the 15th and 16th centuries. The afflicted patients, smitten, as it was thought, by Divine punishment, were refused ad- mission into hospitals. This refusal, as a traditionary usage, prevails to the pre- sent day, and has led to the special class of Lock hospitals. This special provision shows that we have advanced somewhat in Christian humility since those times, and that few dare to express the arrogant conceit that they are en- titled to be exponents of Divine retri- bution by excluding any class of the afflicted from mercy and compassion. But though the religious argument fails entirely, when examined by the light of past experience, the allegations of in- justice and immorality brought against the Acts are not affected by it. The in- justice is said by my hon. Friend to rest m the fact that they apply restrictions upon women and not on men, although both are equally propagators of the dis- ease. Unquestionably both are, though my hon. Friend, in his leaning to women, thinks men are the worst. To discuss