WCTU discusses venereal disease

Practically the whole of the afternoon session of the provincial convention of the Women's Christian Temperance Union yesterday was devoted to a keen discussion on the Government's Social Hygiene Bill for the control of venereal disease, especially with reference to its provisions for compulsory notification and examination. The meeting was held in the Hanover Street Baptist Hall. Mrs W.R. Don, president of the convention, presided, and there was a large attendance, including not only delegates and their friends, but a number of visitors and representatives

of societies interested in what is euphemistically called “the social evil”. Mrs McHugh, lecturer for the Public Health Department, who stated the Government's case said the only clause really in dispute was that enacting compulsory notification. There was much information in their possession showing that this was necessary. She read an extract showing that the nature and power of the temptations that beset our soldiers when back on leave in the great cities of the Old Land. There was not only this physical peril, but this evil had produced an appetite for further wrongdoing. The moral problem was extremely difficult and most important. At the present time we were faced with a terrible menace and something must be done, apart from waiting for the slow process of the uplifting of the moral standards of the community.

Mrs McHugh also dealt with the lack of protection at present accorded to women who suffered disease from infected men. She quoted a case that came under her notice in Auckland of a

man whose wife left him because he had infected her. She conveyed the disease to another man, to whom she bore an infected child. The husband took up with two other girls in turn, both of whom he infected, and further diseased children were born. This awful cycle of disease and crime and suffering went on spreading, yet there was no law at present under which this man could be apprehended or exposed, and his career checked. Attaching a moral stigma to the sufferers from this disease was a cruel wrong to thousands of innocent victims. This often drove them to secrecy or into the clutches of dangerous quacks, who often extracted blackmail. The tinge of puritanism in our race probably prevented us from dealing with the evil as frankly and as boldly as it required.