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During the year, for a time, medical inspections of the soldiers were held once a
week at a regulated hour in the barrack-room.
I attach the least, the faintest importance to such routine inspections. Syphilis is
very, rarely concealed by soldiers, and I have never yet seen a case so detected.
Gonorrhoea in its late stages may be detected, but if men know the hour and place of
inspection nothing is more easy than to clean one's self thoroughly just before the time.
Such inspections, performed as they are in barrack-rooms or in sergeants rooms,
are injurious to the morale of the men, and develop coarseness and injure modesty.
Over and over again the men have told me so, and I feel ashamed every time I am
ordered to do it in a barrack-room.
Every passer-by, every native cookboy, often women and children, must know
what is going on. I speak truly when I say that nine-tenths of the medical officers
perform the duty in a perfunctory manner, and the man dodges the doctor and makes
a joke of it.
When inspected at hospital it is quite the reverse. There is privacy and a perfect
sense of fitness in so inspecting, and a man can be stripped and 'examined with
perfect ease there. In a barrack-room it must be a shame.
To-day, when we are all trying to teach the soldier to be intelligent, self-respect-
ing, and a thorough man, I take it that venereal inspections in barracks and as a
matter of routine are injurious in every way, and the discovery of a few cases of old
gonorrhoea is dearly bought at the cost of injuring that modesty which exists in even
the most careless of the soldiery.
I take it that lectures and hand-bills are more useful than any venereal parades.
Men were punished for getting venereal disease at times during the year. The
punishments were confinement to barracks, making up guards lost, and answering their
names every hour at the guard-room, or certainly at intervals every evening. Consi-
dering that many women escaped my inspection with clean bills of health who were
without doubt diseased, I think the subject of punishing men for contracting venereal
must be reconsidered, especially as men are not punished for contracting fever
from gross carelessness in sun exposure, liver disease from drink, sprains and fractures
from careless horseplay, and a variety of other ailments causing loss of service to the
State.
No venereal return is received of officers' attacks, although I have no doubt
officers do so suffer, and their disease may be contracted from, or spread in, the chak-
las. No disciplinary measure lies against an officer so injuring himself, although
without doubt the State loses his service for a time from a preventible cause.
4. Sub-committee.—The sub-committee, consisting of the deputy commissioner,
one field officer, 25th Foot, and the lock-hospital medical officer, met monthly during
the year. The cantonment magistrate was also a member of the sub-committee.
5. Special measures to control prostitution.—The special measures to guard
against unlicensed prostitution were patrolling by military and cantonment police, and
detective measures by civil and cantonment police.
6. Registration.—Quite efficient. It extends to city and cantonment prostitutes.
The dancing-girl classes are rightly excluded. No European visits them, or very
rarely indeed.
7. Venereal disease amongst the women.—Two hundred and ninety-seven women
were admitted into hospital diseased. In 1876 the number was 348. Gonorrhœa was
the principal disease, giving 135 admissions ; primary syphilis gave 76 admissions.
8. Attendance.— The women attended very regularly ; 19 were reported for
absence, and fines to the amount of Rs. 4-8-0 were levied.
9. Arrangements for treating the women.—The arrangements of the hospital are
good in every way, and the Fyzabad prostitutes have rarely been so well lodged when
ill as now.