The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-01-20
THE PREVALENCE OF
 VENFREAL DISEASES

In attacking a problem it is always advantageous and strategieaIly necces- sary to know the factors in the case. both as to quantity and quality. The. warfare against disease is like any campaign in military operations, we must learn the number and disposi bion of the enemy, Statistics are our scouts in any movement to overcome a given disease locally or generally. Hitherto the prevalence of the social diseases Iso-ca1Ied), that is, those of a venereaI character have defied ae- citrate observation as there has been no compulsory record of them as in the other contagious diseases like smallpox, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and the like. Both the victims and those treaHHng tEl9Tn have kept such. information sub Iosa, because of the peculiar conditions surrounding it. It has been a conspiracy of silence en- tered into by all involved. Hence the at teLnKts made to determine how pre- valent venereaI diseases are ifl this country has been limited to guesses and estimates of those medical men who have had large local experiences in the great centres of population, and these g41esses have been varied as the type of mind of the gllesser, radical or conservatiye. Some have guessed that twenty per cends of the population 1 is or has been affected, others as hieh kg sonal judgment of certain. localities No reliable basis Of computation has ever been offered to make these esti- mates applicable to the general popu- lation of the Undtde States At best lit is a complex problem which cannot
 be reduced to decimals, but the statis-
 tics of the U. s. Public Health Service have been found to afford the nearest practicable answer to this important
 social question. It is, in short, a. pro-
 position in proportion stated thus: Given a certain we'll defined group of persons of whom aesrecord of ailments
 has been kept under official super
 vision and reduce it to an equation,
 using the owi1ole population as the
 other factor.
 1 For over a century the merchant
 seamen Of this country have been
 treated Q class in the Marine Hos
 pitfalls, which are under the jurisdic-
 tion of the Public Health Service and
 accurate records have been kept of
 their injuries and diseases. The whole
 number of merchant sailors in the
 country being known through the cen
 sus returns, numbering now about
 JAG, 900 males Of fifteen years and over,
 the records of the Service show how
 many of them were sick and for what they were treated. Among their dis
 eases it has been found that a little over eight 5er cent were afflicted an EnuaIly with venereaI diseases of var
 ious kinds. This covers a, record Of a
 million and a half of cases of sick and
 6ie@bled seamen, treated in the last
 thinty years a number sufficiently
 large to eliminate all se1nblance of ac-
 cddental conditions. There are about
 3S, 0Oo, 900 males in the United States of
 the age of fifteen and over and by
 rule of proportion the same per cent should show infection. Therefore, the
 propositions in ratios gives the follow
 ing result, making due allowance for the mode Of life and social surround
 ings of the sailor; a probable total
 of over two million cases of venereaI tdisease requiring treatment annually
 throughout the United States This is
 eqaul to about one person in every
 forty.