The
means of treatment should be organised by County Councils and Boroughs,
under the Local Government Board, which should have power to make
independent arrangements when the local authorities fail in their
duties. Institutional treatment should be provided at all general
hospitals, special arrangements made for the treatment of out-patients
in the evenings, and no objection offered to patients seeking treatment
outside their own neighbourhoods. The expenditure should be assisted by
grants from Imperial Funds to the extent of 75 per cent. It may be
added that, however heavy such expenditure may be, an economy can
scarcely fail to be effected. The financial cost of venereal disease
to-day is so vast as to be beyond calculation. It enters into every
field of life. It is enough merely to consider the significant little
fact that the cost of educating a deaf child is ten times as great as
that of educating an ordinary child.
Under the head of Prevention we may place such a suggestion as that the
existence of infective venereal disease should constitute legal
incapacity for marriage, even when unknown, and be a sufficient cause
for annulling the marriage at the discretion of the court. But by far
the chief importance under this head is assigned by the Commission to
education and instruction. We see here the vindication of those who for
years have been teaching that the first essential in dealing with
venereal disease is popular enlightenment.
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