33B and a Prayer

In the practice of the world's oldest profession, the water fronts of Port Said or Shanghai have never hummed more briskly than do London's Piccadilly and gaudy, shoddy Soho. Day & night girls walk their dogs, soliciting. Police look the other way, make few attempts to check the prostitutes' health records. But only last week did British prudery permit a few ugly words to be spoken in public.

When U.S. and Canadian military authorities complained about prostitution, the British Government investigated, discovered a vicious increase in venereal diseases, decided the subject needed airing. The austere London Times quoted Sir Wilson Jameson, Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health: "Because of an old tradition of hush-hush, the public does not know what it ought to." Health authorities, said he, are handicapped by "this misguided secrecy."

Sir Wilson's facts and figures: Although Britain's venereal-disease rate is low among nations, civilian infections of syphilis had increased from 5,000 in 1939 to 7,300 in 1941. Gonorrhea was about eight times as prevalent. Nearly 70,000 civilians had contracted one of the diseases in 1941. Added to the spread of the diseases within the military services, these figures mounted to a wartime increase of 70%.

There are 200 venereal-disease clinics for civilians in England and Wales. But, as in the U.S., no law requires the diseased to go to them. Britain's Defense Regulation 33B makes treatment of venereal diseases compulsory only when two other people can be found who will assert that they have been infected.

Last week in the House of Commons, copper-topped Dr. Edith Summerskill, who has practiced medicine for 18 years, moved "a prayer" for the annulment of Regulation 33B because it was inadequate. Said she: "The Minister of Health has approached this problem like a Victorian spinster reared in a country parsonage and sheltered from the facts of life."

Dr. Summerskill estimated: "The casualties during the last year from venereal disease were far greater than the casualties of the blitz (see p. 23).

Bellowed Minister of Health Ernest Brown: "There are moral and ethical and spiritual issues behind this question. . . . I would agree with the Victorians who hold the view that personal purity is the only complete prophylactic."

By 245-to-31, the House of Commons resolutely turned its eyes away, voted that Regulation 33B was adequate.

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