Fifty Years since the Conception of an Organized Venereal Diseases Service in Great Britain: THE ROYAL COMMISSION OF 1916

Abstract

This is an article of absorbing interest to all those interested in the venereal disease (VD) problem and should be read in extenso. There are few of us left who remember the conditions which prevailed in the early years of the present century. Syphilis was believed to have affected perhaps 10% of British manhood and was regarded by the public as a very serious disease; gonorrhoea, however, was treated as something less than a common cold. The setting up of the Royal Commission on venereal disease was a landmark in the history of this subject and its recommendations hold good today and form the basis of present-day policy. The story of the treatment of syphilis, first with mercury only and later with salvarsan as well, fills a page in the history of medicine almost completed by the introduction of penicillin. That of gonorrhoea is less impressive; treated first with "contempt" and sandal-wood oil, then with irrigations and finally with penicillin, the disease which should have been eliminated by this last drug still baffles all attempts at its eradication. Notification of VD was considered by the Royal Commission but rejected as likely to do more harm than good. There is no doubt that the Commission established venereology [though this word was not invented until the Second World War came] as a definite speciality and this has resulted in greatly improved management of VD. [Not nearly enough credit is given to HARRISON who was the life and soul of the VD service when it was inaugurated; nor to the Military (not Royal Army) Hospital, Rochester Row, which led the country in the treatment of VD in the first two decades of the present century.] T. E. Osmond.