. . . The title of my lecture may sound peculiar, but as my story unfolds I trust that the need and importance of public interest in obstetric practice will become apparent. The art of obstetrics is age old, and the risks to mother and child as old as recorded history, but the science of obstetrics and the appreciation of the necessity for active measures to reduce the risks are of relatively recent origin. Many factors contributed to this lack of social conscience, factors which may seem strange to a public accustomed to see all the details of a confinement portrayed in the cinema.
Extract [The following extract from an appreciation of the situation by the senior medical officer after 24 hours’ contact with the camp will serve to illustrate the state of affairs at the beginning.] . . .
. . .It has been found necessary due to the lack of doctors and nurses from home to employ German doctors and nurses. No doubt the additional medical skill thus added have proved beneficial in a general sense, but the patients are naturally terrified of being looked after by Germans even under supervision, remembering how they were tortured in the past. It has been established that patients were often given intravenous infusions of benzol and creosote by the German medical staff, so that now, when the doctors approach with hydrolysate for intravenous infusion, the patients often cry out begging not to be taken to the crematorium. . .
Conclusion This is a brief preliminary report of Belsen Camp to give the medical profession in Britain some idea of the medical problems involved. It is a complete understatement. No words can describe the stench of decaying faeces, rotting bodies, and burning rags, which in the first weeks one could begin to smell miles from the camp, and it can but be left to the imagination of the medical men who read this article to appreciate what the doctors, nurses, and students at Belsen have endured and accomplished. Since the camp was taken over from the Germans more than 20,000 internees have been buried; some 30,000 are left, of whom 11,200 are in the main hospital area. . . .
Extract . . . What to do with the hopelessly unfit? I had thought at a younger time of my life that the legalizing of euthanasia . . . Now my face is set against the legalization of euthanasia for any person, who, having been well, has at last become ill . . . But I am in favor of euthanasia for those hopeless ones who should never have been born-Nature’s mistakes.
. . . should the social organism grow up and forward to the desire to relieve decently from living the utterly unfit, sterilize the less unfit, and educate the still less unfit-then the Law must also grow, along with the amplitude of our new ideas for a wiser and better world, and fit the growing organism easily and well; and thereafter civilization will pass on and on in beauty.
(Paper read at the International Eugenics Congress, 1921) That the mental and moral qualities of mankind are inherited to the same extent as are the physical characters is now so firmly established that we have some difficulty in realising the opposition which early investigators encountered in establishing this fact. . . .
Closely interlinked with the subject of a Revaccination Act is that of the Conscience Clause. When the Royal Commission on Vaccination published its final report and boldly recommended a Conscience Clause, a great part of the medical profession and probably also of the public were startled at what they regarded as a lowering of the vaccination flag. Some opponents of vaccination appeared at first to be jubilant over what they professed to regard as an antivaccination victory. . .
The question of retaining, mending, or ending the above clause will shortly have to be settled. There are many medical men in favour of, and seriously advocating, the last alternative. They argue (i) that a “conscience clause” is altogether wrong in principle; that it is an anomaly without precedent, and opposed to the spirit of all other compulsory legislation; and that if vaccination is to be compulsory, it should be compulsory for all. (2) That the ” conscience clause ” is greatly abused, and that its administration is becoming a farce. (3) That it has not succeeded, in the sense of securing more vaccination. . .
Whilst agreeing in toto with your timely and forcible leader as regards the moral it indicates, yet do I take exception to certain statements therein contained. I object to the statement that it is petty sessional doings which have made Section ii of the Act-the conscience clause-a laughing- stock in so many parts of the country. The reason why it is not a laughing-stock in every part of the country is either because of the good sense or correct views of the inhabitants or because the antivaccinationists have neglected to disseminate their pernicious literature and to enforce their dangerous propaganda amongst these fortunate sections. . .
The Conscience Clause-the only section of the Vaccination Act as yet in force-appears to have caused some consternation amongst the magistrates upon whom will rest the duty of administering it. To those of the “Great Unpaid” who have heretofore systematically refused to do their duty it will make but little difference; they will continue to disobey the law with perhaps an easier conscience. Setting them aside, however, we anxiously turn to consider the attitude which those who have always endeavoured to do their duty upon the bench are about to adopt. . .
Extract Only this much have I suggested, that in view of that which is plainly a higher mandate; in view of the multiple miseries of the syphilitic infant and child, and its degenerate maturity; in view more especially of the fact that not upon us, but upon these miserable little creatures from whom we avert the mercy of abortion, the consequences of our interference fall, we should in all cases in which Nature is trying to cast off a syphilitic foetus thankfully allow her to do so.
Extract The publication of such distressing cases is of great value, as the more widely they are known the more surely we shall receive the support of all good men and women in our efforts to induce Parliament to sanction preventitive regulation, similar to those which, wisely introduced and unwisely repealed, brought, during this too brief period of existence, the priceless blessing of health, not only to men and women, but also to the little children.
