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rman army after the war, however, includes, under Blaschko's proposals, compulsion and surveillance carried to the finest details. A conservative summary of the situation seems to justify the belief that measures of compulsion will ultimately form an essential part of a fully developed legal code for the control of syphilis. The reasons for this belief have been extensively reviewed in the discussion of the nature of the disease itself (pages 104-105). On the whole, however, the method of Great Britain in looking first to the provision for adequate diagnosis and treatment, and then to the question as to who will not avail himself of it, is a logical mode of attacking the question, and as it develops public sentiment in its favor, will also pave the way for a sentiment which will stand back of compulsion if need be, and save it from being a dead letter. +Backwardness of the United States in the Movement.+--It will be apparent, from the foregoing review of the world movement against syphilis, and the essentials of a public policy toward the disease, that the majority of our efforts in this direction have been decidedly indirect. We have no national program of which we as a people are conscious. It is all we can do to arouse a sentiment to the effect that something ought to be done. In these critical times we must mobilize for action in this direction with as much speed at least as we show in developing an army and navy, slow though we are in that. To limit our efforts to the passing of freak state legislation regulating the price of a Wassermann to determine the fitness of a person for marriage, when both Wassermann test itself, and Wassermann test as evidence of fitness for marriage, are likely, under the conditions, to be absolutely worthless, is to play penny eugenics. The move to take the gag from the mouth of the physician when an irresponsible with a venereal disease aims to spread his infection by marriage is at least intelligent, preventive, even if indirect, legislation, because it acts before and not after the event. Although at the present time we cannot boast a single example of a complete program of direct legislation, the example of Michigan, which is providing free hospital treatment for adults and children with syphilis, should be watched as the first radical step in the right direction. If war and our mobilization for defense leave us with every hospital and dispensary and public health resource and all
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