y medical practitioner, etc.
Certainly notification by itself will not arrest the progress of any
infectious disease. But it is an essential element in every attempt to
deal with the prevention of disease. Unless we know precisely the exact
incidence, local variations, and temporary fluctuations of a disease we
are entirely in the dark and can only beat about at random. All progress
in public hygiene has been accompanied by the increased notification of
disease, and most authorities are agreed that such notification must be
still further extended, any slight inconvenience thus caused to
individuals being of trifling importance compared to the great public
interests at stake. It is true that so great an authority as Neisser has
expressed doubt concerning the extension of notification to gonorrhoea;
the diagnosis cannot be infallible, and the patients often give false
names. These objections, however, seem trivial; diagnosis can very seldom
be infallible (though in this field no one has done so much for exact
diagnosis as Neisser himself), and names are not necessary for
notification, and are not indeed required in the form of compulsory
notification of venereal disease which existed a few years ago in Norway.

The principle of the compulsory notification of venereal diseases seems to
have been first established in Prussia, where it dates from 1835. The
system here, however, is only partial, not being obligatory in all cases
but only when in the doctor's opinion secrecy might be harmful to the
patient himself or to the community; it is only obligatory when the
patient is a soldier. This method of notification is indeed on a wrong
basis, it is not part of a comprehensive sanitary system but merely an
auxiliary to police methods of dealing with prostitution. According to
the Scandinavian system, notification, though not an essential part of
this system, rests on an entirely different basis.

The Scandinavian plan in a modified form has lately been established in
Denmark. This little country, so closely adjoining Germany, for some time
followed in this matter the example of its great neighbor and adopted the
police regulation of prostitution and venereal disease. The more
fundamental Scandinavian affinities of Denmark were, however, eventually
asserted, and in 1906, the system of regulation was entirely abandoned and
Denmark resolved to rely on thorough and systematic application of the
sanitary principle already accepted in