the absence of the facilities for treatment, the implied
feeling that the victims of venereal disease are not sufferers but merely
offenders not entitled to care, that has in the past operated so
disastrously in artificially promoting the dissemination of preventable
diseases which might be brought under control.

If we dispense with the paternal methods of police regulation, if we rely
on the general principles of medical hygiene, and for the rest allow the
responsibility for his own good or bad actions to rest on the individual
himself, there is a further step, already fully recognized in principle,
which we cannot neglect to take: We must look on every person as
accountable for the venereal diseases he transmits. So long as we refuse
to recognize venereal diseases as on the same level as other infectious
diseases, and so long as we offer no full and fair facilities for their
treatment, it is unjust to bring the individual to account for spreading
them. But if we publicly recognize the danger of infectious venereal
diseases, and if we leave freedom to the individual, we must inevitably
declare, with Duclaux, that every man or woman must be held responsible
for the diseases he or she communicates.

According to the Oldenburg Code of 1814 it was a punishable offence for a
venereally diseased person to have sexual intercourse with a healthy
person, whether or not infection resulted. In Germany to-day, however,
there is no law of this kind, although eminent German legal authorities,
notably Von Liszt, are of opinion that a paragraph should be added to the
Code declaring that sexual intercourse on the part of a person who knows
that he is diseased should be punishable by imprisonment for a period not
exceeding two years, the law not to be applied as between married couples
except on the application of one of the parties. At the present time in
Germany the transmission of venereal disease is only punishable as a
special case of the infliction of bodily injury.[246] In this matter
Germany is behind most of the Scandinavian countries where individual
responsibility for venereal infection is well recognized and actively
enforced.

In France, though the law is not definite and satisfactory, actions for
the transmission of syphilis are successfully brought before the courts.
Opinion seems to be more decisively in favor of punishment for this
offense than it is in Germany. In 1883 Despres discussed the matter and
considered the