tatement that the answers to such questions are true.

They recommend the adoption of a provision in the Queensland Act making
venereal disease a ground for annulling a marriage contracted whilst one
party is suffering from such a disease in an infectious stage, provided
the other party was not informed of the fact prior to marriage. Also
that it should be the duty of a medical practitioner attending a case of
venereal disease, if he has reason to believe that the patient intends
to marry, to warn him or her against doing so, and if he or she persists
it should be the duty of the doctor to notify the case by name to the
Director-General of Health, whose duty it should be to inform the other
party, or the parents or guardian of such other party. Such
communications made in good faith either by the doctor or the
Director-General of Health should be absolutely privileged.

The Committee recommend that the law prohibiting treatment of patients
for venereal disease by unqualified persons shall be strengthened, and
suggest that the Pharmaceutical Society might assist in preventing such
practices.

SECTION 3.--CONCLUDING REMARKS.

The Committee in carrying out their task have been brought into contact
with some uninviting aspects of our social life. Some of the facts
disclosed are of a character to give serious concern to those lovers of
their country who rightly regard it as exceptionally favoured by nature,
and desire to see its people healthy and vigorous, clean in body and
mind, worthy of their heritage. The late war showed that the pick of our
population, physically as well as mentally, were of the finest possible
type, the admiration of all who saw them; but the medical examination of
the recruits disclosed that of 135,282 examined after the introduction
of the Military Service Act--mostly young men in the prime of life--only
57,382, or say, 421/2 per cent., could be accepted as fit for training,
unmistakably proving that the nation as a whole was much below the
standard of physical fitness which it ought to exhibit.

The investigations of the Committee show that already there is far too
large a proportion of mental and physical defectives reproducing their
kind. In the absence of accurate statistics it is impossible to say what
proportion of these defectives are the direct product of venereal
disease, but there is clear evidence that a tendency to lead dissolute
lives is especially noticeable in the females belong