Medical News

Abstract

Venereal Disease in the Colonial Empire. I he alarming spread of venereal disease among natives in the Colonies and the urgent need for more effective treatment was stressed by Mr. L. S. Amery in opening the British Social Hygiene Council's One-day Imperial Conference in Westminster. " We have drawn the attention of the Colonial Office to the whole question," he stated. " A great deal has been done in recent years, still it is a fact that we are not attempting to touch in Africa, more than about 6,000,000 out of the 35,000,000 people in the areas committed to our charge, and when one considers what might be the ultimate consequences in this 30.000,000 of the spread of disease, it seems well worth while to make a special effort to cope with this problem as soon as possible." One of the difficulties, he said, was to provide anything like an adequate European staff. This gave rise to the question of training native dispensers and assistants of all kinds. Education by films was of immense value provided that the film was really made suitable for local conditions. Professor Julian Huxley said that in dealing with illiterate native populations, the cinema and the wireless were going to be of the greatest value in any programme of education. Biology had a great practical role to play in the work of education. It was important culturally and socially to include a certain amount of nature study and broadly conceived biology in the curriculum of every child in the Empire. Mr. E. E. Biss of Kenya said that European teachers to teach biology to natives were a rather expensive necessity. A delegate complained that nature study, as taught in our own secondary and elementary schools, stopped short of the reproductive functions.