Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/66

56 founder of this institution had in view have been carried out, and the results are that in this large city, with more than half a million of population, the diseases for which this hospital was opened have become milder in their type, altogether less fatal, and more amenable to treatment than formerly, while at the same time its frequency has greatly diminished, and its effects, even upon the better classes of people, are not so often the subject of medical observation. One of the causes is that there is no restriction placed on the admission of patients—no case is refused from want of accommodation. Every encouragement is afforded, and as the patients are seen early, they are more readily cured. They are kindly treated and spoken to, and ample facilities are afforded them of beginning a new life." Acknowledgment is also given in these hospital reports to "the praiseworthy zeal of the magistracy of the city in vigorously applying the law for the repression and suppression of the particular vice from which these diseases spring."

It should be noted here that the authorities of Glasgow are citizen magistrates, directly responsible to the electors; not stipendiary magistrates elected triennially from among the Town Councillors, and thus farther removed from a responsibility to public opinion.

Another quite independent proof of the wisdom of just repressive law is found in the Registrar-General's tables of illegitimacy. These show a decrease of such